The Websters: Letters of an American Army Family in Peace and War, 1836-1853

Abstract

The Websters: Letters of an American Army Family in Peace and War, 1836-1853. Edited by Van R. Baker. (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 327. Illustrations. $45.00.) Lucien and Frances Webster are not related to the Websters of grammar book and dictionary fame, but they are fascinating people. They belong to the old army, those trained at West Point and sent to various hot spots around that nation in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Lucien Bonaparte Webster, born at the beginning of the century in Vermont, attended the United States Military Academy beginning in 1819 with the help of his eldest brother, Horace, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun, who made Lucien's appointment. Frances Marvin Smith also hailed from New England and also came from a family whose members attended West Point. Her father fought in the Revolutionary War and returned to the United States Army during the War of 1812, where he remained through Frances's early childhood. He later practiced law and, in 1823, accepted an appointment as superior court judge in the new American territory of Florida. He moved his family to St. Augustine, and it was here that Lucien Webster met Frances Smith in 1836. Lucien Webster went to Florida to deal with the Seminoles. He later helped conduct the Cherokee out of Georgia into Indian Territory in the West. As things heated up with Mexico, the army ordered him to Fort Pickens, Florida, where he went with his new wife and their little girl. Frances delivered another daughter while there. Before Lucien answered his nation's call to go first to Texas and then to Mexico to fight a war, Frances was pregnant once more, this time with a boy. The family was separated for twenty-seven months while the war raged. Lucien engaged in battles early in the war, but his station at Saltillo kept him out of the fighting for the most part during 1847. Meanwhile, Frances dealt with what she perceived as rude behavior by the commander at Fort Pickens, a Major Winder, whose wife gave her the impression she was not welcome there with Captain Webster away in Mexico. Her writing to Lucien about the matter and his writing to Major Winder evidently brought her no end of embarrassment at the public airing of her complaint. Then the couple's only son, Lucien Santa Rosa, fell ill and died before his father could see him. Frances weathered this blow to her family and moved her daughters north when she realized the war would go on longer than anticipated. She got news of her father's death at St. Augustine shortly before she lost her son; then, in late 1847, on her way north, she learned of the death of her brother, Kirby Smith, in battle at Molina del Rey. Another brother, Edmund Smith, and two uncles also were fighting in Mexico. Frances expressed more and more concern about her husband as she continued northward to New York, where her husband owned some property on which his agent built four houses. She stopped at the homes of friends and relatives, sometimes for weeks or months at a time, to take up housekeeping while waiting for Lucien to return. …