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Ira Day Webner
a biography by his great nephew, Neil E. Webner

Ira Day Webner may have been the gentlest of David and Charity Webner's sons, all of whom were known for their social correctness and industriousness. He would often wax philosophic, as you will soon read, and was very literate. In his 70's, he could still recite the names of many of his elementary teachers and those at the former Smithville Normal School.
He was an avid reader, having acquired by his retirement years a respectable library of biographies, classics and reference works with the help of "The Hon. J. A. Farber." He regretted tragedies in his life and an unfortunate second marriage. Others called him "affable by nature and rearing." But with his sons, he was a stern taskmaster.
His father, David R. Webner, was a native of Lebanon Co., Pa. Having lost his mother when he was eight-years-old and his father at age 15, David apprenticed as a tailor. He journeyed to Smithville, Oh., in Wayne County in 1852. Even when Ira was born, Smithville was a small town in Wayne County with a population of less than 500. Most were of German descent. Ira's mother, Charity Elizabeth, or "Eliza" as she was better known, was descended from the historic Byberry Waltons from near Philadelphia who helped reconstruct Gnadenhutten, Oh., a Moravian Christian settlement to convert Indians.
As did his father before him, Ira had just turned eight when his father died after long and varied illnesses. This forced strong-willed Mother Charity to take over the family business and to sustain a family of five children aged 11 months to 17 years as a single parent. When the eldest son, Gilbert, was married in 1881, the family business was given to him.
So it is little surprise that Ira would grow up highly principled and industrious, but with a streak of self-assured independence. There was never a moment in his life without some endeavor. But he also had the congenial affability of his parents
Ira was born July 14, 1865, in Smithville, Oh., the fifth of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. When Ira was just 9 weeks old, Mother Charity took very sick and could not feed him. Baby formula was unknown at that time, so Ira was carried every day to other mothers who had babies to feed, to feed Ira. Usually, his sister Helen carried him to other mothers.
Then Ira also became sick, "but the Lord must have preserved his life," Helen once wrote, adding, "The change of diet must have been good for the old reprobate, for he still hangs on with the best health he ever had."
Helen also reported that, when Ira and his brother Rush were small boys, their mother would dress them alike, usually in red velvet. Helen Davidson recalls Ira receiving a suit of clothes from Western Union when he was a messenger for them. It was "all braided with red braid, he had Mother take the braid off and she pressed the suit making it look like new. There was a reunion of his old Schoolmates and he was happy in his new suit minus the flairing red braid."
In his boyhood, Ira loved to fish "above the old Grist Mill at the dam" and to go swimming as far below town as "Stevens where we all visited at all times." In a town of just 800 people in the mid-1870's, a boy made his own play.
After his father died, Ira was fortunate to have a mentor in Adam Brandt, 30 years his senior, about whom Ira spoke glowingly in a brief memoir dated 1933.
In 1880, Ira worked for Dr. John A. Gann and attended Wooster High School. In 1881 - 1883, he attended Smithville Normal School and worked as a janitor to help pay tuition. (Tuition was $23.50 per year for preparatory studies or $28 for collegiate level - not bad considering that this was less than a month of average wages at the time.)
After high school graduation, Ira learned telegraphy in 1883 in Wooster under E. C. Hard and waited table at the American House for his boarding. He began his career in Newcomerstown, Oh., for the Western and Lake Erie Railroad in 1884. He moved to Coshocton, Oh., in 1908 to work as passenger agent for the Pennsylvania Railroad, and he retired Sept. 1, 1930, after having worked in 16 stations for various railroad firms.
Late in his long career with the Pennsy System - probably in the early 1930's -- Ira was selected to help promote the company's new policy of customer service, a significant departure from railroad policy of earlier days throughout the U. S. Ira traveled "up and down their lines preaching the gospel of courtesy to his fellow employees," according to a newspaper account.
The account said that Ira was ideally selected to help make this new paradigm effective because putting his employer and fellow man before himself "has been the central idea of his life."
Ira married Lulu Myrtle Ferguson on December 3, 1889, in Hanover, Oh. Myrtle, as she was known, was born March 18, 1870, in Licking County, Oh., to Jared Cone Ferguson and Irene E. Dumbauld.
A member of Grace Methodist Evangelical Church, Myrtle was active in several church ladies organizations and the Historical Club. She was also a member of the Eastern Star lodge at Hanover. Myrtle possessed considerable literary ability, but poor health limited her volunteer work.
No doubt, Ira's excellent selection of a wife was especially pleasing to his devout mother. Myrtle was highly literate, greatly devout, socially active and attractive.
Ira and Myrtle produced four sons, all of whom followed their father in a career of railroading, and a daughter. Ira, Jr., was born in 1893, Paul Knight in 1894, Karl in 1896 and Anthony Wayne in 1901. Their daughter, Marguerite, was born in 1899; she died the next year of whooping cough and pneumonia.

(1)What makes Ira’s association with Adam Brandt particularly interesting is that Adam's father, John, was born in small Churchtown, Pa., where Ira's father, David, apprenticed. David Webner and John Brandt likely knew each other: the teenagers were but 6 years apart in a relatively small community. However, John moved away about 1848 (David in 1852), relocating to Mansfield. The following year, John's family followed him to Ohio, settling in Plymouth to farm with him. John moved the family to Smithville in 1876 after marrying Catharine Ann Sidle. On the other hand, it may have been coincidence that Ira took up with an older man whose family hailed from Churchtown; many in Wayne County had roots in Churchtown.
(2)Ira's father began the family’s tradition of railroading by running a hack line between Smithville and a station a mile south of town. Ira's brothers all embarked on a railroad career.

War can take its toll in many ways. As World War I drew to a close, a virulent Spanish flu sprang from the battlefields. Reaching its peak in the fall of 1918, the epidemic killed untold millions worldwide, including 19,000 Ohioans. Two of those were first-born son Ira, Jr., who died September 5, 1918, and Myrtle who died October 11, 1918. Both succumbed to pneumonia as a complication of the flu epidemic. Karl also became sick, but he survived.
An obituary for Myrtle noted that no funeral services would be held in the home. "The body will be taken to Dresden (the closest rail station to Hanover) for burial Sunday on Pennsylvania No. 119, and services will be conducted at the grave."
After his wife died, Ira lived with Elizabeth Stewart, 62, his housekeeper. But it was a prior housekeeper, Helen Love Sibley, 22 years his junior, whom Ira married on August 20, 1920, sixteen months after Lulu's death. Helen was born November 20, 1887, and died February 8, 1988. They had one child, Miriam Marylin who was born in 1922. The marriage lasted not much longer than that.
In reporting on a 1936 Webner reunion, Ira noted that his divorced wife and daughter Miriam were among those not in attendance. He commented that Helen "would not live with any one except her mother, Alice Ford Sibley having five divorces in their own family. Father, mother, 2 sons and 1 daughter."
He added factitiously, "I was truly fortunate to get into such a family." Indeed, neither Helen nor Miriam are mentioned in Ira's obituary.
Ira's children, especially Anthony Wayne, were immediately estranged from Ira and his new wife. Just fourteen years separated the ages of Helen and Ira's son who felt that Helen was interested only in Ira's money.
Ira raised his sons very strictly, some might say harshly, with high expectations for success in whatever they endeavored. He tried to instill in his sons the need to rely only on themselves to achieve success. All of the sons were compelled to leave home and strike out for themselves after finishing high school.
In one account, Ira gave a son some money "to get started in life" after he finished high school. But he expected the money to be repaid with the son's first paycheck!
Not so with Ira's daughter, Miriam, at least in the minds of her step-brothers who regarded her as Ira's favorite offspring. Miriam was Ira's only daughter, 21 years younger than Ira's oldest son and a child that Ira fathered as a much older man with a more mature, suitable temperament. It is understandable if not excused that she would be treated differently than the sons, and it is just as understandable that the sons would take exception to that fact.
One probably could not condone Ira's rigorous and demanding approach with his sons, but understanding the underpinnings of Ira's persona might explain his strictness: Ira's father and grandmother both died while their children were still young, stretching the capabilities of surviving spouses to raise young families while also making a living. These circumstances required extra stringency, childhood discipline and rigorous austerity to survive, events that had to have a bearing on the development of the personalities of Ira and his brothers.

(3)He was better known as Wayne.

(Of course, Ira's brothers raised their children differently in spite of having essentially the same influences on their own early childhoods.)
Ira was often regarded as the "family historian" on both the Webner and Walton (his mother's) sides, and much of the work of this writer's genealogy study can be attributed to Ira's interest and efforts. He began seriously collecting information from family members in late 1937, and produced a family lineage in November 1938, no doubt typewritten by Helen. It remains to this day an ideal starting point for Webner genealogists.
Recounting some of his early experiences and life in Smithville, Ira philosophized in 1933, “I often wonder if other boys have as vivid memories of their old home surroundings, and if they were as wonderful to them as mine are to me, as I never expected to leave my early surroundings, when a youngster in school.
"If now I could only start in the Kindergarten and do my life over again could I have been of more service to my fellow man."
In 1937, 72-year-old Ira was still broadening his sharp mind with a library that is, by now, very extensive. He reports that he has been "improving my time, in reading good books, Biographies of our great men and women. . ."
Ira passed away April 6, 1939, following four months of illness. He is buried in Dresden, Oh., his home for most of his adult life.
Ira came into the world at a perilous time with not a great deal of money, faced illness and near death early on, was left fatherless at a young age, helplessly watched as his wife and a son succumbed to a national epidemic, and rued a failed and unfortunate marriage. But he left the world still with not a great deal of money but with a sense of civility and culture, and with sons who themselves accomplished much with their legacy.
Curiously, in spite of the intensity of his mother's and first wife's deep-seated religious beliefs which were successfully transmitted to her other children, Ira never mentions religious activities or church attendance in any of his writings.

This biography was adapted from "Of a Family Legacy" which is available for author's cost at http://www.lulu.com/content/527010. The booklet contains several photographs and personal writings of Ira in addition to a biography of his brother Rush who also was a railroader.

Neil E. Webner
Columbus, Ohio
January 2007

Copyright 2007 by Neil E. Webner. No part of this material may be reproduced in any form mechanical or electronic or any other form unless said reproduction will be provided to others at no charge AND the following two lines are included: from "Of A Family Legacy"
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~nwebner/roots/roots.html

Contributed by: Rod McCormick