On This Day: Noah Webster of Dictionary Fame Dies | WeatherBug
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On This Day: Noah Webster of Dictionary Fame Dies

May 20, 2020
By WeatherBug Sr. Meteorologist, James West
On May 28, 1843, one of the most influential early Americans died in New Haven, Conn. Although he is not named Jefferson, Washington or Adams, you’ll recognize his name if you look on your bookshelf, Noah Webster.

Noah Webster, born on October 16, 1758, near the current day West Hartford, Conn., is considered the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.”  Growing up during the American colonialism and coming of age during the American Revolution, Webster graduated from Yale and studied to become a lawyer. Although he passed the bar, there was not any work for a new lawyer during the still ongoing War for Independence.

Webster, a teacher at several private New England schools and extremely unhappy with the teaching methods and the textbooks imported from England, wrote education textbooks including a speller, grammar book and reader for elementary schools. These books taught children how to read, spell and pronounce words, using phonetics that changed the spelling of common words from British style to the more American style seen today. His ubiquitous “blue-backed spellers” was the most popular American books of its time, selling 15 million copies by 1837 and 60 million by 1890. Five generations of American children used Webster’s books to learn to read and write.

A prolific reader and writer, Webster moved to New York in 1793 and founded New York’s first daily newspaper, the American Minerva. He edited and wrote for the newspaper, advocating for a permanent separation from Britain and the creation of a new nation with its own American values. He left New York in 1798, but would continue to write books, essays, and newspaper articles for decades to come.

Webster, interested in lexicon, etymology of words and creating a standardized American language, published his first dictionary in 1806. The next year, he began to compile his next dictionary. This dictionary, the famous An American Dictionary of the English Language, took 26 years to complete. Webster learned 28 languages while compiling the etymology of the words for the dictionary. The dictionary’s two-volume second edition was published in 1840.

On May 28, 1843 at the age of 84, Webster died while revising the second edition of the dictionary. The rights to his dictionary were acquired by George and Charles Merriam and the ubiquitous Merriam-Webster dictionary still used today was born.