Father of the Cabell Family in Virginia

Born 1699 in Warminster, England. Died 1774 in Warminster, Virginia.

Young William Cabell, Virginia Museum of History and Culture (original source unknown)

Dr. Cabell was from Warminster, England and received his medical training in London at the Royal College of Medicine and Surgery. He immigrated to Virginia in about 1723 and married Elizabeth Burks, daughter of Samuel Burks (1682-1756) and Mary Davis (1685). Dr. William Cabell and Elizabeth are considered founders of the Cabell Family in Virginia.

In 1730, settlements along the James River in Virginia extended as far west as Scottsville, and the James River was becoming the center of population, travel, and trade. Dr. William Cabell, who had first settled on the James in Goochland County, decided to move west and staked out twenty miles of low grounds on the James River beginning 15 miles above Scottsville. He established his home on the lower banks of Swan Creek in present day Nelson County. He built his home, Liberty Hall, on this site, and the ensuing community around Liberty Hall was named Warminster.

By 1753, Dr. Cabell owned close to 26,000 acres of land along the James River. He served his community as magistrate, surveyor, and clergyman. He prospered as a physician and plantation owner establishing a community around the supply trade down the James River. The prosperity enjoyed by Dr. Cabell was in large part due to enslaved persons performing the manual labor associated with running the farm, mills, blacksmiths, boats, and plantation house.

Elizabeth Burks

Elizabeth Burks was the daughter of Samuel Burks Sr. (c. 1675–1756) and Mary Elizabeth Davis (daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Davis). Samuel Burks was an early Goochland County settler who bought 400 acres on Byrd Creek (north side of the James) in 1728 and sold it in 1730 (later called Licking Hole Creek). He was an Indian trader and landholder active along the Rivanna/Burks Creek area by 1733, and he appears across early Goochland, Henrico, and Albemarle records.

Elizabeth married Dr. William Cabell in 1726, and they lived in the Licking Hole Creek area, where their son William was born in 1730. For the Cabell family, Elizabeth Burks Cabell sits at the intersection of documented Virginia settlement history and a much older family tradition about “Princess Nicketti.” The “Princess Nicketti” tradition enters the Burks/Cabell line through Mary Elizabeth Davis, who is said to descend from the same Indian family “to which Pocahontas belonged,” and—despite variations in retelling—is consistently described as Nicketti’s granddaughter[i].

For researchers, the practical relevance is that demonstrating a potential indigenous ancestry depends on a specific mother-to-daughter chain that includes Elizabeth Burks Cabell through her only daughter Mary Cabell Horsley and her daughter, Elizabeth Horsley McCulloch. Where that maternal line can be demonstrated as truly unbroken in records, it becomes one of the only parts of the tradition that is potentially testable via mitochondrial DNA among living direct female-line descendants—helpful for evaluating whether an Indigenous maternal signature is present, even though DNA alone cannot prove a name or the full story.

Legacy

When Dr. William Cabell died in 1774, he and Elizabeth left behind a flourishing family—28 living children and grandchildren—rooted along the James River in Virginia. In the decade that followed, the next generation answered the Revolution’s call: all four of his sons and a band of grandsons stepped forward to serve the Patriot cause and help secure freedom for the United States. Two and a half centuries later, the family has expanded through more than twelve generations to over 8,000 descendants, united by a continuing commitment to historic preservation—of Cabell homes, gravesites, documents, and achievements. This website, maintained by The Cabell Family Society, Inc., stands as both a memorial to their lives and a practical genealogical resource for descendants and all who study this family’s history.

Genealogy

Dr. William Cabell and Elizabeth Burks had 6 children. Cabell family history and genealogy is presented through his 5 children that lived to adulthood.

As his children grew up, they settled on parts of their father’s land and married into other families nearby. In 1763, Dr. Cabell conveyed to his four oldest children their portion of his estate by deeds. Upon his death in 1774, his youngest son, Nicholas, inherited the Liberty Hall plantation.

Members of the Cabell family continued to maintain the genealogy of the descendants of Dr. William Cabell and Elizabeth Burks. In 1993, Randolph W. Cabell compiled and published the updated genealogy of the descendants of Dr. William Cabell and Elizabeth Burks in 20th Century Cabells and Their Kin. This commitment to preserving the details of family lineage and history has resulted in a family tree of 12 generations of descendants (about 8,900 descendants in 2023). Using family records and public records, the birth places and birth dates of 95% of the first 7 generations of descendants (born up to 1920 only) was determined and used to visualize migration of the family from their original home place in central Virginia. The following map shows the birth location of the first 3 generations by descendant (Mary, William, Joseph, John and Nicholas).

Works Consulted

  • Brown, Alexander. The Cabells and their Kin: A Memorial Volume of History, Biography, and Genealogy. Richmond, Va.: Garrett and Massie, Inc., 1939. First published 1895.
  • Cabell, Randolph W. 20th Century Cabells and their Kin. Franklin, N.C.: Genealogy Pub. Service, 1993
  • N. J. Floyd’s Floyd Biographical Genealogies (1912) says Nicketti married a fur trader named Hughes near Balcony Falls and that Davis married their daughter, while also giving Nicketti a different parentage.