lowing!
Thank God--you share with me a part!
It stirs my brain; it warms my heart!
I go with new life glowing."

[Webster Historical Society Papers.]

THE WEBSTER FAMILY.

BY HON. STEPHEN M. ALLEN.

I.

The family of Webster, which settled on the easterly coast of
Massachusetts and New Hampshire, became quite numerous, and emigrated to
the various parts of western New Hampshire as early as 1763. Stephen
Webster was one of the twelve pioneers of the town of Plymouth, N.H., in
which, with other settlers of the backwoods, they had to endure great
privations and hardships.

The three Webster families which settled and remained in Plymouth always
claimed Daniel and Ezekiel of Salisbury as first or second cousins.

I quote from Moore Russell Fletcher, M.D., who was connected with the
Webster family on both sides, the following narration. He says that Mrs.
Stephen Webster and her sons and daughters, the youngest of whom was
Mrs. Betsey Fletcher Webster,--the mother of the doctor, and who died in
1863, at the advanced age of eighty-one,--gave him much of his
information.

"Stephen Webster, with eleven others, with their wives and children,
went from Chester, N.H., to Plymouth, N.H., then a wilderness, about
forty-five miles north of Penacook, now Concord, and there, on the
Pemigewasset, near the juncture of Baker's River (afterwards so
called), they erected a log-cabin, in that hitherto transient abode of
the wild animals of the forest and the still wilder Indians, who at
intervals passed through the place on their way to Penacook, Contoocook,
Hooksett, Suncook, and Soucook, their old camping-grounds. These men,
having selected lands for farms, had no alternative but to carry on
their backs the articles of food, implements and seeds requisite for
their colonization. They had axes, saws, augers, and shaves, or
drawing-knives, and for protection and food their guns and ammunition;
not forgetting their bibles, hymn-books, and tinder-boxes. In their
journey through the wilderness from Penacook, a distance of sixty or
seventy miles, they were guided by blazes on trees made by surveyors or
men in search of lands, were obliged to cross streams on fallen trees
reaching from bank to bank, and when hunger and fatigue compelled a
halt, they selected a spot near some stream, drew forth their
tinder-boxes, and with steel and flint struck a fire; then they selected
flat stones, wet some Indian meal, placed it on