Ann (Nancy) Carrington Cabell (1760–1838), the most likely addressee of this letter, was born in Charlotte County. She married William Cabell (1759–1822) in 1780 and thereafter resided in the portion of Amherst County that became Nelson County in 1807. Of the Cabells’ fourteen children, eleven reached adulthood (Alexander Brown, The Cabells and their Kin, 2d ed., rev. [1939; repr. 1994], 207, 209, 219, 221–2, 227; Virginia Genealogical Society, Quarterly 13 [1975]: 66–8; Lynchburg Virginian, 16 Apr. 1838).

In October 1818 Indiana governor Jonathan Jennings (jenings) was at Saint Marys, Ohio, representing the federal government in the negotiation of land-purchase treaties with the Potawatomi, Wea, Delaware, and Miami Indians (ASP, Indian Affairs, 2:168–70).

Sarah Syme Cabell, the wife of Samuel J. Cabell (1756–1818), of soldiers joy, died in 1814. Ann Carrington Cabell and her husband moved into his parents’ union hill estate about five years after the death of his father, William Cabell (1730–98). His mother, Margaret Jordan Cabell, lived out her widowhood with them at Union Hill until her death in 1812 (Brown, Cabells and their Kin, 81, 83, 132, 139, 191, 204–5, 219). Having apparently been out of contact with the Cabell family for several years, Battles could also have intended this letter for Margaret Jordan Cabell.