♀Eldora M. Webster

Eldora M. Webster (11 February 1846 – 15 October 1913) was a Maine woman from Kingfield, in Franklin County, who spent her married life in Lewiston. A memorial of the Webster family, published by her brother in 1904, records that she was state treasurer of the Maine Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and president of its Lewiston union. She was the great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and his son Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Early life

Eldora was born at Kingfield on 11 February 1846, the daughter of Benjamin Webster (1802–1884), a native of Wilton, and his second wife, Harriet Clough (1809–1887). Her parents had married in 1832. She grew up in a large household. Her full brothers and sisters were Sybil, Benjamin C., who served in the Civil War, John C., later a vice-president of the Ætna Life company at Hartford, Conway, and a younger sister, Emma. She also had three half-brothers, Daniel, William and George, from her father’s first marriage. In the census of 1850 she was four years old, living at Kingfield with her parents, her full siblings and two of the half-brothers, both by then grown men. The family was still at Kingfield in 1860.

Marriage and family

On 5 August 1866, at the neighboring town of Freeman, she married Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), a Freeman man, in a ceremony performed by J. R. Masterman, a preacher of the gospel. By 1870 the couple were living in Lewiston, Androscoggin County, where the census lists her as keeping house. Lewiston stayed their home for the rest of their lives. They had four children, born between 1868 and 1880. Their second child, Addie Eldora, died in October 1874 at the age of four. Their eldest son, George Wesley, became a physician in New York State, and their daughter Edith married John G. Coburn Jr. of Lewiston in 1896. The family memorial describes him as a merchant tailor.

The 1904 family memorial gives an account of her public work. Besides her temperance offices, it says she founded “The Star in the East”, was a director of the Young Woman’s Home, and was a charter member of the Woman’s Hospital Association. The memorial does not say what “The Star in the East” was.

In 1900 her sister-in-law Ida Alice Blanchard died at Lewiston and left $300 each to three of Eldora’s children. The will names “Mrs. Wesley Blanchard of Lewiston”, and Wesley was one of its executors. When a son married in 1903, the Maine marriage return listed his parents as Wesley Blanchard, retired, and Eldora Webster, both of Lewiston, and gave her birthplace as Kingfield.

Later life and death

In 1900 she and Wesley, married thirty-three years, were living at Lewiston with their son Channing. Wesley Blanchard died in 1908, at his son George’s home in New York. In 1910 Eldora, a widow of 64, headed her own household at Lewiston; the census records that she had borne four children, three of them living, and her daughter Edith and Edith’s husband John G. Coburn lived next door. Eldora outlived Wesley by five years and died at Lewiston on 15 October 1913, aged 67. She is buried in Riverside Cemetery, Lewiston.

Notes

A Sons of the American Revolution application filed by a descendant gives the marriage as 23 July 1866 at Lewiston. The town marriage return gives 5 August 1866 at Freeman, and so does her brother’s 1904 memorial. The return is preferred here.

A family story connects the Webster line to Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Nothing found in the records supports it. Her father’s line has been traced back only to her grandfather, Joseph Goss Webster (1769–1831), who was born at Plaistow, New Hampshire, and nothing in that line points to Virginia.