Page:Illustrated History of Nebraska volume 3.pdf/752

BIOGRAPHICAL 689 ated from a private boarding school at Jenkintown, Pa., and taught school for a few years following. After the sale of the old homestead at Chelton Hills, Mr. Webster's father bought a smaller place on Washington Lane, near Germantown, Pa. It was here that Joseph Webster began his married life, when in 1854 he was united in marriage to Emma Walton, also of Quaker parentage. His father and his half-sister occupied a portion of the house until the death of the father in 1859. During the resi dence of about twelve years on Washington Lane, two children were born to them, Mary (1855), and William (1857). Upon the sale of this place, a farm was bought near Oxford Valley. Bucks county, Pa., which was their home for one year only. They then removed to a farm near Sorrel Horse, Mont gomery county, remaining there until 1871. Mr. Webster had long taken a keen interest in the wel fare of the Indians and often expressed a desire to labor among them. In the summer of 1871, upon the recommendation of Genesee and Philadelphia yearly meetings of Friends. Joseph Webster was appointed by President Grant to the position of U. S. Indian agent for the Santee Sioux Indians in north ern Nebraska. The appointment was promptly con firmed by the senate. He. with his family, came west to take charge of the agency, arriving there July 7th, succeeding the retiring agent, Asa M. Janney. At this date there were no railroads west of Sioux City, la. The distance from Sioux City to the agency was about one hundred miles, which was made by stage and private conveyance. At the time Mr. Webster took charge of the Santee, the Indians were living in their lodges clustered about the agency buildings. Probably the most important work of Mr. Webster's administration was the sur vey of the reservation and the allotment of the land in severalty to the Indians and their removal from the lodges at the agency to comfortable frame, or log houses upon their respective claims. At the close of his administration he had the satis faction of seeing the Indians tilling their claims and the congregation of tipis about the agency entirely dispersed. Upon the expiration of his term of office, July, 1875, he was reappointed and con firmed for another term of four years. He, how ever, did not serve longer than the fall of this year, but resigned, his resignation to take effect October 1st, and removed to the farm he had purchased in Platte county, near the present town of Monroe, where he made his home during the remainder of his life. For a number of years he was actively en gaged in farming and stock-raising. In 1892 he, together with his son, son-in-law, Major Charles Hill. ex-Lieutenant Governor Geo. W. Snow, and Reuben Groot, all of Springfield, S. D., organized the Bank of Monroe and opened for business Au-

689

gust 15th of that year. Mr. Webster served as its president from the first, and his son, William Web ster, as cashier. A little later he took an interest in the Bank of Springfield, S. D., a bank owned by the South Dakota stockholders in the Bank of Mon roe. On October 9, 1900. after a lingering ill ness, Mrs. Webster died at the sanitarium at Sioux City, la. Her husband survived her but a short time; contracting pneumonia while on a visit for the holidays with his daughter at Springfield, he died January 2, 1901, and was laid to rest beside his wife in Genoa Friends cemetery, near Monroe. For many years he and Mrs. Webster were elders of Genoa monthly meeting of Friends. Joseph Webster was a man of exemplary habits and genial disposition ; he made but few enemies and many friends. The daughter, Mary Webster, wife of Major Charles Hill, was for some years a teacher in the Santee Indian schools.

WEBSTER. JOSEPH RAWSON, Lincoln, Neb., was born May 5. 1839. in Ahmadnagar Hills, near Bombay, British East India. His parents were of American birth, and resided in Victor, N. Y. He is the son of Elijah Ashley and Marietta (Rawson) Webster, the former born in Whitesboro, N. Y., February 20, 1813, and died February 19, 1855, at Ontario, Ind. ; the latter born in 1811, at West Stockbridge, Mass., died at Galesburg, Ill., in February, 1879. Elijah Ashley Webster was a printer, and in 1835 went to Bombay, British East India, to take charge of the American Board of Foreign Missions printing house. He was an artist in metal work, and finding the type in Bombay unsuitable for good work, himself cut the dies and cast reformed fonts of type in the Maharatta language, so reduced in size that the Bible was printed in one volume instead of four, yet in a neater and more legible letter press. He remained there seven years, training a couple of native workmen, whose successors are still in charge of the printing house and use the same style reformed fonts of type. While there, he distinguished himself in rescue of troops from two transports wrecked in Bombay harbor, and for this was "gazetted" by the governor-general in the official paper of the Indian government. His wife, whose grandfather fought in Bunker Hill, also engaged in missionary work. They returned to New York in 1842, and in 1847 removed to LaGrange county, Ind., where Mr. Webster engaged in farming and school teaching. Joseph R. Webster is eighth in descent from John Webster of Hartford, deputy governor of Connecticut in 1659, having emigrated to America in 1635. He received his early education in the log school houses of Indiana, afterwards was a student of LaGrange collegiate institute of Ontario, and graduated from Wabash College,