Biography
Born near Churchville, Maryland, Webster received a classical training, and attended the Churchville Academy and later the New London Academy of Chester County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Dickinson College of Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 1847, and afterwards taught school and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1851, and commenced practice in Bel Air, Maryland.
Webster became a member of the Maryland State Senate, serving from 1855 until 1859. During the American Civil War, Webster was colonel of the 7th Regiment Maryland Volunteer Infantry, serving in 1862 and 1863. He was elected as a candidate of the American Party to the Thirty-sixth Congress, as a Unionist to the Thirty-seventh Congress and as an Unconditional Unionist to the Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses.
Webster served in Congress from March 4, 1859 until his resignation in July 1865, at which time he was appointed collector of customs at the port of Baltimore, Maryland, serving in that position from July 27, 1865 to April 15, 1869. Afterwards, he resumed the practice of his profession in Bel Air until he was again appointed collector of customs by President Chester A. Arthur on February 17, 1882. He served as collector until February 23, 1886. In 1882, he engaged in banking, which he followed until his death in Bel Air in 1893. He is interred in Calvary Cemetery, near Churchville.
Read more about this topic: Edwin Hanson Webster
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)