♂John C. Webster

John C. Webster (24 May 1839 – 30 September 1921) was a Maine-born printer from Kingfield who went into insurance, settled at Hartford, Connecticut, and in 1904 published a memorial of the Webster family, the book that preserves most of what is known of his parents’ children and grandchildren. That memorial, which he compiled himself, describes him as a vice-president of the Ætna Life company. He was the elder brother of Eldora M. Webster (1846–1913), the great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006).

Early life

John was born in Maine on 24 May 1839, and both of his marriage records give his birthplace as Kingfield, in Franklin County. He was the third of the six children of Benjamin Webster (1802–1884), a Kingfield mechanic and clock repairer, and his second wife, Harriet Clough (1809–1887). His full brothers and sisters were Sybil, Benjamin C., Conway, Eldora and Emma, and he had three half-brothers and a half-sister from his father’s first marriage. In the census of 1850 he was eleven, one of nine people in his father’s household at Kingfield. By 1860, aged 21 and still at Kingfield, he was working as a printer.

Marriages

On 19 January 1862, at Concord, New Hampshire, he married Sarah B. Norton (1837–1868), also of Kingfield. The marriage record lists them both as living at Concord, him as a printer, and calls it the first marriage for each. Their only known child, George, was born on 12 May 1868 and died two days later. Sarah died the same year.

On 27 October 1869 he married Mary E. Little. His family memorial calls her Mrs. Mary E. Abbott, a widow, and the daughter of James Little and Eliza G. Little of Enfield, New Hampshire. The Massachusetts register of the marriage gives John’s age as 30 and his home as Concord, and it names his parents as Benjamin and Harriet. By then he had left printing: the register gives his occupation as insurance agent. No children of the second marriage are known.

Hartford and the family memorial

He made his career in insurance at Hartford. In 1904 he published there Memorial Poems and Brief Ancestral Record of the Webster Family and Descendants, a book of poems followed by a record of the family. It traces the Websters back through his grandfather, Joseph Goss Webster (1769–1831), and lists his parents’ children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren generation by generation, with dates, marriages, residences and trades. For several of his nephews and nieces it is the only source for a full name or an exact date of birth. Because he wrote it within living memory of nearly everyone in it, it is the main witness for this branch. It is still a compilation, though, and his own entry in it is the only source for his vice-presidency at the Ætna Life company.

His sister Sybil died in Kansas in 1890. Her estate included a $500 note owed to her by John. It was handed over to the guardian of her son, Turner H. Sampson (1870–1914), and made up much of the boy’s inheritance. His memorial says of that nephew only that he “resides in Kansas.”

Death

John C. Webster died on 30 September 1921, aged 82, and was buried at Hartford.

Notes

The marriage record of 1862 gives Sarah B. Norton’s age as 17, which would place her birth about 1845, not 1837. The Massachusetts register of 1869 gives the bride as Mary E. L. Abbott, aged 20 and born at Boscawen, New Hampshire. That age sits awkwardly with the memorial’s statement that she was already a widow. The records found do not settle either point. Census entries for 1900 and 1910 placing a John C. Webster at Farmington, Franklin County, Maine, do not sit with his Hartford career or with the Hartford imprint of his 1904 book. They may belong to another man.