♂Joseph Webster

Joseph Webster was a New Hampshire man who raised a family with his wife Maria at Kingston and later lived in the east part of Weare, on the River road. He was most likely the fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Joseph Goss Webster (1769–1831).

Kingston

He was probably the Joseph Webster born at Kingston on 15 September 1724, a twin of his sister Mary, to Ebenezer Webster, one of the town’s grantees, and Hannah Judkins. If so, Joseph was a great-uncle of the statesman Daniel Webster^W: his elder brother Ebenezer was Daniel’s grandfather.

He and Maria are said to have married on 17 November 1747. They were most likely the Joseph Webster and his wife Mariah whose children Hannah, Rachel, Abigail and Cotton were born at Kingston and East Kingston between 1749 and 1757.

Weare

The family later lived in the east part of Weare, on the River road. Four of his sons are remembered there: Joseph, John, Abel, who was born on 13 April 1773, and Cotton. John and Cotton went to Maine.

A family memorial printed in 1904 calls Joseph, born at Plaistow on 31 December 1769, the “son of Joseph and Maria”; he settled at Wilton, Maine, and the family’s line runs through him. Another Joseph Webster was born at Weare that same month, on 3 December 1769, to John and Abigail Webster, so the link is not certain.

Joseph Webster is said to have died on 13 September 1810 and to have been buried at Weare.

Notes

Birth, marriage and death

The Webster family memorial printed in 1904 gives his birth at Kingston on 15 September 1724, a twin of Mary, as a son of Ebenezer and Hannah; his marriage to “Maria Goss, Nov. 17, 1747”; and his death on 13 September 1810. It says that he “lived in Kingston and was buried in Weare, N. H.” The Kingston birth of a Joseph Webster on 15 September 1724 is also in the New Hampshire birth index, with his parents named as Ebenezer Webster and Hannah Judgkin. A family genealogy compiled in 1991 gives the marriage as 26 November 1747 and the death as 12 September 1810 at Weare. No record of the marriage is known; family trees give his dates as 1724–1810. That the Kingston-born Joseph is the Joseph of east Weare rests on the memorial and on the son Cotton, who appears in both places.

Kingston and Weare

The Kingston and East Kingston births are indexed under Joseph Webster and his wife Mariah (also indexed as Moriah): Hannah on 22 February 1749, Rachel on 10 June 1751 (1754 in one copy), Abigail on 1 January 1755 and Cotton on 10 August 1757. Hannah’s birth survives as a copy made by the East Kingston town clerk in 1905. A Maria baptized at Kingston on 20 April 1760, daughter of a Joseph Webster, may belong to the same family. William Little’s History of Weare (1888) says that “Another Joseph Webster lived in the east part of Weare on the River road. He had four sons, and perhaps other ch.”, and names them as Joseph, John (“went to Maine”), Abel (born 13 April 1773) and Cotton (“went to Maine”); it gives no details for the son Joseph. Cotton Webster of Weare, a cooper, and a John Webster bought land at Tyngstown, as Wilton was then called, in 1804, and in 1811 they sold half an acre at Wilton to Joseph Webster of Wilton. The deeds do not state any kinship.

Which Joseph

The same page of Little’s history lists John and Abigail Webster of the west part of Weare with a son Joseph born 3 December 1769, and the New Hampshire birth records give that birth too. A third Joseph Webster of Weare, whose wife was Mary, had a son Hezekiah on 14 May 1769 and so cannot be the father of a son born that December. DNA matches between a descendant of Joseph Goss Webster and descendants of John, Abel and Cotton Webster favor Joseph and Maria; none run through the other children of John and Abigail, though DNA at this distance could not tell the two households apart if they were close kin.

Daniel Webster

The memorial traces Joseph’s elder brother Ebenezer, born in 1714, to his son Colonel Ebenezer Webster (1739–1816) and his grandson Daniel Webster. Family papers have long claimed a kinship with Daniel Webster, in differing degrees.