Frank Webster, former mayor of the city of Dunkirk and one of the active and progressive business men of that city, proprietor of an old established meat market, and who also has the honor of having been the youngest man to sit in the Dunkirk city council, has been a resident of Dunkirk since the days of his early childhood and has thus "grown up" with the town. He was born on a farm in Union county, this state, August 4, 1878, son of John W. and Amelia F. (Robertson) Webster, the latter of whom was born in Montgomery county, Virginia, in 1853, and who are now living in Dunkirk. John W. Webster was born on a farm in Union county, this state, in 1852, a member of one of the pioneer families of that section of the state. He was reared on the farm and received his schooling at Brownsville and at Oxford, Ohio. For a time after his marriage he continued farming on the home place in Union county, but in 1880 moved to a farm in the vicinity of Eaton. The next year (1881) he moved to Dunkirk, where for about three years he was engaged in the tile business. He bought part of the old Sutton homestead farm and operated the same for about twenty-five years, also renting land, in the meantime, in 1886, opening a meat market in Dunkirk, this latter enterprise being operated in association with his son Frank Webster. In 1908 John W. Webster went to Petersburg, Va. where for ten years he was proprietor of the Prospect hotel. He then retired from business and returned to Dunkirk, where he and his wife are now living.
I Frank Webster was but two or three years old when his parents moved to Dunkirk and there he received his schooling. As a boy he was a valued assistant to his father in the labors of the farm and when twenty years of age became associated with his father in the retail meat business at Dunkirk and when his father retired in 1906 assumed complete control of that business, which he since has maintained, one of the best known business men in the city. Mr. Webster is a Republican and from the days of his boyhood has taken an active interest in local political affairs. When but twenty-one years of age he was elected to represent his ward in the city council and by successive re-elections served in that capacity for three terms, the youngest man who ever occupied such a seat in Dunkirk. In 1917 Mr. Webster was elected mayor of the city and served for four years, his term of service having been marked by several notable public improvements in the city. Mr. Webster is a member of the local lodge of the Improved Order of Red Men.
In 1907, I. Frank Webster was united in marriage to Jessie M. Miller, who was born in Pennsylvania, and to this union has been born two children, sons both, Kenneth and John.
SOURCE: Milton T. Jay, M.D., History of Jay County Indiana, Historical Publishing Co., Indpls. 1922, Vol. II, pp. 181-182. Transcribed by Eloine Chesnut