explorer journalist naturalist author
Charles Wilkins Webber was born in Russellville, Ky. , the first son and second child of Dr. Augustine Webber, who practised medicine for over half a century in southern Kentucky, and Agnes Maria (Tannehill) Webber, said to be the daughter of John Tannehill, a Revolutionary officer in the Continental Army.
Educated at home in an informal way, in 1838 Webber went to Texas, then struggling for independence; there he associated himself with John Coffee Hays and other leading members of the Texas Rangers. Later he studied medicine in Kentucky for a short time, and in 1843 entered the Princeton Theological Seminary to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry.
In 1844 he went to New York to take up journalism. There he renewed acquaintance with John James Audubon, whom he had met during a Rocky Mountain tour. The two men became close friends, and Audubon's influence is to be plainly seen in much of Webber's literary work. Webber began his career with articles on Texas adventure for Winchester's New World; when it failed, he wrote for the Literary World, the Democratic Review, the Sunday Dispatch, and Graham's Magazine, all in New York City. For two years he is said to have been an editor and joint proprietor of the American Review (later the American Whig Review). In 1849, the year of his marriage in Boston, he organized an expedition to the Colorado and Gila Rivers, which failed when the horses were stolen by Comanche Indians at Corpus Christi, Tex. About six years later he is reported to have obtained from the New York legislature a charter to form a camel company, a project the necessity of which was apparent to those who knew of the difficulties to be met in crossing Western deserts. In 1855 he went to Central America, still eager for excitement. In the winter of the same year he joined the filibustering party commanded by the military adventurer, William Walker, and, according to all accounts, was killed at Nicaragua in the battle of Rivas on April 11, 1856.
Webber's principal works are Old Hicks the Guide, or Adventures in Search of a Gold Mine (1848); The Gold Mines of the Gila (1849); The Hunter-Naturalist (1851), the first volume of a projected series of seven, of which only two were published; The Texan Virago and Other Tales (1852); The Wild Girl of Nebraska (1852); Tales of the Southern Border (1852); The Romance of Forest and Prairie Life (1853); Spiritual Vampirism (1853); Wild Scenes and Song Birds (1854), volume II of The Hunter-Naturalist, illustrated with twenty colored lithographs drawn by Mrs. Webber; "Sam, " or the History of Mystery (1855), an account of the Jesuits; and History and Revolutionary Incidents of the Early Settlers of the United States (1859). A fourteen-page pamphlet, A Letter to the Country and Whig Party with Regard to the Conduct of the "American Whig Review" (1847), reveals Webber as no mean master of invective. In it he charges George Hooker Colton (1818 - 1847) with "falsehood, imbecility, and shameful cowardice, " and then dares him to resent his statements. Webber excelled in descriptions of wild border life; he wrote an easy, rapid, flowing style; his enthusiasm for natural history was real and deep, and his skill in communicating that enthusiasm was his chief strength.
His writing reflects a man of strong animal spirits, but one who was able to appreciate the beauty and the poetry, as well as the power and energy, of nature.
