• Epigraph

    I did not choose this story.

    It arrived in my hands—

    crackling, fragile, insistent—

    and asked to be spoken.

    ---

    I. THE NAME ON THE MAP

    The town on the map says Webberville.

    But that word is not the whole story.

    It is only a chapter—

    a beginning that was never an ending.

    The founders were John Ferdinand Webber

    and Silvia Hector Webber.

    To the world, their names are history.

    To me, they are John

    I. THE NAME ON THE MAP

    The town on the map says Webberville.

    But that word is not the whole story.

    It is only a chapter—

    a beginning that was never an ending.

    The founders were John Ferdinand Webber

    and Silvia Hector Webber.

    To the world, their names are history.

    To me, they are John

    ---

    II. TWO LIVES, ONE DEFIANCE

    John—white, born in Vermont,

    veteran of the War of 1812—

    left the strictures of the North

    for Austin’s Colony, early and unguarded:

    a healer without permission,

    a man who carried conviction like a compass

    and built a life where law could not bend him.

    Silvia—Black, born in Spanish West Florida—

    entered the record the way the record often does:

    not as a girl, but as a number.

    Sold at nine.

    Separated from her mother, Sarah.

    Perhaps from another kin—Hector—

    a name that lingers like a shadow

    at the edge of the page.

    At twelve, the ledger took her again:

    “one girl, Silvia, $550.”

    Carried west.

    Into Arkansas.

    Into the unknown.

    Yet even as the world tried to unmake her,

    she carried forward

    the seed of freedom.

    Her freedom was not handed down like mercy.

    It was pressed for—argued for—secured—

    and defended in love.

    Their union was never convenience.

    It was rebellion.

    ---

    III. THE PRAIRIE HOUSE

    A neighbor, Noah Smithwick,

    called John “Doctor”

    and called Silvia something else—

    a nickname that tried to shrink her.

    Even in witness,

    the ink carried prejudice.

    But his pen could not hide the truth:

    their home stood as refuge and fortress

    on the Comanche frontier

    and at the edge of white suspicion.

    Too Black for the settlers.

    Too “white-adjacent” for the safety of the freed.

    Their children barred from school.

    Their family watched, weighed, and whispered over.

    And yet—

    Silvia opened her door to strangers,

    fed the orphan,

    clothed the traveler,

    and refused to answer hatred with hunger.

    ---

    IV. EXILE FROM THE NAME

    The town they founded

    turned against them.

    A tutor arrived—

    and the air shifted.

    A lesson became a threat.

    A threat became a warning:

    Leave, or face the fire.

    So they sold the land that bore their name—

    exiled by neighbors,

    driven not by failure,

    but by fidelity to family.


    V. THE BORDERLAND SANCTUARY

    Southward they traveled

    to Hidalgo County,

    where river bends widen into promise.

    Nine thousand acres—

    the Webber Ranch—

    a new beginning on older soil.

    Here, Silvia’s steadiness

    became shelter.

    The seed she carried

    became sanctuary.

    Here, John ferried souls across the Rio Grande—

    his license official,

    his purpose clandestine.

    Together with Matilda and Nathaniel Jackson,

    they built a southbound road of freedom—

    guiding the weary toward Mexico,

    a land where chains

    had already been struck from law.

    ---

    VI. A COMMUNITY OF MANY NAMES

    Among Mexican families,

    they were embraced.

    Their names shifted in the records—

    John to Juan Fernando,

    Silvia to Sylvia—

    as if the borderland itself understood

    that survival sometimes speaks more than one language.

    They bought more land

    and wove themselves into the fabric of place.

    When civil war rose

    and Texas chose the Confederacy,

    John chose the Union—

    and in choosing, risked everything.

    In hard years,

    he spoke truth close to danger

    while the Confederacy pressed near.

    ---

    VII. THE FINAL REST

    They lie now

    in the Webber Family Cemetery,

    watching the Rio Grande—

    their graves shadowed by a wall

    that divides what they once united.

    The same river

    that carried fugitives into freedom

    is now a contested boundary—

    a reminder that their struggle

    did not end with them.

    ---

    VIII. THE LEGACY WE CARRY

    So when you hear Webberville,

    do not stop at the town.

    Remember the exile.

    Remember the ferry.

    Remember the sanctuary

    built in defiance of hate.

    Our inheritance is not only land,

    nor the name etched on maps,

    but the courage of John and Silvia—

    to love without apology,

    to live by conscience when the world called it crime,

    to carry justice across a river

    even when law demanded silence.

    It was Silvia’s hands

    that turned loss into sanctuary,

    and John’s resolve

    that held the line.

    This is the story my family carried.

    This is the story I now defend.

    And it is the story

    I charge the world to remember.

The Story My Family Carried