Cabellsville

R-81

Just west of here near the old Stage Road stood Amherst County’s first purpose-built courthouse, constructed on privately owned land shortly after the county’s creation in 1761. An unincorporated village developed around it and served as the county’s center of government for nearly 50 years. Samuel Jordan Cabell, later a U.S. Congressman, acquired the courthouse tract from his parents in 1784. In 1803, the Virginia General Assembly established the town of Cabellsville on 25 acres of Cabell’s land. This area became part of Nelson County in 1807, when Nelson was formed from Amherst. Nelson’s justices continued to meet in Cabellsville until a new courthouse opened in Lovingston in 1810.

Department of Historic Resources, 2022

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Acts of the General Assembly, Deeds of Amherst County, and Nelson County Virginia 1761-2004 provided by research conducted by Rosemary Dunne; William H. Gaines, “Courthouses of Amherst and Nelson Counties,” Virginia Cavalcade 18 (Autumn 1968): 5-7; John T. Kneebone, J. Jefferson Looney, Brent Tarter, and Sandra Gioia Treadway, eds., Dictionary of Virginia Biography (2 vols.; Richmond, Va., The Library of Virginia, 1998- ), 2:494-495; Sherrie S. McLeRoy and William R. McLeRoy, More Passages: A New History of Amherst County, Virginia (Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, Inc., 1995), 35-36, 69; Nelson County Survey Reports, Works Progress Administration of Virginia Historical Inventory, http://ajax.lva.lib.va.us/F/8GCAEV7VK597NSM8ASVLSVRGMI4NGX1MY4JLRR2LGX2GHTR8GS-03678?func=find-acc&acc_sequence=001727779, 7 May 2004; Nelson County, Deed Book 1, 1808-1815, Reel 1, Library of Virginia, 114-115; Nelson County Virginia Heritage, 1807-2000 (Summerville: Wva.: S.E. & Associates, Inc., 2001); John O. and Margaret T. Peters, Virginia’s Historic Courthouses (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 38-39, 141; Oliver A. Pollard, Jr, Under the Blue Ledge: Nelson County Virginia (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1997), 66-67; Emily J. Salmon and Edward D. C. Campbell, Jr., eds., The Hornbook of Virginia History, 4th ed. (Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1994); Catherine Hawes Coleman Seaman, Tuckahoes and Cohees: The Settlers and Cultures of Amherst and Nelson Counties, 1607-1807 (Sweet Briar, Va.: Sweet Briar College Printing Press, 1992), 209-210.