Glendale, California Biographies

Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster was born at Conway, Carroll county, New Hampshire, on December 1, 1836, a son of Samuel and Naamah (Swan) Webster. The Webster family is of scotch-Irish ancestry and has been in America since the middle of the eighteenth century. Mr. Webster’s grandfather, John Webster, was advanced to the rank of colonel during the Revolutionary War, and in the French and Indian wars fought under General John Stark. His grandmother Mary (Sterling) Webster, was a niece of General Stirling and also of General John Stark. Samuel Webster was a second cousin of Daniel Webster, the illustrious American statesman, jurist and orator. Naamah Swan attended Fryburg Academy when Daniel Webster was one of the faculty of that institution.

Mr. Webster was reared on his father’s farm, and after attending the district school, went to Fryburg Academy, at Fryburg, Maine, which was only a short distance from Conway, New Hampshire. After finishing his course at Fryburg Academy, he was employed in a carriage and wagon factory at Gilmanton for three years. He then went to Woburn, Massachusetts, where he was employed I n the manufacture of leather goods for several years; in later years acting as foreman. In 1860, Mr. Webster went to Osage County, Kansas, where he pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres of government land, improved the same and remained there for eighteen years. There he was one of the organizers of a school district that was twenty-four miles long. Selling his Osage county farm he went to Lego, Coffy county, Kansas, and conducted a general mercantile store and farmed until he sold out in 1884 and came to Tropico. He purchased four acres of land, his present residence at 1012 South Central Avenue occupying a part of the original purchase. In 1904 he went to Imperial Valley, where he and his eldest son each homesteaded a quarter section of land west of El Centro. They resided there a part of each year until 1914, when they sold their holdings and returned to their home in Tropico.

Mr. Webster was a member of the first board of trustees of the City of Tropico; was re-elected and served the second term as president of the board. Mr. Webster married Hannah Sleeper Smith at Concord, Massachusetts, December 15, 1857, a native of Gilmanton, New Hampshire, and of an old New England family. Their children are: Fred, who is the city clerk of Burbank; Josephine, who married Griffeth O. Hughes, passed away in 1903, leaving a family of five children; Samuel, who died in Arizona of typhoid fever at the age of thirty-two; and Joseph, who is purchasing agent in the light and power department of the City of Glendale.

Mr. and Mrs. Webster are members of the Second Adventist Church of Los Angeles. On December 15, 1917, they celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary. Both have been blessed with good health all their lives, and are exceptionally well preserved for their years. Mrs. Webster is one year younger than her husband. They have eight grand children and nine great-grand children.

From “History of Glendale and Vicinity” by John Calvin Sherer. The Glendale Publishing Company, c. 1922 F. M. Broadbooks and J. C. Sherer. p. 339.