Noah Webster

Noah Webster (October 16, 1758–May 28, 1843) was an American lexicographer, textbook author, Bible translator, spelling reformer, writer, and editor. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education." His "Blue-backed Speller" books taught five generations of children in the United States how to spell and read, and his name became synonymous with "dictionary", especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary which was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language.

Biography

Noah Webster was born on October 16, 1758, in the West Division of Hartford, Connecticut to an agriculural colonial family. His father was a farmer and a weaver, and his mother a homemaker. Noah's siblings were his brothers, Charles and Abraham, and his sisters, Mercy and Jerusha.

Related Topics:
October 16 - 1758 - West Division of Hartford, Connecticut - Homemaker

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At the age of 16, he began attending Yale, the sole college in Connecticut. His years at Yale overlapped with the American Revolutionary War, and because of food shortages, many of his college classes were held in Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Related Topics:
Yale - American Revolutionary War - Glastonbury, Connecticut

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He graduated from Yale in 1778. Unable to afford law school, he taught school in Glastonbury, Hartford, and West Hartford. He eventually earned his law degree in 1781 and was admitted to the Hartford bar the same year.

Related Topics:
1778 - 1781

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As a teacher, he had come to dislike American elementary schools. They could be overcrowded, with up to seventy children of all ages crammed into one-room schoolhouses, poorly staffed with untrained teachers, and poorly equipped with no desks and unsatisfactory textbooks which came from England. Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began writing a three volume compendium, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The work consisted of a speller (published in 1783), a grammar (published in 1784), and a reader (published in 1785).

Related Topics:
One-room schoolhouse - England - 1783 - 1784 - 1785

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The speller was originally entitled The First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The title was changed in 1786 to The American Spelling Book, and again in 1829 to The Elementary Spelling Book. Most people called it the "Blue-backed Speller" because of its blue cover, and for the next one hundred years, Webster's book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words. It was the most popular American book of its time; by 1861, it was selling a million copies per year, and its royalty of less than one cent per copy was enough to sustain Webster in his other endeavors. Even Ben Franklin used Webster's book to teach his granddaughter how to read. Some consider it to be the first dictionary created in the United States, and it helped create the popular contests known as spelling bees.

Related Topics:
1786 - 1829 - 1861 - Ben Franklin - Spelling bee

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Unauthorized printing of his books, and disparate copyright laws that varied among the thirteen states, led Webster to champion the federal copyright law that was successfully passed in 1790.

Related Topics:
Copyright - 1790

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Webster married Rebecca Greenleaf in 1789. They had eight children.

Related Topics:
Rebecca Greenleaf - 1789

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In 1793, the Websters moved to New York City to be closer to George Washington and the new country's federal administration. On December 9, 1793, Noah Webster founded New York's first daily newspaper, American Minerva (later known as The Commercial Advertiser). He also published the semi-weekly publication, The Herald, A Gazette for the country (later known as The New York Spectator).

Related Topics:
1793 - New York City - George Washington - December 9

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The Websters moved back to New Haven in 1798.

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In 1806 Noah Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language.

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The following year, at the age of 43, Webster began writing an expanded and comprehensive dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, which would take twenty-seven years to complete. To supplement the documentation of the etymology of the words, Webster would learn twenty-six languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit. Webster hoped to standardize American speech, since Americans in different parts of the country spelled, pronounced, and used words differently.

Related Topics:
Anglo-Saxon - Sanskrit

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During the course of his work on the book, the family moved to Amherst, Massachusetts in 1812, where Webster helped to found Amherst College. Later in 1822, the family moved back to New Haven, and Webster earned an Ll.D. from Yale the following year.

Related Topics:
Amherst, Massachusetts - 1812 - Amherst College - 1822 - Ll.D.

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Webster completed his dictionary during his year abroad in 1825 in Paris, France and at the University of Cambridge. His book contained 70,000 words, of which 12,000 had never appeared in any earlier published dictionary. As a spelling reformer, Webster believed that English spelling rules were unnecessarily complex, so his dictionary introduced American spellings like "color" instead of the English "colour", "music" instead " of "musick", "wagon" instead of "waggon", "center" instead of "centre", and "honor" instead of "honour". He also added American words that were not in English dictionaries like "skunk" and "squash". At the age of seventy, Webster published his dictionary in 1828.

Related Topics:
1825 - Paris, France - University of Cambridge - Spelling reform - 1828

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In 1840, the second edition was published in two volumes. On May 28, 1843, a few days after he had completed revising an appendix to the second edition, Noah Webster died.

Related Topics:
1840 - May 28 - 1843

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Sources

• http://noahwebsterhouse.org/biography.html The Noah Webster House, Museum of West Hartford History.
• http://www.m-w.com/info/noah.htm Merriam-Webster website
• http://www.ctheritage.org/encyclopedia/ct1763_1818/webster.htm Connecticut Heritage website
• http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/WAT_WIL/WEBSTER_NOAH_1758_1843_.html Biographical entry in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• http://www.bartleby.com/65/we/WebsterN.html Biographical entry in the Columbia Encyclopedia