Edwin Hanson Webster (1829-1893)

Edwin H. Webster was born at Churchville in Harford County, Maryland to Henry and Martha Webster on March 31, 1829. From a Presbyterian family, he prepared for college at the local Academy and later at the famed New London Academy in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1844 and graduated three years later with the class of 1847.

Webster worked as a school teacher while studying law till he was admitted to the Harford County bar in 1851. He opened a law practice in the county, at Bel Air. Quickly gaining success in the courtroom, he was elected to the Maryland State Senate from Harford County at the age of twenty-six in 1855. He served until 1858, acting as the President of the Senate in his final year. Maryland was at the time one of the few strongholds of the American Party and he served as a presidential elector for Millard Fillmore in 1856. He was himself elected to the 36th Congress from the 2nd District of Maryland as a member of the American Party in the mid-term elections of 1858. By the next Congress, with the Civil War underway, he had moved allegience to the Unionist Party and later called himself an Unconditional Unionist in the following two Congresses and served up to the end of the Civil War. During the conflict he was also active in the Union war effort, helping to raise the 7th Maryland Infantry Volunteers in August and September of 1862 and leading it as its first colonel in the defense of Washington D.C. The 7th later became part of the Maryland Brigade, the 3rd Brigade of the 3rd Division of I Corps of the Army of the Potomac. He commanded the regiment until November 1863 when he resigned his commission and returned full-time to his seat in Congress. Following the war, he was appointed as Collector of Customs at the port of Baltimore during the Andrew Johnson administration. Not reappointed under Grant, he returned to his law practice in Bel Air. He did serve the port of Baltimore again, when President Arthur appointed him in 1882 and he held the post until February 1886. In his later years he combined banking with his legal practice.

Webster had married Caroline H. Earl of Bel Air on June 6, 1855 and the couple had four children, three daughters and a son. Edwin Hanson Webster died at his home in Bel Air on April 24, 1893 and was buried in the family lot at the Calvary Cemetery near Churchville. He was sixty-four years old.