Administrative Information

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Preferred Citation

Papers of William Daniel Cabell and the Cabell and Ellet families, Accession #276, 276-a, 283, 1154, 1210, 1744, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Va.

Acquisition Information

This collection was a gift of Margaret Cabell and Elvira Daniel Cabell, 1938-1943.

Scope and Content

Papers of the Cabell and Ellet family contain family correspondence, financial and legal papers, genealogical and biographical material and bound volumes, chiefly journals, of family members particularly William D. Cabell and Mary Virginia Ellet Cabell.

Major topics are antebellum plantation life at Norwood in Nelson County, Va.; enslavement; the Civil War and Reconstruction; the Nelson County Home Guard; the University of Virginia Alumni Association; the Daughters of the American Revolution; the Norwood School; Nelson County, Va.; and the Norwood Institute, Washington, D.C.

Subjects in the correspondence include genealogical and biographical information on the Cabell and Ellet families; European travel, 1855; the Crimean War; collecting of supplies for the Confederate Army; anti-Southern sentiment after the war; the engineering and naval career of Charles Ellet, Jr., especially the design of the Niagara River suspension bridge, war service on the steam ramship he designed, and his death in the naval battle for Memphis.

Additional subjects include the settlement of William Cabell's estate and other Nelson County land transactions. Launcelot M. Blackford and John Hartwell Cocke are mentioned in the correspondence.

Topics of interest in single letters include reaction in Staunton, Va., to John Brown's raid; the Washington Peace Conference, 1861; pro-Confederate sentiments of Lynchburg, Va., women and enslaved laborers; the South's response to Lincoln's call for troops; families divided by war; armed enslaved laborers fighting for the Confederacy; 1st Bull Run; Confederate troop movements April 1862; and Union occupation of Winchester, Va., May 1862.

Also Antietam; opposition to the Confederacy in western Virginia; an 1865 appeal by Robert E. Lee to Virginia farmers regarding provisions; the U.S. War Department's refusal to compensate the Ursuline sisters of Columbia, S.C. for Sherman's destruction of their convent; and the U.S. Navy investigation of Charles Rivers Ellet.

Also cotton speculation by Union general Samuel R. Curtis; reunion of northern and southern Episcopal churches; the National Union Convention, August 1866; labor conscription of freedmen; baseball in Philadelphia, 1866; proposed merger of the University of Virginia medical school and Richmond Medical College; a Virginia flood, 1870; legal property rights of women, 1870; and a Gridiron Club dinner, 1896.

Also diaries, journals, and commonplace books, 1853-1925, of Mary Virginia Ellet Cabell, with comments on the fugitive enslaved laborer law and secession; drawings, poetry, and genealogical notes about the Cabell family, the Ellet and related Israel families; speeches on behalf of the D.A.R.; and translations of French articles.

Also journals, memoranda books and scrapbooks of William D. Cabell, catalogs, account books, student autograph books and other printed material of the Norwood Institute, and minutes, 1888-1894, of its Literary Society; a daybook and University of Virginia autograph book of Joseph C. Cabell; pamphlets, 1837-1862, by Charles Ellet about canals, railroads and bridges; and an incomplete essay on the Civil War in 1861 by Edward A. Pollard.

The collection also contains "Cabellana, "1851, 1872, by Nathaniel Francis Cabell, a series of essays on the history of the Cabell family used as the basis of The Cabells and their kin. The volume also contains diary entries, 1871 January-March, of N. F. Cabell, with a catalog of the Norwood School, 1870-1871, and copies of some correspondence, business and legal documents interpersed, including testimony regarding an incident that led to William C. Cabell's expulsion from Norwood School.

Of interest are a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, 1771 August 3, giving advice on choice of books, and defending fiction; a statement of Joseph C. Cabell's debts 1837 January 19; and three letters from Robert Skipwith to William Daniel Cabell regarding Cabell's purchase of the 1771 Jefferson letter to Skipwith's ancestor.

Organization

The papers have been grouped into four general series: Correspondence, Financial and Legal Papers, Genealogical and Biographical Material, and Bound Volumes. The correspondence and business papers have been organized chronologically, while the genealogical and biographical records have been separated by subject. Within these subsets, the original order of the documents has been preserved. The seventy bound volumes included in the collection are stored in the final five boxes, and have been organized according to author or subject and category (journal, scrapbook, etc.). A complete box listing, including all bound volumes, follows.