Daniel Webster

 Who was Daniel Webster? 1782-1852  Formerly of New Hampshire.  Had a nasty fall out of his barouche (a type of carriage) on the present Route 3A in Duxbury, plus cirrhosis (I knew how to spell that) of the liver. We have his law office and his barouche at the 1699 Historic Winslow house.

While on his way to Sandwich, on the Cape  to duck hunt, Webster came across the Thomas Estate in Marshfield. He fell in love with it, bought it, and lived there for twenty years until his death.

Nathaniel Thomas Estate

more recent photo of the Webster Estate

He is buried in the Winslow Cemetery off Webster Street. The Winslows were on the Mayflower.

The Union Oyster house in Boston has Webster's name plate, where he sat to eat and drink.

He fought to keep us out of the Civil War for a long time.

He was a leading American senator for nineteen years, three times Whig candidate for President of the United States, Secretary of State for Presidents Harrison, Tyler and Filmore.

He was a lawyer who settled the boundary line of Canada and the U.S. Who knew there was an "a" in boundary?

He litigated Robert Fulton's steamship monopoly.  Hence the street Steamboat Drive, which is a continuation of our street, Stagecoach Drive.

Was he a farmer? He was a gentleman farmer of 1200 acres, with access to the Atlantic Ocean at Green's Harbour. Sandy and I own one of his acres. His boat was called the Lapwing. Now we have Lapwing Way. It is near Fletcher, named for his son who was killed at Second Manassas in Virginia.

Green was the first mate on the ship the Mayflower. William Green built a fish sea salting business on the harbor.

Most of Webster's land today is conservation,  loaded with migrating birds and owls, plenty of deer and fox, and even coyote. In the 1700s it had wolves. It is a beautiful place to walk and breathe in the ocean air. The house still stands, after being rebuilt after a fire leveled it. They had the original plans and rebuilt it exactly how it was. The Pilgrim Trail runs nearby and through the property. This trail was the way to and from the village of Plimoth in 1620+  I will be walking on it later today actually.

Seth Peterson was Webster's foreman. That got us Peterson Path.

Scott Circle in D.C. has a memorial to Webster.

The Devil & Daniel Webster. Check it out.

Oh ! I forgot to tell you ....

In 1775, John Thomas asked the British Lieutenant General Thomas Gage to send troops to guard his house -- Daniel Webster's future house --  against action by the local Patriots. Thomas and most of Marshfield were Tories. The troops came in by dory via Green's Harbour and pitched tents near the house and marched at times through the town as a show of strength. They left when they were called to the Acton, Bedford, Lexington and Concord area. Something about gunpowder.

The armed Patriots marched toward the Thomas Estate by way of our Blackmount area and Parsonage Street. If the Patriots had showed up a day earlier, the first battle of the Revolutionary War would have been in Marshfield, and there would be no "bridge that arched the flood" stories.