"A Gentleman of Superior Cultivation and Refinement": Recovering the Biography of Frank J. Webb

African American Review, Summer, 2001 by Eric Gardner

Webb's reasons for choosing Galveston are hazy at best. Perhaps, like many Americans, he still saw it as part of the mythical West; perhaps he became familiar with Galveston's Black community during his time with the Freedmen's Bureau (about which, the 1870 city directory--after noting under the heading "Public Schools and Colleges" that "the city has none!"-- rather sarcastically says, "erected a good frame building, for the use of the people of color" [11]). By 1880, Galveston boasted sixteen "colored organizations," including the Grant Rifles, the Lincoln Guards, and a city band (75-77).

Austin says that, after Webb left the postal service, the Webbs continued in Galveston, where Webb worked as a principal and school teacher (1881c.1894) (2796). I have been unable to find record of this; Webb does not appear at all in Galveston directories for 1879-1882. Rather, my research has traced the Webb family to the small city of Columbus, Colorado County, Texas, which is about halfway between Galveston and Austin. The Webb family--now including two additional children born in Texas, Ethelrid (age 5) and Thomas R. (age 2), as well as Mary Rodgers Webb's brother August H. Rodgers (age 30, race "mulatto," birthplace Jamaica, no occupation listed, marked as divorced/widowed) and sister or sister-in-law Sarah A. Rodgers (age 28, race "mulatto," birthplace Jamaica, no occupation listed, marked as married)--appear in the 1880 U.S. Census of Columbus in a home on Crocket Street. All ten members of the household are listed as being in good health, and all who are old enough are listed as literate. The vast m ajority of their neighbors are African Americans. Frank's job is listed as "P0 Clerk Store"; Evangeline, Ruth, and Clarissa (Clarice) are all listed as "scholars."

Colorado County had a large Black population for much of the nineteenth century; according to Bill Stein, in 1860 almost half of the county's residents were slaves, many of whom lived on large cotton plantations (45). Although anti-Black sentiments often ran high, Colorado County's Black community "exerted a powerful political influence over the county" in and after Reconstruction, and served in a range of community, county, and even state offices (47-48). Figuring Frank Webb's dialogue with this rough and tumble county--which was still having prominent gunfights at the end of the nineteenth century--should provide significant ground for future research, especially given Colorado County Black teacher Robert Lloyd Smith's organization of the Farmers Improvement Society in early 1890 with "the intention of bringing 'the American Negro up to a high standard of citizenship'" (47-48). Smith was elected to the state legislature in 1894, setting off a decade of intense white resentment during which a "White Man's P arty" was established (in 1902) that worked, fairly effectively, to disenfranchise Blacks by controlling Democratic party primaries (48-49). If, as Austin asserts, Webb was alive until 1894 and was, as my work with the 1880 census suggests, settled in this area, he would have spent his final years in the thick of yet another conflict over the establishment of a Black nationalist presence in the United States.