BIOGRAPHICAL 691
Crawfordsville, Ind., in 1862, with the degrees of A. B. and A. M., taking the class honors. He enlisted at Crawfordsville, Ind., as private in Company I, 11th Indiana volunteer infantry, in April, 1861, for three months' service, was discharged in July of that year, but reenlisted July 4, 1862, in Company G, 88th Indiana volunteer infantry, and was elected captain of the company. He was in the battles of Chaplin Hills. Ky., Stone River, Tenn. (1862), Chickamauga, the sieges of Chattanooga and Nashville, and the battle of Nashville (1864). He was commissioned major but never mustered, because of depletion of the regiment by service and casualties. In the spring of 1864 he organized the 44th United States colored volunteer infantry at Chattanooga, Tenn., and was commissioned lieutenant colonel. He resigned from service in February, 1866. The last two years of service he read law by the camp-fire. At the close of the war he settled at Rosedale, Miss., where he engaged in cotton planting. In 1869 he returned to Indiana, afterwards went to Iowa City, where he took lectures in the college of law of the Iowa State University. In July, 1869, he moved to Council Bluffs, Ia., and was admitted to the bar at Glenwood. In October, 1869, he moved to Lincoln, Neb., where he formed a partnership with L. W. Billingsley. In 1871 he moved to Crete, but two years later resumed his law practice in Lincoln, where he had at different times as partners : Smith B. Galey, Lionel C. Burr, Allen W. Field, William E. Stewart, Halleck F. Rose, and Denis J. Flaharty. Mr. Webster has always been a republican, casting his first vote for president in 1861. He was attorney general of Nebraska in 1874, and county judge of Lancaster county in 1878 and 1879, member of the board of education, city council, city attorney of Lincoln, 1897-8, and 1901 was appointed assistant attorney in the office of assistant attorney general, department of the interior, Washington, D. C., and in March, 1909, was advanced to assistant attorney in the office of the secretary. Mr. Webster filled the chair of equity jurisprudence, college of law, University of Nebraska, from the organization of the college to June, 1899. He drafted the act for registration for payment of state, county, and city warrants, which greatly strengthened municipal and public credit; also the act authorizing maintenance of city libraries; the act for collection of decrees for alimony in divorce proceedings like other judgments; the first act for organization of sanitary drainage districts; the act authorizing the use of voting machines; the recent acts for government of the home for the friendless, and for that of the Milford home, and other laws and amendments, as well as the amendments to the Lincoln city charter. A fact of great local importance which he discovered, was that the record of the issue of two series of Midland Pacific railway subsidy bonds of Lan caster county, of $150,000 and $100,000, drawing ten per cent interest, had been erroneously made to appear as though issued payable at the end of twenty years, while in fact payable at the county's option. At his own expense and under bond of $20,000 he undertook to compel surrender of these bonds prior to their supposed maturity, and effected the transaction, so that over $149,000 was saved within the supposed term of the bonds. The county paid only his actual expense, about $800, with no compensation for his services. He litigated the question whether the telephone was a public utility or a private business, and established in a case of first instance, that the telephone is a public servant, liable, like the common carrier, to public control. Mr. Webster is a member of the Phi Delta Theta college fraternity, the Grand Army of the Republic, Farragut post, Lincoln, department of Nebraska; Burnside post, Washington, D. C. ; Society of Colonial Wars, Washington, D. C. ; and the Loyal Legion and Law Society Phi Delta Phi. He was at one time member of the Presbyterian church in Indiana, but placed his membership with the Congregational church in Lincoln. He was married June 12, 1873, in Lima, Ind., to Sara Cooper Thompson, and one daughter was born to them, Joy L. Webster. Mrs. Webster died March 23, 1904. Mr. Webster was again married in November, 1906, to Dr. Lenore Perky, whose biography appears in this history.
WEBSTER, DOCTOR LENORE (PERKY),
wife of Joseph R. Webster, was born at Mt. Hope,
Holmes county, O, May 23, 1857. Her parents were
Dr. John Firestone Perky and his second wife,
Esther Martin, both natives of Pennsylvania, who
moved to Ohio with their parents when children.
The name Perky is a corruption of Berky, by the de
scendants of Christopher Berky. who migrated from
Switzerland, canton of Berne, in colonial days. Dr.
John F. Perky, on his mother's side (Firestone)
was of Huguenot descent. He practiced extensively
in Hancock, Holmes and Wayne counties, O., and
died at Smithville, August, 1872, never having been
able to practice actively after service in the field
hospitals of the sanitary commission in the War of
the Rebellion. His widow, with their children,
Lenore, and Kirtland I. Perky, now a lawyer of
Boise, Ida., moved to Lincoln, Neb., in 1880, and
thence to Wahoo, Saunders county, in 1884. Dr.
Lenore Perky's early education was in the common
schools and normal school at Smithville and Leb
anon, O. At Wahoo, Neb., she conducted a photo
graph business, began the study of medicine and
later entered Hahnemann Medical College, Chicago,
