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CABLE Biographies
A new message, "Caspar (Cable) Goebell," was posted by
volunteer on Fri,
20 Oct 2000
Surname: Goebell, Fines
---
NAME: volunteer
EMAIL:
DATE: Oct 20 2000
QRYTEXT: (Extended version of an article intended for the
Sunday, Dec. 26, 1976 issue of a Lafayette, Ind., newspaper
but not published)
TODAY IN THE BICENTENNIAL YEAR
R.M. Cable, Emeritus Professor of Biology, Purdue University
Two hundred years ago this morning, the Battle of Trenton was
fought. As battles go, it was
short, but as a total victory after many setbacks, it was a
glorious ending for that difficult
first year of the American War for Independence. Without
doubt, it gave to Washington's
discouraged rag-tag army a tremendous lift that would be
remembered, yes, sorely needed a year
later in the snows of Valley Forge.
Before the battle, General Washington had retreated west from
New York across New Jersey,
pursued by crack British regulars and three Hessian regiments
under the command of Col. Johann
Gottlieb Rall. Reaching the Delaware River, Washington crossed
above Philadelphia to the
Pennsylvania side, taking with him all of the boats that could
be found to deny their use to
the enemy. However, winter was beginning and already ice was
in the river. At any time, it
could freeze over and the enemy walk across dry-shod. That
danger had Philadelphia in a panic,
and threatened disaster to the American cause. In Trenton, the
enemy, confident of victory
soon, settled into winter quarters and celebrated Christmas in
high spirits.
As dusk fell that Christmas day, loaded boats pushed out from
the Pennsylvania shore as
Washington's celebrated crossing of the Delaware got underway
to continue most of the night.
ashore in New Jersey, he moved on Trenton with knowledge of
the enemy's strength and deployment
from a spy posing as Rall's butcher. The attack at daybreak
was a complete surprise. In no
longer than two hours B some later said less than one B the
battle was over. Many of the enemy
escaped by running away but most resisted until one by one,
the three Hessian regiments were
cornered and threw down their arms. Col. Rall was twice
wounded and died the next day after
Washington visited him and promised humane treatment of the
prisoners.
Captured enemy officers were sent to Dumfries in Virginia for
interment. Enlisted men were
taken across the Delaware into Pennsylvania and imprisoned at
Lancaster where many German
immigrants had settled. Speaking their language, captives were
permitted to work for local
farmers or as apprentices to trades. Some mingled with the
people and lost their identity as
prisoners of way; others chose to join the Americans in their
struggle for independence, and
had a promise of receiving a grant of land for beginning a new
life when the war was over.
However, more than half of the German troops captured at
Trenton were exchanged with the
British for American prisoners. As a result, men who left
their homeland as comrades in arms
came to be on opposing sides of the conflict. But that
situation was to be temporary for two
men, at least, both grenadiers in Rall's own regiment before
their capture: one, Henrich Fines,
returned to the British in a prisoner exchange; the other,
Caspar Goe!
bell who was not in the list of prisoners exchanged,
presumably because he had volunteered in
the Continental army. This story is about them, primarily
because a Caspar Goebell was the
great-great-great grandfather of the writer and another West
Lafayette resident, Virginia
Becker, trustee of Wabash township. At least two soldiers of
that name were among the German
mercenaries. Capture of the one at Trenton is recorded on the
attached copy of a page from the
official list in Hessisches Staatsarchiv, Marburg. No. 37 on
that page, he is among the
grenadiers taken to Lancaster. No. 1 is their company
commander, Obristleutnant (Lt. Col.)
Bretthauer, who died later at Dumfries.
Less than two years after the Battle of Trenton, Fines and
Goebell were together again. No
record of the circumstances has been found, but more than
likely, Goebell was recaptured by the
British. At any rate, he and Fines found themselves in the
same company of a Hessian regiment
with a British expeditionary force that sailed south from New
York in November, 1778. Its
orders were to capture Savannah and Charleston to deny their
use as seaports for supplying the
Americans, and then move inland to subdue them with the help
of loyalists and indians,
especially the Cherokees. Savannah was taken in December, and
in the spring the enemy marched
up the coast to capture Charleston. The city resisted until
reinforcements arrived. Then badly
outnumbered, the enemy fell back to Savannah, forced by
pressure from the Americans to cross
Stono River, now part of the inland waterway, to a chain of
islands and to retreat along them.
The Battle of Stono River was fought during the month that !
the enemy was encamped on Johns Island, the second in the
chain.
The regimental Monatische Liste (monthly report) for June,
1779, in the Marburg archives
included the following entry in the report for the company of
Major Endemann (in translation):
1 private Caspar Goebell, born at Rodenhausen,
jurisdiction of Rodenberg, 24 2 years old,
5 feet 4 inches tall; [handwritten notation: possibly near
present day Hannover, Germany]
1 private Henrich Fines, born at Westuffeln,
jurisdiction of Zigrenberg, 20 years old, 5
feet 5 2 inches tall. Both deserted June 4 from camp on Johns
Island, with full arms and
equipment.
Besides Goebell and Fines, five other privates and a drummer
in Major Endemann's company
deserted that month. As the tide began to turn against the
British, the desertion rate
accelerated. Before Cornwallis left North Carolina for the
Virginia campaign that ended at
Yorktown, he reported to the Crown that German-speaking
strangers, loose in the countryside,
were more responsible than combat losses and disease for the
dwindling size of his forces.
If the records just cited are of the same Caspar Goebell, they
reconcile family legends which
disagree in that one version gives capture and the other
desertion as the circumstances leading
to his joining the American cause. The legend handed down to
the writer was one of desertion,
told over 40 years ago by his grandfather whose memory and
knowledge of family history were
prodigious in scope and accuracy as records later would
testify. He had been told that Goebell
had a companion, but not his name or where they deserted, and
that they escaped by setting a
boat adrift, lying on the bottom, and letting the current
carry them away from camp without
making any noise.
In 1969, the writer had a search of German records started,
expecting that the surname would
prove to be Kabel because south German immigrants of that
name, including a Caspar Kabel, had
settled in Pennsylvania a generation before the Revolutionary
War. When no one named Kabel was
found, the only other likely surname was Goebell, closer
phonetically in German to Cable in
English than is Kabel, pronounced Cobble. Also, Goebell was a
common Hessian name. Because
induction records are more informative as a rule than others,
they were searched first but only
one Caspar Goebell was found, in the regiment from Hanau, near
Frankfurt a. Main. However,
those records had been lost for some units, the most important
of which later proved to be the
companies in Rall's regiment that came to America.
Found next was the record of a Caspar Goebell in the list of
captives at Trenton, but because
it did not agree with the legend of desertion, the search
continued until one that did was
found. As the translation above shows, that record more than
agreed: it confirmed the legend by
naming Goebell's companion in desertion and the place which
explains why a boat was used. Stono
River could be crossed by wading at low tide only at two
places guarded by a picket boat.
With the belief that the full story had been revealed, the
search was called off until Norma
Duff, in Ohio, sent the writer a story of capture rather than
desertion that she had obtained
in western North Carolina. It was stoutly maintained there to
be the true account, even though
a history of the county stated that Goebell deserted at the
first opportunity. Mrs. Duff
wondered whether both legends could be true of the same man;
still unidentified was the Caspar
Goebell captured at Trenton. Further enquiry proved that he
could not have been the one in the
Hanau regiment for who, instead, a record almost as improbable
as the possibility raised by
Mrs. Duff was disclosed. He deserted the British, but in 1781
and at Winchester, Virginia.
After working briefly in Reading, Pennsylvania, he joined the
American navy and was on the
frigate South Carolina when the British captured it. He was
returned to his German unit and
sailed home with it after the war. ended in 1783. From his
rec!
ord, the possibility that another of the same name could have
both been captured and deserted
gained considerable credibility which was vastly increased by
learning that Fines, too, was
captured at Trenton and handed back to the British in a
prisoner exchange that did not include
Goebell.
Without even induction records for Rall's regiment, the matter
would be settled if the capture
record were as informative as the one of desertion, or gave no
more than the place of birth. As
contribution to the Bicentennial Year, the Institut fur
Archivwissenschaft in Marburg recently
published a work entitled Hessischen Truppen im Amerikanischen
Unabhängickeitskrieq (HETRINA)
(Hessian Troops in the American War for Independence). The
work is divided into volumes, each
covering certain regiments, records of which are in the
Staatsarchiv in Marburg. Of the few
units not included, one is the Hanau regiment with its records
in Frankfurt. Names of soldiers
are listed alphabetically, and with a data line for each
record pertaining to an individual. A
line includes the date and place of birth if in the record,
the rank, unit, type of record, its
date, and a reference locating the record at Marburg. In the
attached excerpts from Vol. 3,
data lines 6202 and 6203 are the only ones fo!
r records of a Caspar Goebell (Kaspar Goebel) in the entire
work. Both lines are for records
already known to the writer: that of capture (11 in the
record-type code) at Trenton; and the
record of desertion (12) later at Johns Island. Giving
Rodenhausen as the place of birth in the
first line must have been on the assumption that both lines
concern the same man, because the
capture record does not mention a place of birth.
Although nothing new was learned from Goebell's data lines in
HETRINA, those of Henrich Fines
(lines 5300 and 5301) were something else. Besides being based
on the same records as were
those of Goebell, they give Vinus as an alternate spelling for
Fines, both pronounced Fee ' nus
in German. Looking again at the capture record in which
Goebell is no. 37, it is seen that no.
16 is none other than Henrich Vinus! Without a doubt, the same
Henrich Fines and Caspar Goebell
were captured at Trenton in 1776 and deserted at Johns Island
in 1779. Hence, legends that have
divided opinion among Goebell's descendants are not
contradictory but complementary. Each is
part of the whole truth which, with retelling, became
different and incomplete accounts.
Returning to Goebell and Fines, left riding the tide across
Stono River, what happened when
they reached the mainland is not known. Presumably, they
quickly made contact with the
Americans there, keeping pressure on the enemy. They may have
joined the continental army then.
According to family legend, Goebell was in Gen. Greene's army,
and he may well have been later,
after Freene was sent south the following year to replace
Gates on whom rout of the Americans
at the Battle of Camden was blamed. Goebell probably was still
soldiering in eastern North
Carolina when he met and married Elizabeth Bakr, and lost no
time in starting a family. The
first (1790) U.S. Census shows him as Casper Cabel with a wife
and five children. He had moved
from the Uwharrie River Valley in the piedmont of North
Carolina to near Boone at the western
end of the state. In 1800, he purchased 150 acres of land in
two tracts over the border in
Tennessee, and settled there. In 1826, an adjoining 100 acres!
came to him in a land grant signed by the Governor of
Tennessee, presumably as a belated
reward for his service in the war. His will, filed in 1807,
and the inventory of his estate,
dated November 3, 1826, are extant.
Casper and Elizabeth had nine sons and three daughters who
lived to adulthood. Best knows is
Peter because of his homestead in Cades Cove, Great Smoky Mt.
National Park. Said to be one of
the first three settlers in the cove, Peter was followed there
after the Civil War by a nephew,
John P. Cable, who settled at the lower end of the cove and
built the water mill which has been
restored and grinds cornmeal for sale to visitors to the park.
Nearby is the house of his
daughter, Becky, and the family cemetery in which, among other
descendants of Hessian Goebell,
two of his namesakes are buried. Cades Cove reminds the writer
of the lush bluegrass region of
his native Kentucky, the difference being that the cove is a
picture complete with a frame of
the surrounding mountains.
In contract to the documentation known for Hessian Caspar,
search has revealed nothing
concerning Henrich Fines after the record of their desertion
in 1779. If alive in 1790, he
would have been 31, probably head of a family, and thus named
in the first U.S. Census. If
there, his name was changed and not recognized in the search.
What may have become of him was
learned by pure chance while returning from a visit to Johns
Island a year ago. On Interstate
40 west of Asheville, N.C., we were startled to see an exit
sign to Fines creek! Leaving the
highway to make enquiries, we were directed to the county
library in Waynesville, expecting to
learn, if anything, that the creek was named for a pioneer
settler who died before the first
census was taken. Instead, a history of the county stated that
the creek was named for a man
with a group from Tennessee, pursuing Indians who had stolen
horses. At the creek, which was
frozen over, they ambushed the group and killed Fines. To
continu!
e the chase, Fines' companions put his body under the ice for
burial on the way back, but when
they returned, the ice had moved out and the body could not be
found. The absence of official
records of Fines, the locality of this account, and other
circumstances make a strong case for
the names of Fines Creek being the last rite for Caspar's
companion in arms, captivity, and
desertion.
As pertinent as the sign to Fines Creek may be to this story ,
but certainly not intentionally
so, is another seen on that trip. At the Johns Island end of
the bridge to the mainland, that
sign reads:
CABLE CROSSING
[Please note that this article was received by the contributor
around 1984 from a relative of
the author. I have none of the attachments mentioned in the
article and have determined that
Casper Cable was not my ancestor, nor do I have any additional
information on this family. My
sole purpose in contributing the above is that it may be
beneficial to others researching the
Cable surname.]
Shirley Cable Adler
--
Rosemary Miller
Johnstown, PA