About The Cabell Family Society, Inc.
Dr. William Cabell, the primogenitor of the Virginia Cabells, was born at Bugley Farm near Warminster, England, in March 1699. He sailed to Virginia in 1723, settled along the James River in Henrico County, and married Elizabeth Burks of Hanover. Three years after his arrival, they welcomed their first child, Mary.
By 1750, William and Elizabeth had four more children—William, Joseph, John, and Nicholas—and established a settlement on the James River, which they named Warminster. Around 1742, they built their home, Liberty Hall, in what is now Nelson County. After their deaths—Elizabeth in 1756 and William in 1774—the family buried them in the graveyard at Liberty Hall.
Nearly 200 years later, in 1955, a falling tree limb dislodged the monument marking William and Elizabeth’s graves. A small group of Cabell descendants formed an informal committee to repair the monument. Realizing they needed a formal organization to raise funds and maintain the graveyard, they founded The Cabell Memorial Foundation in 1957.
Since then, the Foundation has held annual meetings as a Virginia Corporation, typically during the third week of October. While the main business includes electing the board of directors, the highlight has always been reconnecting with old and new Cabell cousins and sharing family stories.
By the early 1970s, membership had grown to 200 and continued to increase gradually over the next 30 years, reaching about 300 by the late 1990s. Since its founding, more than 600 people have belonged to the Society at one time or another.
Source: The History Channel: Eleven Short Papers, by Randolph W. Cabell, 2000.