John Webster (Governor)

John Webster (born August 9, 1590 in Cossington , Leicestershire , † April 5, 1661 in Hadley , Massachusetts ) was 1656-1657 Governor of the Colony of Connecticut .

Life

Webster was born in Cossington, Leicestershire, England, to Matthew Webster (1548-1623) and his wife Elizabeth Ashton. He emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with his wife and five children in the early 1630s . The family settled in the Newtowne area, now Cambridge , Massachusetts. Together with Thomas Hooker and his followers, they left Newtowne in 1636 and moved to Hartford .

His first public office was membership in a committee that was involved with the Magistrate Court in determining the course of the war with the Indians of the Pequot tribe . He was an elected judge from 1639 to 1655 and, in 1655, Vice Governor of the Colony of Connecticut. He was governor of the Colony from 1656 to 1657. He was first judge from 1657 to 1659.

In addition to serving as governor of the Colony of Connecticut, John Webster was one of the nineteen men who represented the cities of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor from 1638 to 1639 in drafting and adopting the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut . This document is widely considered to be the earliest form of constitutional government.

A division among church members in Hartford came into being when the priest of the First Church in Hartford, Samuel Stone , explained that the requirement that only parents where both the Puritan would belong Community, permitted to give a child to be baptized, would be omitted and that non-baptized persons should also have the right to vote in the future. John Webster agreed with others that this was not acceptable. Reverend Stone ignored these objections and the amendment was accepted by the Massachusetts court. The court ruled that although the Reverent Stone was very headstrong to ignore the opinion of the majority of his parishioners, it was right to liberalize the baptismal ritual. It was also found that those who disagreed with this decision may relocate elsewhere in Massachusetts to practice their beliefs as they see fit. Hadley became the location of this parish and a new parish was established there in 1659. Webster lived there for the last two years of his life. In 1661 he fell ill with a fever and died.

family

Webster married Agnes Smith (born August 29, 1585 in Cossington, Leicestershire, England) on November 7, 1609 in Cossington. She died in Hadley, Massachusetts in 1667. They had nine children:

• Matthew (born February 11, 1608/1609), married to Sarah Waterbury then to Mary Reeve
• Margaret (born February 21, 1609/1610), married to William Bolton afterwards Thomas Hunt
• William (born December 26, 1614), married to Mary Reeve
• Thomas (born November 24, 1616), married to Abigail Alexander
• Robert (born November 17, 1619), married to Susanna Treat
• Anne (born July 29, 1621), married to John Marsh
• Elizabeth (born March 16, 1622/1623), married to William Markham
• Mary (born March 30, 1623), married to Jonathan Hunt
• Faith (born April 8, 1627, died at the age of 10 days)

His descendants were numerous and included the lexicographer Noah Webster .

literature

• William Holcomb and Melville Reuben Webster, William Holcomb Webster, Melville Reuben Webster: History and Genealogy of the Governor John Webster Family of Connecticut . ER Andrews Printing Company, 1915, pp. 1-19.
• Lucius Barnes Barbour: Families of Early Hartford, CT . Genealogical Publishing Company, Inc., 1982.
• Frank R. Holmes: Directory of the Ancestral Heads of New England Families 1620-1700 . Genealogical Publishing Company, 1974.
• Meckler: Biographies of American and Colonial Governors .
• Nethaniel Goodwin: Genealogical Notes First Settlers of Connecticut and Massachusetts 1856.

Individual evidence

1. ^ "The Ancestry of Governor John Webster," in The American Genealogist , Issue 24, Number 4 (Oct. 1948), pp. 197ff.
2. ↑ “The Constitutional History of Connecticut” by Roger Welles in Connecticut Magazine, Issue 5, page 93 (1899).