Websters

R. Baker Van

Description

When Lucien Webster, West Point graduate and artilleryman, met Frances Smith, granddaughter of a Connecticut Revolutionary War hero, in Florida, neither could anticipate how exciting and stressful their lives would be over the next 17 years.Thrown together in St. Augustine in 1836 during the Second Seminole War, the couple was barely married before being separated by orders that sent Lucien first to south Florida, where he established a post on the site of present-day Miami, and then to North Carolina, where he participated in the army's sad duty of driving the Cherokee Indians on their "trail of tears."When finally reunited, the newlyweds were posted to duty in Maine for seven years-part of the time at remote Fort Kent, where Frances was the only officer's wife-and then Pensacola Bay for a few months while Lucien's unit prepared for the imminent war with Mexico.For the next two years Frances and Lucien's letters were filled with the details of their lives and with news of their friends. Lucien wrote of the horrors of the Battles of Monterey and Buena Vista and about the boredom of occupation duty, while Frances wrote about her difficulties in maintaining a virtual frontier home in western Florida and her decision to return to her relatives in the North.The Websters has the rare distinction of containing both sides of a correspondence between an "Old Army" officer and his socially prominent wife, one that reflects both their private lives and many of the public events of the times and that interweaves their responses to each other's experiences.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Historical geography

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 05 janvier 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612779560
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Websters
LETTERS OF AN AMERICAN ARMY FAMILY IN PEACE AND WAR, 1836–1853 The Websters EDITED BY VAN R. BAKER   THE KENT STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS Kent, Ohio, & London
© 2000 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242 All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 99-048530 ISBN 0-87338-654-x Manufactured in the United States of America
07  06  05  04  03  02  01  00     5  4  3  2  1
Frontispiece: Lucien Bonaparte Webster and Frances Smith Webster, 1839
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Webster, Francis Marvin Smith, 1809–1881. The Websters : letters of an American army family in peace and war, 1836–1853 / edited by Van R. Baker. p.    cm.
Correspondence between Lucien and Frances Webster. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87338-654-x (alk. paper) ∞ 1. United States—History—1815–1861—Biography. 2. Mexican War, 1846–1848—Personal narratives, American, 3. United States, Army—Military life—History—19th century. 4. Webster, Francis Marvin Smith, 1809–1881—Correspondence. 5. Webster, Lucien Bonaparte, 1801–1853—Correspondence. 6. Webster family—Correspondence. I. Webster, Lucien Bonaparte, 1801–1853. II. Baker, Van R., 1925– III. Title. E338.w38 2000 973.5′092′2—dc21
[B]                              99-048530
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.
To Eric & Molly, Doug, Sue, & Libby, Troy, Jon, Katie, Will, Nathan, & Steven
I give it as my fixed opinion, that but for our graduated cadets, the war between the United States and Mexico might, and probably would have lasted some four or five years, with, in its first half, more defeats than victories falling to our share; whereas, in less than two campaigns, we conquered a great country and a peace, without the loss of a single battle or skirmish.
—Winfield Scott
To the ladies who come up in June,
We’ll bid a fond adieu,
Here’s hoping they’ll be married soon,
And join the Army too
—“Army Blue”
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
1
Prologue, 1801–1836
2
Indian War and Indian Removal: Florida and North Carolina, 1836–1838
3
Peacetime Duty: Maine, 1838–1843
4
Interlude: Hancock Barracks and Pensacola Bay, 1844–1846
5
The Mexican War: Beginnings, 1846
6
The Mexican War: Monterey and Florida, 1846
7
The Mexican War: Buena Vista and Florida, 1847
8
Frances’s Odyssey: Florida to Kentucky, 1847
9
Waiting for Peace: Mexico and Maryland, 1847
10
The Arrival of Peace: Mexico and the United States, 1848
11
Peacetime Duty: Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Texas, 1848–1853
12
Epilogue, 1853–1979
Appendix 1. Identification of Persons
Appendix 2. Addresses of Depositories
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
PHOTOGRAPHS
Webster home in Hartland, Vermont
West Point, ca. 1819
West Point, ca. 1826
The Ephraim Kirby home in Litchfield, Connecticut
Fort Marion (the old Castillo San Marcos), St. Augustine, Florida
Lucien Bonaparte Webster, 1839
Frances Smith Webster, 1839
The Blockhouse at Fort Kent, Maine
Lucien Bonaparte Webster, ca.1846
Fort at Monterey, Mexico
Battle of Buena Vista, 22-23 February 1847
Commander’s quarters, Fort Mifflin
Commander’s quarters, Baton Rouge
New Orleans, 1851
NewYork and Brooklyn (and Governor’s Island), 1851
Edmund Kirby Webster
MAPS
East Florida, southern half, 1840
Northern Maine, 1844
Pensacola Bay, 1857
Mexico, 1846
Webster’s camp at Monterey, 1846
Preface
THE CONFLICTS THAT FORM THE BACKGROUND FOR THIS STORY—THE Second Seminole War, the controversy over the Canadian border, and the Mexican War—are all recounted in published histories. Moreover, diaries, letters, and memoirs provide firsthand accounts of the war with Mexico. So far as I know, however, there has not yet appeared a series of letters between a husband and a wife reflecting both their private lives and the public events of the times.
Although the letters chiefly reflect the thinking of one army officer and his wife, they speak to anybody interested in human nature, for they show how ordinary people reacted to conditions and events beyond their control, how they coped with hardships and strains, sometimes finding much pleasure in their day-to-day experiences and sometimes, as in the case of Lucien Webster, developing a philosophy to get through life.
Most of the letters in this volume were passed down from Frances Smith Webster to her daughter Fanny Webster Danner and then to Fanny’s son Norman Danner, who was still living in York, Pennsylvania, in 1970. Through York historian James Rudisill, in that year I learned of the existence of the letters and met Mr. Danner. Earlier Mr. Danner had divided the collection—sending the Florida letters to St. Augustine; some of the Cherokee letters to Cherokee, North Carolina; the army letters to Fort Sill, Oklahoma (home of the Artillery School); the Maine letters to the Maine Historical Society; and the family letters to the Historical Society of York County. Using the information Mr. Danner provided, I was able to get copies of all the letters.
Related letters were in other places—at West Point, Lucien’s alma mater; in the National Archives, which held some of Lucien’s official correspondence; and especially at Chapel Hill, where the University of North Carolina kept the letters of Frances’s brother, Edmund Kirby Smith, who became a Confederate general. I obtained copies of some of these letters and took notes from others. I seized the excuse to visit all these places, as well as sites from which the letters were written—St. Augustine and Santa Rosa Island, Florida; Houlton and Fort Kent, Maine; Monterrey and Saltillo, Mexico; Fort Mifflin, Pennsylvania; Newport, Kentucky. In some of these places original or restored buildings remained, which helped me visualize how the Websters had lived. In other instances, greater imagination was required—just a historical marker (or nothing at all) indicating where a fort or residence once stood.
Since I knew little about the Mexican War or the period in which it took place, I was challenged to learn enough history and geography to set the letters in context. Reading about the times, together with required travel, provided a pleasurable education. I was accompanied by my family on the early explorations—my wife, my son and daughter, sometimes my mother—and in the later journeys by my second wife, who has been not only companionable but also helpful. I hope all these persons dear to me gained something from the adventure also.
Reading some of the Mexican War correspondence between Frances Webster and her husband made me realize that this was an unusual collection, and talking with Mr. Danner further stimulated my interest in his family. He put me in touch with his cousin Frances Marvin Webster, a Webster grand-daughter who lived in New York City, and as I became friends with Frances and Norman (while continuing to read and transcribe the letters) I almost came to feel that I, too, was a Webster.
Work on the letters went slowly and even stopped entirely for a while. My profession took most of my time, my children grew up, I was widowed and remarried, and eventually I retired from teaching. Meanwhile, Norman Danner and his cousin Frances died, as did Norman’s nephew, Chauncey Black, leaving only me to tell the story of Lucien and Frances Webster.
The story has appealed to me especially because, like Lucien Webster, I am a West Point graduate (1946) who went into the artillery and traveled to many stations, in the United States and abroad, and who had a family that profited, mostly, but sometimes suffered, from the experiences, especially during one long separation. Through the years, on active duty and in retirement, my military friendships have endured (and strengthened). Like Lucien and Frances and their children and grandchildren, who were proud of their military heritage, my army colleagues and our spouses and children and grandchildren and godchildren know what it means to belong to the army family. Perhaps the Websters’ experiences can further remind us of the great importance of that family in our lives.
To edit the great mass of letters relating to the Websters has required me to be selective, for they total nearly seven hundred documents, ranging in time from 1818 (when Lucien’s brother recommended him to the secretary of war for an appointment to West Point) to 1881 (when Frances died). Nearly all of the strictly military letters and orders have been omitted, or summarized; letters from Frances’s girlhood friends have also been omitted. Most other letters, though, have been retained, often in toto.
Editing of the letters chiefly meant making them more readable without losing accuracy and flavor: spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been standardized and modernized (an exception with respect to spelling is the retention of “Monterey” for the Mexican city instead of the modern spelling with two r’s); abbreviations have been expanded; and dates have been standardized (the military form is used throughout). To save space, after the first few letters salutations and complimentary closes have been omitted. (Frances and Lucien often did not use them in their letters to each other.) In some cases, to avoid tedium, sentences and paragraphs have been omitted. (Examples are Lucien’s endless inquiries about the children’s health or Frances’s repeated lamentations about the length of the war and the difficulties of her situation or Lucien’s constant admonition that Frances put her trust in the Lord.) All omissions are indicated by ellipsis points.
How to identify nearly three hundred persons mentioned in the letters posed a special problem. Notes would have been either highly repetitious or greatly inadequate. My solution has been to list these people in Appendix I , with brief remarks about each. Anybody not found there I was simply unable to identify further than already indicated in the