Mary Virginia Ellet Cabell (24 January 1839–4 July 1930), a founding officer of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, was born at Point of Honor in her mother's hometown of Lynchburg, the daughter of Charles Ellet and Elvira Augusta Daniel Ellet. Her father was a noted civil engineer and moved frequently during her childhood. Ellet lived in such varied places as Cuba, Niagara Falls, Philadelphia, and several cities in Virginia, including Wheeling, where her father erected the then-longest suspension bridge in the world, across the Ohio River. The family resided in Europe in 1855. Educated by her father, Ellet became proficient in French and German and developed an interest in history. She spent the momentous winter of 1860–1861 in Richmond, where John Brown Baldwin and Alexander Hugh Holmes Stuart escorted her to sessions of the state secession convention.
Ellet's father died in 1862 of wounds suffered while commanding a fleet of United States steam rams on the Mississippi River during the Civil War, and her mother and younger brother both died not long thereafter, leaving her to care for her two younger siblings at their residence in Philadelphia. In that city on 9 July 1867 she married her cousin William Daniel Cabell, of Nelson County, a widower with two daughters. They had three sons and three daughters. William Cabell had lost much of his wealth during the Civil War and in 1865 had opened the Norwood School (Norwood High School after 1873 and Norwood High School and College after 1876) on his Nelson County property. Many of its graduates matriculated at the University of Virginia, where he had been educated. He was a leader for many years of the university's alumni association.
William Cabell ceased being principal of Norwood in 1879. In 1881, after they sold the school, the Cabells moved to Washington, D.C., and opened the Norwood Institute, an exclusive school for girls, of which they were joint directors. Cabell and her husband became well known for their educational work, and while they lived in Washington they were prominent members of society. On 11 October 1890 she was one of eighteen women who attended the organizing meeting of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. Cabell presided at the meeting and was elected one of the vice presidents general. Caroline Scott Harrison, wife of the president of the United States, accepted election as president general on the condition that she not shoulder any functional responsibility. Cabell was then named vice president presiding. She directed the organization and presided over its meetings, many of which were held at the Cabells' large and elegant residence, as was an elaborate reception to publicize the new organization in 1891.
Following Harrison's death Cabell became acting president general and was nominated for president general in February 1893, but she withdrew in favor of Letitia Greene Stevenson, wife of the vice president of the United States, who accepted the office on terms similar to Harrison's. Cabell was named president presiding, recognition of her role as principal director of the society since its founding. While she was in charge the DAR enrolled thousands of members in approximately 150 chapters in thirty-five states and the District of Columbia; founded a journal, the American Monthly Magazine (later Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine); and made plans to erect a national headquarters building in Washington. Cabell was one of the society's delegates at the World's Congress of Representative Women in Chicago in May 1893 and delivered an address entitled "The Ethical Influence of Woman in Education." It exalted the maternal role of women and emphasized their special social responsibility to educate their children properly. Cabell remained president presiding of the DAR until she resigned on 5 October 1893.
In 1897 the Cabells retired from management of the Norwood Institute and moved back to Norwood in Nelson County. She attended national meetings of the DAR from time to time through World War I but did not join a state chapter. The DAR named Cabell honorary vice president general in 1898, and in 1901, in recognition of her services during the founding decade, the society created for her the office of honorary president presiding. After her husband died on 18 February 1904 while visiting his daughter in Berryville, she lived in Chicago with two of her daughters. Mary Virginia Ellet Cabell died in Michigan City, Indiana, on 4 July 1930 and was buried in Green Hill Cemetery in Berryville.
Sources Consulted:
Ellen Hardin Walworth, "Mrs. William D. Cabell," American Monthly Magazine 1 (1892): 114–120 (frontispiece portrait); Frances E. Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches Accompanied by Portraits of Leading American Women in All Walks of Life (1893), 144–145 (portrait); Alexander Brown, The Cabells and Their Kin: A Memorial Volume of History, Biography, and Genealogy, 2d ed., rev. (1939), 427–428; feature article in Lynchburg News, 10 Oct. 1965; Cabell correspondence and documents in Papers of William Daniel Cabell and the Cabell and Ellet Families (including Cabell's diaries, journals, and commonplace books, 1853–1925, and DAR speeches), Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in Mary Virginia Ellet Cabell Papers, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution Archives, DAR Library, Washington, D.C., and in Cabell Family Letters, Accession 22968, Library of Virginia; Ann Arnold Hunter, A Century of Service: The Story of the DAR (1991), 8–10, 45–52; Cabell, "The Ethical Influence of Woman in Education," American Monthly Magazine 2 (1893): 615–620; obituaries in New York Times and Winchester Evening Star, both 7 July 1930; memorials in Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine 64 (1930): 479–480, and Virginia State Conference of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (1930): 79.
Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Glenn R. Gray.
How to cite this page:
Glenn R. Gray, "Mary Virginia Ellet Cabell (1839–1930)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cabell_Mary_Virginia_Ellet, accessed [today's date]).
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