Webb, Edwin B.

Born: 1802-11-03 Fayette County, Kentucky

Died: 1858-10-14 Carmi, Illinois

As early as November 1821, Webb lived in Carmi, where he began studying law. He later continued his studies at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He returned to Carmi and began practicing law and served as state's attorney. Beginning in 1838, Webb was a director of both the Lawrenceville and Shawneetown branches of the Bank of Illinois. "Bat," as his lawyer friends called him, was a widower and a close friend of Abraham Lincoln and a friend and former suitor of Mary Todd before the latter two were married in 1842. He served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1834 to 1842, in the Illinois Senate from 1844 to 1848, and as a presidential elector in 1840 and 1844. He sent his daughter Patty to school in Lexington in the late 1840s. He was the Whig Party candidate for Illinois governor in 1852. In 1850, Webb owned real estate worth $3,500. He died of gastritis in 1858.

History of White County, Illinois (Chicago: Inter-State, 1883), 305-306, 507; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), White County, IL, 268; G. Cullom Davis and Horace Q. Waggoner, Memories of a Bank: An Oral History and Documentary Inventory of Old Shawneetown (Springfield, IL: Sangamon State University Oral History Office, 1979), 1:A-79; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 119, 151, 273, 291, 314, 337, 383; Usher F. Linder, Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois (Chicago: The Chicago Legal News, 1879), 266-67; Mary Todd to Mercy Ann Levering, 15 December 1840, Lincoln Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL; Petition of Abraham Lincoln and Others to Eliza Browning.