HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY 363 made other improvements of value, his farm being one of the best in its appointments of any in the neighborhood. On May 11, 1875, Mr. Casteel married Eliza Ann Pell, a daughter of William F. and Nancy (McMillan) Pell. Their only child, Bertha, is the wife of Morton Herbert. In politics Mr. Casteel is a stanch Demo- crat, and takes an active interest in state and local affairs. Since 1905 he has served as a member of the township council, an office to which he was at first appointed but afterwards elected. He has also been a member of the County Council. ANDERSON WEBSTER.—A representative of one of the earlier families to settle in Clay county and a farmer of wide experience and much ability, Anderson Webster, of Dick Johnson township, is surely entitled to honor- able mention in a work of this kind, the lives of himself and his more immediate ancestors being closely associated with the development and growth of this part of Indiana. Tradition tells us that two brothers named Webster came to America a century or more before the Revolu- tion and that one of them, who settled in New England, numbered among his descendants Noah Webster, the lexicographer, John, the scientist, and Daniel, the statesman. The other brother located in Virginia, where succeeding generations occupied the homestead which he improved. Anderson Webster was born November 18, 1852, in Dick Johnson township, a son of Joshua Webster. His grandfather, Charles Webster, was, doubtless, born in Franklin county, Virginia. About 1828, with two of his brothers, Daniel and Reuben, he migrated to Indiana and located first in Parke county, later settling in Clay county, from the unbroken wilderness clearing the homestead on which he spent his remaining days. Born in Franklin county, Virginia, about 1812, Joshua Webster was sixteen or more years of age when he came with his parents to Clay county. The country at that time was in its primeval wildness, and the land was mostly owned by the government. Entering a tract in section fifteen, Dick Johnson township, he soon built the log house in which the birth of his son Anderson occurred. It was rude of construction, having one door and one window. Game of all kinds abounded, wild turkeys then being as plentiful as barnyard fowls are now. There were then no con- venient markets, the people living on wild game and the productions of the land, and the energetic women of the household carded, spun and wove and made all of the clothing worn by the members thereof. Little do the people of these later generations realize the trials and hardships endured, the great ambition required, and the physical endurance demanded to secure the homes established by the brave pioneers for them- selves and their descendants. How well they succeeded in their efforts the broad expanse of cultivated fields and the large and productive orchards now occupying the place formerly covered by a dense forest, the commodious and even elegant residences that have superseded the log cabin, and the long trains of palace cars that are used for transportation in place of the wagon drawn by oxen or horses, are a strong testimony. In this wonderful transformation Joshua Webster took an active part, and on the farm which he cleared and improved lived until his death, in June, 1880, at the age of sixty-eight years. His wife, whose maiden name was Mary Kerr, was born in Kentucky, a daughter of James Kerr. In 1817, just after Indiana had been admitted to statehood, James