Governor John Webster, Hartford Founder

Compiled by Timothy Lester Jacobs, SDFH Genealogist

JOHN¹ WEBSTER, GOV., HARTFORD FOUNDER (MATTHEW^A) was baptized 16 Aug 1590 in Cossington, Leicestershire, England, and died 06 Apr 1661 in Hadley, MA. He married AGNES SMITH 07 Nov 1609 in Cossington, Leicestershire, England. She was born abt. 1588 in England, and died 1667 in Hartford, CT.

John Webster emigrated from Cossington, Leicestershire, England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1635, first living in Watertown. He removed to Hartford, probably with the Rev. Hooker’s party, in April 1636.

In the Hartford land inventory of February 1699/40 he held: two acres on which his dwelling house stood with other outhouses, yards, and gardens or orchards located on the east side of the Road from William Hills’s to the Oxpasture; twenty-six acres in the South Meadow; seven acres in Hockanum; one acre and two roods in the Little Meadow; twenty-nine acres of upland lying partly in the Oxpasture and partly on the west side of it; thirty acres abutting on the Oxpasture; and forty-seven acres in the Oxpasture.

He became an Assistant to the Connecticut General Court in 1639, which office he held until 1655. He was a Commissioner to the United Colonies of New England in 1654. He became Deputy Governor of Connecticut in 1655, then Governor in 1656. In 1657 he was named as Chief Magistrate.

He was among the dissenters against Samuel Stone becoming Hartford’s minister in 1659, and he left shortly after that as one of the leaders of the Hadley Company, although he first resided in Northampton, Massachusetts. He later removed to Hadley, where he was made a magistrate in May 1660, dying the next year on 6 April 1661.

Genealogy: “History and Genealogy of the Gov. John Webster Family of Connecticut”, William H. Webster & Melville R. Webster, Rochester, 1915