JOHN WEBBER AND EX-SLAVE WIFE SILVIA PLAYED A LARGE ROLE IN RIO GRANDE VALLEY'S UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

(Ed.'s Note: If you haven't taken the time to read the pages posted before on this blog about John F. Webber and the racial attitudes in the early 1800s before Texas became a state that eventually became part of the Confederacy, take the time now to take a gander. Webber was a white settler who was married to a black slave and had a mixed-race family and was part of the Rio Grande Valley's Underground Railroad. Joe Cuellar, of Brownsville, the man standing above his headstone, is his descendant.)

The selections below come from the book written by Noah Smithwick called "The Evolution of a State." That state was Texas and this is the "heritage" of prejudice and cruelty towards blacks and progressive thinking that neo-Confederates take pride in celebrating. Webber is buried in a cemetery near Donna, Texas, where he resettled after the Civil War when he returned from Mexico. )

By Juan Montoya

John Webber, a native of Vermont, born on 1786, fought in the War of 1812 and served as a private in Capt. S. Dickinson's company, Thirty-first United States Infantry, from May 23, 1813, to May 31, 1814, during which time he fought in the battle of Shadage Woods.
 

He was in Stephen Austin's colony as early as 1826 and received a headright on June 22, 1832. Sometime earlier he was married to a slave, Silvia Hector. On June 11, 1834, John Cryer emancipated (sold ) Silvia and their three children to Webber. (The bill of sale at right is the one where a Morgan Cryer bought Silvia from a Silas McDaniel in Missouri in 1819 before his heir John Cryer came to Texas.) 

"The Webber family, of course, could not mingle with the white people, and, owing to a strong prejudice against free negroes, they were not allowed to mix with the slaves, even had they so desired; so they were constrained to keep to themselves," wrote Smithwick.

"Still there wasn't a white woman in the vicinity but knew and liked Aunt Puss as Webber's dusky helpmeet was called, and in truth they had cause to like her, for, if there was any need of help, (she) was

ever ready to render assistance without money and without price, as we old-timers knew. Webber's house was always open to anyone who chose to avail himself of its hospitality, and no human being went away from its door hungry. The destitute and afflicted many times found asylum there."

(Smithwick tells of Webber's wife taking in an orphaned girl [a "sinner"] who was turned away by her kin and a man suffering from rheumatism who they took care of for years.)

"Beneath that sable bosom beat as true a heart as ever warmed a human body."

"By such generous acts as these joined to the good sense they displayed in conforming their outward lives to the hard lines which the peculiar situation imposed on them, Webber and his wife merited and enjoyed the good will, and, to a certain extent the respect, of the early settlers. 

"The ladies visited (her) not as an equal, but because they appreciated her kindness. At such times she flew around and set out the best meal which her larder afforded; but, neither herself nor her children offered to sit down and eat with their guests, and when she returned the visit she was set down in the kitchen to eat alone."

"After the Indians had been driven back...a new lot of people came – "the better sort" as Colonel Knight styled them – and they at once sat to drive Webber out. His (racially mixed) children could not attend school, so he hired an Englishman to come to his home and teach them, upon which his persecutors raised a hue and a cry about the effect it would have on the slave negroes and even went as far as to threaten to mob the tutor....

"The cruel injustice of the thing angered me, and I told some of them that Webber was there before any of them dared to, and I, for one, proposed to stand by him."

"I abhorred the situation, but I honored the man for standing by his children whatever their complexion. But the bitter prejudice, coupled with the desire to get Webber's land and improvements became so threatening that I at length counseled him to sell out and take his family to Mexico, where there was no distinction of color. He took my advice, and I never afterwards saw or heard of him."

They purchased land on the Rio Grande River border in Hidalgo County Texas and on the Mexico side in current day Tamaulipas in 1854. At their ranch “Webber Rancho Veijo” they owned and operated a ferry which they used to aid enslaved peoples in their fight for freedom into Mexico where slavery had been abolished.

According to Juan Carmona, a history teacher at Donna High School – and Hidalgo County's historical commissioner – the Rio Grande Valley was part of the Underground Railroad.

Those on the Underground Railroad would run from Pharr, San Juan and Donna to escape to Mexico, where slavery was abolished. Carmona said the Underground Railroad-like activity going through the Valley had many conductors with the help of mixed-race families in the community.

One of those mix-raced families along the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County was the Webber family.

"[They] were known to harbor formerly enslaved peoples and use their ferries to cross them into Mexico,” Carmona said. “It was not unknown for them to be crossing back and forth with their ferries.”

Webber died in 1882, and his wife Silvia 10 years later. Both are buried, along with their descendants, on the Webber Family Cemetery in their old homestead in Donna.