Noah Webster, Jr. (October 16, 1758 – May 28, 1843) was an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, political writer, editor, and prolific author. He has been called the "Father of American Scholarship and Education". His blue-backed speller books taught five generations of American children how to spell and read, secularizing their education. According to Ellis (1979), he gave Americans "a secular catechism to the nation-state." Webster's name has become synonymous with "dictionary" in the United States, especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language. Webster was born in the Western Division of Hartford (which became West Hartford, Connecticut) to an established family. His father Noah Sr. (1722–1813) was a descendant of Connecticut Governor John Webster; his mother Mercy (Steele) Webster (1727–1794) was a descendant of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony.[4] His father was primarily a farmer, though he was also deacon of the local Congregational church, captain of the town's militia, and a founder of a local book society (a precursor to the public library).[5] After American independence, he was appointed a justice of the peace.[6] Webster's father never attended college, but he was intellectually curious and prized education. Webster's mother spent long hours teaching her children spelling, mathematics, and music.[7] At age six, Webster began attending a dilapidated one-room primary school built by West Hartford's Ecclesiastical Society. Years later, he described the teachers as the "dregs of humanity" and complained that the instruction was mainly in religion.[8] Webster's experiences there motivated him to improve the educational experience of future generations.[9] At age fourteen, his church pastor began tutoring him in Latin and Greek to prepare him for entering Yale College.[10] Webster enrolled at Yale just before his 16th birthday, studying during his senior year with Ezra Stiles, Yale's president. His four years at Yale overlapped the American Revolutionary War and, because of food shortages and threatened British invasions, many of his classes had to be held in other towns. Webster served in the Connecticut Militia. His father had mortgaged the farm to send Webster to Yale, but he was now on his own and had nothing more to do with his family.[11] Webster lacked career plans after graduating from Yale in 1778, later writing that a liberal arts education "disqualifies a man for business."[12] He taught school briefly in Glastonbury, but the working conditions were harsh and the pay low. He quit to study law.[13] While studying law under future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, Webster also taught full-time in Hartford — which was grueling, and ultimately impossible to continue.[14] He quit his legal studies for a year and lapsed into a depression; he then found another practicing attorney to tutor him, and completed his studies and passed the bar examination in 1781.[15] As the Revolutionary War was still going on, he could not find work as a lawyer. He received a master's degree from Yale by giving an oral dissertation to the Yale graduating class. Later that year, he opened a small private school in western Connecticut that was a success. Nevertheless, he soon closed it and left town, probably because of a failed romance.[16] Turning to literary work as a way to overcome his losses and channel his ambitions,[17] he began writing a series of well-received articles for a prominent New England newspaper justifying and praising the American Revolution and arguing that the separation from Britain was permanent.[18] He then founded a private school catering to wealthy parents in Goshen, New York and, by 1785, he had written his speller, a grammar book and a reader for elementary schools.[19] Proceeds from continuing sales of the popular blue-backed speller enabled Webster to spend many years working on his famous dictionary.[20] Webster was by nature a revolutionary, seeking American independence from the cultural thralldom to Britain. To replace it, he sought to create a utopian America, cleansed of luxury and ostentation and the champion of freedom.[21] By 1781, Webster had an expansive view of the new nation. American nationalism was superior to Europe because American values were superior, he claimed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster

• published: 05 Jun 2016
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