Between 1911 and 1913, he worked for his uncle in the office of the Branch coal mines in West Virginia. On November 8, 1913, he married Priscilla Bradley Shepherd. She was a widow with five children from an earlier marriage. In 1915, Priscilla gave birth to a son, Ballard Hartwell Cabell. Priscilla died in March of 1949. In June 1950, Cabell married Margaret Waller Freeman.