A Bit About the Webster Name
While the English word Webster derives from the Anglo Saxon "webbestre," meaning "a weaver; originally a female weaver," (Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913) myths and legends of weaving exist in nearly every culture around the world:Arachne was a weaver of Greek mythology whose beautiful designs made the goddesses envious; Penelope was a much admired Greek woman who constantly wove her husband's shroud during the day and unwove it every night until Odysseus could return home to her; in Southwest American Indian lore, Grandmother Spider Woman spins all life from the threads in her belly; Conrad alludes to the weaving Fates with his women in black who stand knitting at the gates of the Sepulchral City in Heart of Darkness; Dickens places needles in the hands of Madame DeFarge, weaving the names of the condemned into her cloth during the French Revolution; in the fairy tales Sleeping Beauty and Rumplestiltskin, a beautiful young maiden's fate is determined by the spinning wheel; the German goddess Holda is the patron of spinners, whose story is told by the Bros. Grimm; Egyptians held that Isis was the first to spin; the Japanese include a goddess Amaterasu who works in her weaving room in the sky; and in the Scottish folktale "Whipperty Stourie" a husband is so disgusted by his wife's inability to spin that he threatens to divorce her.The Saxons called their women "peace weavers" and perhaps that is one way the name came into use as a surname among the kin of the clans. Most likely, as trade for fine textiles and woven cloth opened and demand for ready-made woolens increased, family groups became known as Websters who could provide for extended families, clans, or alliances. 
Updated November 2001
