This is from another list, good reading. Enjoy! Jean http://cgi.rootsweb.com/~genbbs/genbbs.cgi/surnames/c/a/CABLE/biographies 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 Goebell 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 inquiry 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 record, 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 for 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 inquires, 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