Daniel Webster Elementary School celebrated early the birthday of famous lawyer and statesman Daniel Webster, after whom the school is named, through a special performance about his life last Friday.
PTPA members Anne Grimaldi, Tory Swanson, and Valerie Ramshur organized the “birthday party,” hiring professional children’s story teller Kristen Pedemonti to chronicle Webster’s childhood, career, and successes in a special assembly.
Students hung on Pedemonti’s every word as she shared a vignette from Webster’s childhood on the farm. She enlisted students to don animal hats and act out a scene in which an entire barn filled with sheep, goats, and chickens floated down a river during a flood.
Pedemonti also shared that Webster used his photographic memory to his advantage when he attended college at the young age of 15. In part due to his outstanding memory, she said, Webster became known as one of the best speech makers of all time because he was able to recall poetry, passages, and hymn quotes.
At the conclusion of the assembly, Daniel Webster students left with two things: a souvenir button and the knowledge that Daniel Webster is not “the dictionary guy.”
Not the dictionary guy
Daniel Webster is recognized as a leading statesman during the Antebellum Era (1789-1849), serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 10 years and the U.S. Senate for 19 years, and as the U.S. secretary of state under presidents William Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore.
In 1952, he was selected as one of the five greatest U.S. Senators by a Senate Committee, alongside Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft.
Webster was born in 1782 and raised on his parents’ farm in Salisbury, N.H. He graduated from Dartmouth College, was apprenticed to lawyer Thomas W. Thompson, worked under prominent attorney Christopher Gore, and later opened his own practice in Boston.
He gained early recognition as a constitutional lawyer, winning roughly half of the 223 cases he argued before the Supreme Court. As the leading reference for constitutional law, Webster soon garnered the nickname “the Great Expounder of the Constitution.”
He later served as counsel for a number of important Supreme Court cases that established constitutional precedents still applicable today.
Webster died in 1852 at his home in Marshfield, Mass. and is buried in Winslow Cemetery, near Marshfield.
His memory lives on with at least six middle and elementary schools named after him throughout the country, including Daniel Webster Elementary School in Weehawken.
Deanna Cullen can be reached at dcullen@hudsonreporter.com.