October 16: Birthday of Noah Webster (1758)
Prayer Idea
Pray for people to use words to help instead of harm.
History Note
Noah Webster was born in 1758 in West Hartford, Connecticut. Like other New England boys, Noah probably began elementary school when he was seven. When he was 14, he asked the local minister of the Congregational Church to help him prepare for college at Yale.
In 1774 Webster entered Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The following year, General George Washington passed through New Haven while serving as commander in chief of the Continental Army. Noah played a flute while other students sang to the general. Noah Webster served in the Connecticut militia but did not actively participate in the American Revolutionary War as a soldier.
Webster graduated from Yale in 1778. He became an elementary schoolteacher and began to study law. He became convinced that Americans should have their own textbooks. He did not want students to be dependent on textbooks from England. Webster thought American schoolbooks should contain American words such as skunk, hickory, and chowder, and also American geography. Webster wanted to promote a truly American form of English.
Webster passed the bar and became a lawyer in 1781, but he continued teaching and began to write a spelling book. First published in 1783, it had a blue cover and people called it the Blue-Backed Speller. Webster published a grammar book in 1784 and a reader in 1785.
In 1787 Noah began to court Rebecca Greenleaf from Boston. Rebecca refused his first proposal of marriage. Afterwards, Webster wrote her a love letter and sent her a lock of his hair. Webster finally succeeded in wooing Rebecca, and they were married in 1789. He and his beloved Becca had six daughters and two sons.
When Webster first published his Blue-Backed Speller, America had no national copyright law. Anyone could make copies of a book, and the author would not earn any money from those copies. Noah Webster worked for fair copyright laws, and in 1790 the U.S. Congress passed the first national copyright law.
Webster believed that America needed a dictionary with words Americans used every day, plus new scientific and technical words. Webster published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language in 1806. This dictionary defined 37,000 words. About one-eighth of those words were new words American authors used.
In 1808, during the Second Great Awakening, Noah Webster attended an evangelistic meeting and made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. His religious perspective had a significant influence on his work. Webster often used a Bible quotation or a Biblical teaching to explain a word’s meaning.
Webster spent two decades working on a new edition of his dictionary. He reviewed the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew he had learned in college. He did research in America, England, and France. He studied Anglo-Saxon, Danish, French, German, Old Irish, Persian, Welsh, and other languages to better understand the origins of English words.
Noah Webster published his final version of the American Dictionary of the English Language in two volumes in 1828, at age 70. He had defined 70,000 words. The U.S. Congress adopted it as their official dictionary.
Webster died in 1843 at age 84.
This 1886 print recognizes Noah Webster as “The Schoolmaster of the Republic.” Image courtesy the Library of Congress.
Learn More
Watch a short video about Noah Webster’s work.
Find more resources at Homeschool History.
