Dear Mr. Cabell,
Since you appear to be a Cabell descendant, I am assuming you are familiar with and have already checked the Cabell Papers at UVA.
The largest collection of Cyrus McCormick records, which includes his personanl and business documents, is held by the Wisconsin Historical Society. Here's a link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/libraryarchives/ihc/contents.asp
In Nelson County, McCormick had extensive dealings with William Massie, proprietor of Pharsalia. Massie's records are available on microfilm from the Center for American History at UT. On Massie and Pharsalia, don't miss Lynn A. Nelson's "Pharsalia: An Environmental Biography of a Southern Plantation, 1780-1880 (Environmental History and the American South)."
As you probably know, a number of agricultural improvement societies appeared in Va. in the 1820s-1830s. If one of them (such as the one for Albemarle Co.) covered Nelson Co., you should check their records, along with Va. newspapers for the relevant period and locale (both for ads and organizational lists and announcements).
Finally, don't ignore other vendors of harvesting machines. For example, Robert Wormeley Carter II of Sabine Hall (I am writing a biography of his sister, Fanny Carter Dulany) is mentioned, along with twenty other prominent Virginia “practical agriculturalists,” in an 1834 newspaper advertisement promoting the “Douglass Patent Wheat Machine,” an improved threshing machine built in New York by Zalmon Booth.
Best regards.
Thomas Katheder
---- Chawnzmit <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> A friend of mine called and asked if I knew anything about who Cyrus McCormack's first Virginia customers were for his reaper. From the text he had, it sounds like Nelson County was written all over it, but I have not been able to find anything about the Cabells in Nelson County planting wheat in the 1830-1840 time frame. Everything was tobacco.
>
> Any ideas of where we might find out just who ordered those early reapers. Apparently both lived on the banks of the James River, and McCormack came up with serrated blades to address the potential problem of cutting damp wheat.
>
> Randy Cabell
>
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