page_title: Webster, North Carolina
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Webster, North Carolina / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The old 1888 Jackson County Courthouse in Webster, which replaced an earlier 1851 frame structure destroyed by fire in 1887 and lasted until 1935 when it was demolished. Presently the site of the Rhinehart Home.
context_page_description: Webster is a town in Jackson County, North Carolina, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 363, down from 486 at the 2000 census.
  Webster was the first county seat of Jackson County, until Sylva took over in 1913.
context_section_description: Webster was founded in 1851 in order to serve as the county seat of Jackson County. A massive fire and the railroad's failure to come to the town caused the larger and more powerful railroading center of Sylva to take over the position of county seat. Webster once had a courthouse and many shops, but few of the buildings that hint at its vibrant past as a thriving county seat survive.
  Several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places are within the town. The Lucius Coleman Hall House, the Elisha Calor Hedden House, the Walter E. Moore House, and the old Webster Rock Schoolhouse, built by the Works Progress Administration in 1936, were all listed in 1990. The Webster Baptist Church, built in 1900, and the Webster Methodist Church, next to the old school and built around the same time, were listed in 1989; the former is across the Tuckasegee River outside the town limits but still considered to be in Webster.
caption: The old Webster Courthouse, built in 1888, abandoned in 1914, and demolished in 1935
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