Lt. Robert Webster
Robert Webster was a son of John Webster, governor of Connecticut, and his wife Agnes. One account gives his baptism at Cossington in Leicestershire on 17 November 1619, without showing the record.
His father's will, dated 25 June 1659, the year the governor left Hartford to help found Hadley, made him the heir of everything not otherwise given away and the sole executor: "To my son Robert Webster I give all the remainder of my estate of one kind and another, whom also I doe appoynt and ordayn to be my sole and full executor of this my last will and testament." It left it to him to decide which legacies were paid first, "to the discretion and faithfulness of my son Robert." The governor died at Hadley in 1661, and Robert's mother Agnes died about 1667, probably at Hartford.
He married Susannah Treat, a daughter of Richard Treat of Wethersfield and a sister of Robert Treat, later governor of the colony. She had been baptised at Pitminster in Somerset in 1629. They settled at Middletown, then a new plantation on the Connecticut river below Hartford, where their son John was born on 10 November 1653. He was deputy for Middletown at the General Court in 1654 and 1656, recorder of the town, and from 1654 lieutenant of its trainband.
He moved to Hartford. On 25 January 1662/3 he sat on the jury that tried and convicted Nathaniel and Rebecca Greensmith for witchcraft, and they were executed. In 1669 he was one of fifteen brethren in full communion who formed the Second Church of Hartford, and in October that year he was listed among the freemen "on ye South side of Hartford." On 9 May 1672 the Court of Elections granted "Leiftenant" Robert Webster 300 acres, "provided he took it up where it would not prejudice any former grant."
In October 1673 the General Court sent Lt. Thomas Bull, Lt. Robert Webster and Daniel Pratt to survey the lands at Mattatuck on the Naugatuck River. Their report of April 1674 found that the place "may accomodate thirty families." The court then named Maj. John Talcott, Lt. Robert Webster, Lt. Nicholas Olmstead, Ensign Samuel Steele and Ensign John Wadsworth a committee to lay out the plantation. Mattatuck became the town of Waterbury. Its historian Henry Bronson, writing in 1858, called the committee "men of note, who bore honorable names well known in the history of the Colony," and said of him: "He was a respectable man though not distinguished like his father."
King Philip's War reached the Connecticut valley in the summer of 1675. Brookfield was attacked on 2 August, Hatfield on 25 August, Deerfield and Hadley on 1 September and Northfield on 2 September. Captain Beers's company was destroyed at Bloody Brook on 4 September and Springfield was burned on 5 October. On 11 October the Hartford council appointed him to a committee "to arrange certain defences of the Towne." Savage, the genealogist, says he was "on service in the war of 1675." His account was settled long after his death. On 22 May 1712 the Governor and Council ordered payments to soldiers whose length of service had been uncertain, among them "To Robert Webster of Hartford, 2 pounds, 13 shillings, and 6 pence."
He made his will on 20 May 1676, died about 31 May, and was buried on 2 June 1676. His estate was valued at 670 pounds. No gravestone for him survives. His widow Susannah made her own will in 1698. Their eldest son John carried the line, and a younger son Jonathan married a sister of John Hopkins, one of the early settlers of the plantation Robert had helped lay out.
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Cite: Heirology, "Lt. Robert Webster (1619-1676)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lt-robert-webster-1619-1676-584e8d.