Attention:
**Zoning Ordinance Public Hearing Documents**
The Town of Webster, established in 1859 as the county seat, is located in Jackson County, NC. Webster is rich with history, which can be found on this web site. Current residents can find information about the town board, ordinances, and read about Webster's fascinating history.
"While Webster may not be as old as the hills that surround it, the date of its establishment, 1851, the same time that Jackson County was created from Macon and Haywood counties, is deceiving. Why? Because for years untold the location of the village that would become Jackson's first county seat, was the location of a large Cherokee town known to the Cherokee as Unadanti'yi, "where they conjured." According to tradition and the story in "Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees" by James Mooney, "a war party of Shawano, coming from the direction of Pigeon river, halted here to 'make medicine' against the Cherokee, but while thus engaged were surpised by the latter, who came up from behind and killed several, including the conjurer." James Mooney who collected his myths of the Cherokee between 1887 and 1890 for the Bureau of American Ethnology gives credit to Civil War veteran Captain James W. Terrell of Webster for leading and introducing him to the Cherokee. Even today it is not unusual to find Cherokee artifacts in newly turned or plowed ground, and two of the Cherokee fish wiers are found on the Tuckaseigee in Webster, one the best preserved of the remaining wiers.
The dividing line between Macon and Haywood until Jackson was created was the Tuckaseigee River. It was on this river that the county and the state established Webster, naming the county after the Democratic president and North Carolinian Andrew Jackson and the government center for the New England Whig Daniel Webster of Massachusetts.
The earliest known description of Webster appeared with a steel engraving, "On the Road to Webster" in the March 1874, issue of "Scribner's Monthly," "The Great South," written by Edward King. "
