Male

October 16, 1758

1843

Hartford, CT

Rebecca Greenleaf Webster (1789)

Noah Webster was born on October 16, 1758 in the West Division of Hartford. Webster grew up in an average colonial family - his father farmed and worked as a weaver, while his mother worked at home. At the time, few people went to college, but Webster enjoyed learning so much that his parents sent him to Yale, Connecticut’s first college. He left for New Haven in 1774 when he was 16 and graduated in 1778. He wanted to continue his education by studying law, but his parents could not afford to give him more money for school. After thinking about his options, Webster began working as a teacher. In 1789, Noah married Rebecca Greenleaf, the daughter of a rich man from Boston. During their long marriage, they had eight children and numerous grandchildren. The family lived in New Haven, and then ...moved to Amherst, Massachusetts. There, Webster helped to found Amherst College. The family later moved back to New Haven. In 1801, Webster started working on defining the words that Americans use. He did this because Americans spoke and used words differently than the English, and so people who lived in different parts of the country could speak and spell the same way.

Some sources have listed Webster as a student of the Litchfield Law School, but he actually studied law in the Litchfield office of lawyer Jedediah Strong.

In his dictionary, Webster used American spellings like “color” instead of the English “colour” and “music” instead of “musick”. He also added American words that weren’t in English dictionaries like “skunk” and “squash.” His first edition, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1806. This book offered brief definitions of about 37,000 words. It took him 22 more years to finish his American Dictionary of the English Language. When he finished in 1828, at the age of 70, Noah’s dictionary defined over 65,000 words.

Noah Webster fought for a distinctly American language, copyright laws, a strong federal government, universal education, and the abolition of slavery. In addition to his dictionary, he wrote textbooks and edited magazines. Noah Webster died in 1843.
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