The Websters: Letters of an American Army Family in Peace and War, 1836-1853

When Lucien Webster, West Point graduate and artilleryman, met Frances Smith, granddaughter of a Connecticut Revolutionary War hero, in Florida, neither could anticipate how exciting and stressful their lives would be over the next 17 years.

Thrown together in St. Augustine in 1836 during the Second Seminole War, the couple was barely married before being separated by orders that sent Lucien first to south Florida, where he established a post on the site of present-day Miami, and then to No...