Notable and Wonderful Noah Webster

Noah Webster (1758-1843) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in an average colonial family.

Noah Webster (1758-1843) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and grew up in an average colonial family. His father was a farmer, a justice of the peace, and a deacon of a Congregational church. Noah’s sisters Mercy (1749 – 1820) and Jerusha (1756 – 1831) worked with their mother to keep the house and to make food and clothing for the family. His two brothers, Charles (1762 – 1817) and Abraham (1751 – 1831) helped their father with the farm work.

Few people went to college during the colonial period, but Noah loved to learn, and his parents let him go to Connecticut’s only college, Yale. To make this happen, his father mortgaged the farm, and in 1774, at 16 years of age, Noah left home for Yale. Noah graduated in 1778 at the height of the Revolutionary War, and he wanted to study law, but his parents were unable to provide him with any more money. So, to earn a living, Noah taught school in Glastonbury, Hartford, and West Hartford. Later he studied law under several lawyers. In 1781, the bar in Hartford admitted Webster.

Noah did not like the conditions in American schools because many children of all ages were crammed into one-room schoolhouses with no desks, poor books, and untrained teachers. Schoolbooks came from England, and Noah believed that Americans should learn from American books. In 1783, Noah wrote his textbook: “A Grammatical Institute of the English Language” which was called by most people the “Blue-backed Speller” because of its blue cover. For 100 years, this book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words. Ben Franklin used it to teach his granddaughter to read.

In 1784, Webster also wrote a grammar book and in 1785 a reader book. The speller, grammar, and reader were published beginning in 1785 as a three-volume set. Around 1836, William Holmes McGuffey published the McGuffey Readers to include a grammar book and a reader book. McGuffey intended to use Webster’s “Blue Back” as a supplement along with the McGuffey Readers.

In 1785, Webster began delivering a series of public lectures that promoted a more uniform language and education. One little-known and the overlooked but essential fact is Webster’s significant role in developing the American Constitution. In 1785, he wrote a pamphlet called “Sketches of American Policy.” Read by educated Americans, most of the principles in that pamphlet were incorporated into the Constitution and the essays in the Federalist Papers. While the principles themselves were not Webster’s, he was the first to publish them in the form of specific proposals for a new Constitution.

In 1786, Noah met Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, where they discussed their favorite subject — simplified spelling. During this time, Noah coined the terms “fœderal” and “anti-fœderal” to describe the sides for and against a strong national government.

In 1787, he briefly lived in New York to edit the American Magazine, but this venture failed. After the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he anonymously wrote an “Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” an easy-to-read pamphlet influential among the citizens. He also wrote several articles promoting the new Constitution under the pseudonyms “America,” Giles Hickory,” and “A Citizen of America.” He moved back to Hartford in 1788 and practiced law there until 1793.

During his travels, Noah experienced difficulties in obtaining copyright for his works in each state. As such, he was at the forefront of the establishment of a national copyright system.

In 1789, Noah married Rebecca Greenleaf in Boston, and they had eight children. In 1793, a prominent Federalist convinced him to move back to New York to edit a daily newspaper, “The Minerva” (later the Commercial Advertiser) and the semi-weekly “The Herald” (later the Spectator).

In 1803, Webster moved to New Haven to work on his dictionary. In 1812 the Websters moved to Amherst, Massachusetts and Noah helped to start Amherst College (1821). He served in the Massachusetts legislature in 1815 and 1819. In 1822 the Webster’s moved back to New Haven. Noah traveled to France and England in 1824-25 to research lexicography (the practice of compiling dictionaries).

When Noah was 43, he started writing the first American dictionary. He did this because Americans in various parts of the country used words differently. Noah thought that all Americans should speak the same way. He also believed that Americans should not talk and spell just like the English. For example, Noah used American spellings like “color” instead of the English “colour.” He also added American words that were not in English dictionaries. His early success in 1782 with the blue-backed spelling book earned him a steady income and the wherewithal to devote his life to the first American dictionary, published in 1806. In 1828 after 27 years of work and at 70 years of age, Noah’s second edition dictionary had 70,000 words.

Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language was produced during the years when the American home, church, and school were set up on a Biblical and patriotic basis. Webster descended on his mother’s side from Pilgrim Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation. The latter made essential contributions to the American educational system, which kept the nation on a Christian family base and a Constitutional course for many years. The famous “blue-backed Speller,” his “Grammars,” and his “Reader,” all had Biblical and patriotic themes. Webster championed the flood of educational volumes emphasizing Christian Constitutional values for more than a century.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the 1828 American Dictionary should have the most significant number of Biblical definitions given in any reference volume. For a salient example of the different worldview that Webster had in mind in 1828 compared to today, look at the definition of the word “law.” The New Collegiate Dictionary:

LAW: a binding custom or practice of a community; a rule of conduct or action prescribed or formally recognized as binding or enforced by a controlling authority. (This definition continues for two inches of one column of space.)

The American Dictionary of the English Language with pronouncing vocabularies of Scripture, classical and geographical names (1828):

LAW: A rule, particularly an established or permanent rule, prescribed by the supreme power of a state to its subjects, for regulating their actions, particularly their social actions. Laws are imperative or mandatory, commanding what shall be done; prohibitory, restraining from what is to be forborne; or permissive, declaring what may be done without incurring a penalty. The laws which enjoin the duties of piety and morality, are prescribed by God and found in the Scriptures…

It appears that Christianity in the form of Calvinism was important to Webster, but he was not always consistent with it in his thinking. For instance, he believed in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract theory for a period in his early life. ¹ He later turned away from the social contract theory when he began to see the dangers of what today we would call “mobocracy” or “woke.”

Late in life, Webster was critical of the politics of dependency. ² He set himself with the founders, who believed that if someone depended financially on someone, they could not serve the public good but would only be concerned about his dependent relationship. Only a man had no economic interests and sought no financial advantage who could perform well.

If there is any doubt to the veracity of Noah’s Christianity, the following from the preface to the 1828 edition of his “An American Dictionary of the English Language — with pronouncing vocabularies of Scripture, classical and geographical names:”

In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed . . . No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people. 

The above is just one of many examples of Webster’s Christian worldview expressed in his many works. It is curious but understandable why there is little about Webster in modern history (cough cough) books; what scant information may be around is devoid of any Christian references. While Webster may still be known because of the modern namesake dictionary, Noah carried out many more beautiful things throughout his life.

Noah Webster and Daniel Webster are familiar names from history. While they lived during the founding of the United States and were from the same area, there is no known family relationship. Daniel Webster (1782-1852) was an American politician who twice served in the United States House of Representatives, representing New Hampshire (1813-1817) and Massachusetts (1823 -1827), served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (1827-1841) and 1845-1850) and was twice the United States Secretary of State, under Presidents William Henry Harrison and John Tyler (1841-1843) and Millard Fillmore (1850-1852). He was a Dartmouth graduate.

Primary sources for this paper:

• The Debate on the Constitution, Volume One and Two, Library of America; (July 1993)

• America’s God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations, by William J. Federer (Editor), Amerisearch, Inc. (2000)

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Cogent Author and Publisher, Frederick R. Smith
Cogent Editor, Sean Tinney

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a French philosopher and political theorist and considered the father of modern democratic ideals. He believed in “popular sovereignty” and free will, whose idea influenced the godless French Revolution. Rousseau held that laws must be solely the creation of man, not handed down by God. His “Social Contract” (1762) proclaimed that civil order would be a product of “general will,” a mystical thought that civic responsibility is inclined towards the good of all and not each person’s particular will. Rousseau believed in the perfectibility of man. His novel Émile (1762) outlined an education system with self-expression encouraged and rote learning eliminated (does this not sound like today’s school system?).

2. Now we know why the debased woke commie gang loves the Caustic Cancel Culture Pogrom — it relegates the history of hard work to the dustbin.