Pictured are Lewis and Martha Webster, great, great grandparents of the writer.
(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1983)
In the late 1850’s, Thomas Webster moved to Fairfax. He was a peddler and made Fairfax his base of operations as he sold and traded his goods through the surrounding countryside. After the Civil War began, he served as farrier in Company C of the Eighth Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Calvary. Thomas was a brother to John Webster, Fairfax blacksmith we mentioned last week. A third brother, Elijah Webster served the small village in 1871 and operated livestock scales behind the old Dickey/Ford store for twenty years.
In 1860, yet another Webster brother settled in Fairfax. He was twenty-three-year-old Lewis Fry Pulse Webster who moved in with his older brother, Thomas. The entire town had less than seventy residents at that time and it was not long before Lewis made the acquaintance of twenty two year old Martha Alice Pulliam. She was the youngest daughter of Fairfax’s founders, Benjamin and Sarah Pulliam, Lewis and Martha soon became attracted to one another, fell in love and committed the rash act of marriage the following year. Benajmin Pulliam was primarily a farmer by trade, but also operated a general store and tavern out of his home. John W. Yowell, who lived with the Pulliam’s, was the actual storekeeper. After Lewis Webster began courting his daughter, Pulliam apparently introduced the young man to the mercantile trade which Webster then practiced for the remainder of his life.
After ten years of renting a storeroom in Fairfax, Lewis and Martha managed to buy their own home and store in 1871 on the north edge of town. Unfortunately, just two years later, depression struck the nation’s economy and the Webster’s lost five thousand dollars in grocery accounts, a staggering sum for that time. Although they held on for several more years, this great loss was never recovered and in 1886, the Webster’s were forced to sell their store buildings and “snug cottage by the pines” and move into the old Pulliam home where Martha had grown up. Here they opened their store in the same room that John Yowell had kept store in for so many years.
Ironically, when the Websters moved into the old Pulliam home, they moved with them the village’s post office. Lewis had received the appointment of postmaster in 1878, taking over where his father-in-law had left off. Benjamin Pulliam had been appointed Fairfax’s first postmaster in June, 1851 and kept the office for twenty-seven years in the same room that Lewis moved into in 1886. During the fifty-five year existence of the Fairfax post office, only these two postmasters served. Part of Lewis’ postal responsibilities from 1897-99 included that of transferring mail from Hillsboro to Seaman. Upon the advent of rural free delivery, the Fairfax post office was closed a final time on July 31, 1906, exactly one month before Lewis Webster’s Death.
After his demise, Martha closed the store and continued to live in Fairfax until her death in 1922.
