Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 147, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1904 — Another Vestige of Early Days. [ARTICLE]

Another Vestige of Early Days.

The former Grant house at~the southwest corner of Front and Susan streets now being torn down is still one more of our fast disappearing relics of early days in Rensselaer. This hou e e was huilt in 1843, and has therefore existed tnere score years. The builder and owner and occupant for a number of years, psrhaps 12 or moie was a man named William Webster. He was a man widely known in his days, for his numerous peculiarities. For one thing he was an ardent “Millerite,” as the New Adventists of that day were called and fully believed that the end of the world was coming at the time set by Miller, which was along some time in the forties. Webster was also a no less sincere vegetarian, and would not eat any kind of animal food, on any consideration, Uncle Jared Benjamin, our living chronicle of of Rensselaer’s early history, does not remember what occupation Webster followed, more than to talk Milleriem and eat vegetable food.

Be had a son, also named William, and very much like bis father in peculiarities, He became possessed of a farm over prairie in Jackson Tp., now part of Newton county, and went to live there, but got run do in health and means, and died in poverty, many years ago. The dates of the r deaths of either father or 'son are I not remembered by Uncle Jared.