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Author: Webb, John

Biography:

WEBB, John (1768-1840: ancestry.co.uk)

He was born at Burton End, Suffolk, and baptised on 30 Nov. 1768 at the Old Meeting House (Presbyterian), Haverhill, one of at least six children of John Webb and Elizabeth Bigmore, who had married in 1759. He received an elementary education at the village school, where the master was also a weaver who taught him the trade which Webb practised his whole life and from 1832 traded in London. Under the patronage of Rev. F. Merrewether, vicar of Haverhill, he published by subscription HaverhillA Descriptive PoemAnd Other Poems (1808). He was a regular contributor to the Lady’s Magazine from at least 1791 to 1818, and also had poems published in the Gentleman’s Magazine. He married Mehetabel Browne of Steeple Bumpstead, Essex, on 17 Mar. 1793 at St. Mary, Haverhill. They went on to have around thirteen children with several infant deaths. He died at the family house at Burton End on 12 Nov. 1840, aged 72, and was buried at Haverhill church where there are several memorials to members of the Webb family. His widow, Mehetabel, remained in the house with an unmarried daughter, Hester Ellen, and died on 21 July 1852, aged 80. He left in manuscript an autobiography (composed after 1832) that is now in the New York Public Library and “A Biographical History of Haverhill” (1826) in the Suffolk Archives. (Copsey 1: 515; ancestry.co.uk 3 Apr. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 3 Apr. 2023; BNP 18 and 25 Nov. 1840; Earl of Cranbrook, Parnassian Molehill [1953], 243) AA

 

Books written (1):

London: for the author by J. Nunn, 1810