Jonathan Webster

8 vii. Jonathan WEBSTER was born in 1775 in Gill, Franklin, Massachusetts.11 He was baptised on 12 Jun 1775 in , Franklin, Massachusetts.12 History of the Town of Gill, Massachusetts. Volume IV, Genealogies J-Z by Ralph M. Stoughton, 1960.

" You may tell Mrs. Derby that Mrs. Jemima Bats has received a  letter from her sister Hannah that brought news. Eight years ago she was  removing by water to some distant part of our land. Found Mr. Jonathan  Webster aboard the same vessel, asked shy he did not return to Gill? He said  when he got to the farm, he found he could not hold it; not knowing what to  do, took a voyage at sea; was taken; kept in confinement three years, and had  lived a sea faring life ever since."

(Ltr written 1834 by Ira Stoughton to his brother George in  Holland Patent, N. Y.) History and Genealogy of the Gov. John Webster Family of  Connecticut, by William Holcomb Webster and Rev. Melville Reuben Webster, 1st  Edition; Published by Andrews Printing Co., 1915. p. 410

Jonathan Webster is said to have enlisted in the U. S. Navy at  the time of the war with Algiers, and for a long time was supposed to have  been killed there, but in 1835, some of his old schoolmates met him in St.  Louis, Mo., and learned that he was then Capt. of a steamboat on the  Mississippi River. another account says, he was drowned in Cayuga Lake, N.  Y., but nothing more can be learned.

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