Mary Barnes Cabell (February 1815 — June 11, 1900) was an American freedwoman who enabled the foundation of Institute, West Virginia.
[4] They lived on land that later became Kanawha County, West Virginia that Cabell had purchased from the heirs of Martha Washington in 1853.
While the rumors of the time said that his murder was because of "white resentment toward his integrated family life," that has never been substantiated and no one was convicted of the crime.
[1] In 1891, because of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts saying certain benefits would be denied to states that didn't educate Black people, the West Virginia Legislature passed an act creating the "West Virginia Colored Institute," a high school for educating Black students.
The school became West Virginia State University and as of the late 1990s many Cabell descendants serve there as faculty and staff.