♀Sybil A. Webster

Sybil A. Webster (22 May 1833 – 9 January 1890) was a Maine woman from Kingfield who went west in the 1850s, settled in Kansas, and as a widow kept a hotel in Lawrence. She married three times. Her first husband, a doctor, left her in Kansas, and two years after her death her only son, newly of age, took his stepfather to court over the handling of her estate. She was the elder sister of Eldora M. Webster (1846–1913), the great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006).

Early life

Sybil was born at Kingfield, Franklin County, Maine, on 22 May 1833. She was the eldest of the six children of Benjamin Webster (1802–1884), a Kingfield mechanic and clock repairer, and his second wife, Harriet Clough (1809–1887). She also had three half-brothers and a half-sister from her father’s first marriage. In the census of 1850 she was seventeen and still at home in Kingfield, the eldest daughter in a household of nine.

Wisconsin, Minnesota and Kansas

The family record gives her marriage to J. G. Taylor as 31 October 1855. Her obituary calls him Dr. Taylor and traces the couple’s moves: four years in Wisconsin, one in Minnesota, and then De Soto, in Johnson County, Kansas. At De Soto, the obituary says, “Dr. Taylor deserted her, obtaining a divorce.” It records both the desertion and a divorce that he, not she, obtained. The records do not say where or when the divorce was granted, and no children of the marriage are known. Her probate file in 1890 named no Taylor heir.

On 18 July 1861, at De Soto, she married Turner Sampson (1814–1880), a New Hampshire-born dyer turned hotel and livery man, nearly twenty years her senior and a widower. He had arrived in Lawrence in 1854, served as a major in the Free State home guard, and was the first treasurer of Douglas County. At the time of the marriage he was keeping the Lexington House, a hotel near De Soto. The couple moved to Lawrence in 1863 or 1864. In the census of 1870 Turner was the proprietor of a feed stable, with property worth $10,000, and Sybil was keeping house. Their only child, Turner H. Sampson (1870–1914), was born on 22 September 1870. According to Turner’s obituary, the couple also adopted and raised two girls. The elder, Julia, died soon after her marriage, and the younger was Florance P. Sampson (born about 1868).

The Lawrence House

In his last years Turner Sampson kept the Lawrence House, a hotel in the city. He died on 21 January 1880, and Sybil carried on the business. The census taken that June lists her as a widowed hotel keeper on Desmont Street in the First Ward, with Florance and her son, several boarders and servants, and two of her late husband’s relatives: his sister Lydia A. Stevens and Lydia’s son George, who was the hotel’s manager. Her obituary says she managed the house, “assisted by her sister-in-law”, until she remarried.

Osawatomie and death

On 22 January 1882, in Douglas County, she married T. A. Stanley, who had children of his own. Shortly afterwards the couple and her son moved to Mr. Stanley’s farm at Osawatomie, Miami County, Kansas. She died there on 9 January 1890, aged 56, without a will. She was a Baptist, and her funeral was conducted by the Baptist minister who had baptized her, the Rev. J. A. Iler. At her own request her body was taken back to Lawrence and buried beside Turner Sampson in Oak Hill Cemetery. A Lawrence undertaker billed for the hearse and carriages two days after her death. Her obituary, printed in the Osawatomie Advertiser on 6 February 1890, names her mourners as her husband, “an only son, just stepping into manhood”, an adopted daughter and several stepchildren.

The estate

T. A. Stanley was appointed administrator by the probate court of Miami County at Paola. His sworn petition valued her personal property at about $2,500 and named only two heirs: himself and her son. Her adopted daughter was not among them. The estate was largely farm stock, including a Jersey cow sold privately at Osawatomie. It also held a $500 note owed to her by her brother John C. Webster, and $28.27 “received from the Estate of Benjamin Webster”, her father’s estate in Maine, which was still paying out six years after his death. Her son, then nineteen, chose his own guardian, A. A. Cooper of Lawrence, and the $500 note was handed over to the guardian. The guardian’s accounts, closed in 1894, show that $18 of the son’s money was spent on a monument for her grave.

In August 1892, less than a year after he came of age, Turner H. Sampson applied to the court, as “son and heir at law”, for a citation requiring his stepfather to show why he had not returned a true inventory of the estate’s personal property. The court heard the matter on four days that autumn, and Stanley was examined as a witness. The case was then continued to 29 December 1892 for argument. The file does not record the ruling. Stanley’s final account, which ended with a balance of $58.72, argued that $103.12 he had retained the year before, under the judge’s order, should not have been counted as part of the estate. Her brother’s family memorial of 1904 says only that she “had but one child, Turner, and he resides in Kansas.”

Notes

The dates in her obituary do not all agree with other records. It gives her first marriage as 1853, not 1855, her marriage to Turner Sampson as 13 July rather than 18 July 1861, and his death as 1879 rather than January 1880. A memorial index gives Lawrence as her place of death, but that is where she was buried. The probate papers call her “late of the County of Miami”, and the obituary places her death on the Osawatomie farm. The census of 1880 enters her as “Sarah A. Sampson” and her son as “Henry T.”; he signed his own court papers as Turner H. Sampson. Florance’s age is given as two in 1870 but seventeen in 1880.