William Robert WEBB, Congress, TN (1842-1926)

WEBB, William Robert, (grandson of Richard Stanford), a Senator from Tennessee; born near Mount Tirzah, Person County, N.C., November 11, 1842; attended private schools and was a student in Bingham School, Oaks, N.C., 1856-1860; entered the University of North Carolina in 1860 but left to enlist in the Confederate Army; returned to North Carolina in 1865; graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1868; taught at Horner’s School, Oxford, N.C., 1868-1870; founded the Webb School, a preparatory school, at Culleoka, Tenn., in 1870; moved the school to Bell Buckle, Tenn., in 1886; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Robert L. Taylor and served from January 24, 1913, to March 3, 1913; was not a candidate for reelection in 1913; continued teaching until his death in Bell Buckle, Tenn., December 19, 1926; interment in Hazelwood Cemetery.

Bibliography

Dictionary of American Biography; McMillin, Laurence. The Schoolmaker: Sawney Webb and the Bell Buckle Story. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971; Parks, E.W. “Sawney Webb: Tennessee’s Schoolmaster.” North Carolina Historical Review 12 (July 1935): 233-51.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present