While we all know about Webster's dictionary what is not well known is the other writing he did BEFORE the dictionary

How many of you think only of the first American Dictionary when you hear the name Noah Webster? I know I did. What I have since learned is the dictionary was one of the last things Noah wrote.

Noah Webster was born on 16 October 1758 in West Hartford, Connecticut the fourth child and the second son to John Webster. His lack of interest in farming clearly disappointed his parents. They couldn’t understand Noah’s hunger for and love of the written word. Noah ended up teaching himself the basic’s of Latin so he could both borrow books from and be formally taught by the family pastor, Dr Perkins. In fact Dr Perkins convinced Noah’s father to send him to Yale when the young Noah turned 16. His father agreed and took out a loan against the fanily farm to enable young Noah the opportunity of an education.

These were turbulent years during the American Revolution which disrupted both education and commerce. Nevertheless, Noah, even with the classes moved to Glastonbury, continued to study. He and his class graduated without a formal ceramony in 1778. Noah wanted to continue his education by studying law but his father informed him he had to support himself. One of the reasons he decide to become a teacher. Teaching in Glastonbury, Hartford and West Hartford.

Teaching became both the best and worst thing to happen to Noah. The best because his idea’s of what school should be for both the teacher and student started taking shape. Many of these ideas are still being practiced here in the 21st Century. Noah also believed America needed a literary revolution in conjuction with the political revolution they were going through. That we, as AMERICAN’S, should write and print our own books, especially textbooks. To that end he set out to write The American Instructor which he renamed A Grammatical Institute of the English Language on the recommendation of an admired college professor. The first of the three-book set was the speller that you can still find in print today. He printed the grammar and reader later. The worst because Noah discovered he wasn’t really suited to being a teacher with up to 70 students of different ages in a one room school where he had to do ALL the work.

Before Noah took his speller to the printer to publish he wanted to make sure he, and other writers, got paid the proper royalties from their works. To that end he campagned for copyright legislation in several states. Connecticut was the first state to pass such legislation on 14 August 1783 by protecting the author’s rights for a period of fourteen years. Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, New Hamshire, and Rhode Island quickly followed suit.

Noah then asked Barlow & Trumball of New York not only for financial help to print the book but to actually print the first run of the book. They agreed, printing the first 500 copies of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. None of them realized how many copies of this first book would be sold, not only in his lifetime, but well after. Even though it was a three book set only the speller has been constantly reprinted. Of course some of the sales were due Noah’s salesmanship since he traveled the states doing public speaking engagements. This, in addition to his speaking to teachers and preachers, expressing his views about the whole of education. His focus, however, was always on how American children should be learning from American textbooks.

One of the things Noah Webster believed in was a national government stronger than the Articles of Confederation allowed. He believed the central government should deal with things like money, mail service, the army, navigation and taxes. His views were set out in his pamphlet Sketches of American Politics. Because of this pamphlet he was asked in 1787 to write something in defense of the new Constitution of the United States that had just been completed in Philadephia, Pennsylvania. An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution to help people see the advantages of the Federal government.

While Noah was in Philadephia writing his pamphlet on the new constitution he met his future wife, Rebecca Greenleaf of Boston. They married on 7 November 1789 at her family home in Boston and immediately went to Hartford, Connecticut where Noah hoped to build a law practice. He succeeded in passing his bar exam in 1780 but could not develop the clientele he needed to support his growing family, eventually giving up his law office to write fulltime.

At the family Thanksgiving in 1789 Noah discovered his parents had lost the family farm due to his inability to repay the loan they took out for him to attend Yale. While heartbroken over this turn of events there was little he could do about it. The royalties from his six textbooks and two books of essays barely supported his growing family. Noah’s young family cut back expenses as best they could including moving into a ‘smaller’ house and yet he still had to borrow to meet both housing and publishing expenses.

While the Webster’s lived in Hartford Noah became active in the social fabric of the community. Elected to the Common Council he served willingly. Noah also actively worked in the local anti-slavery society. He was also commissioned by the Postmaster General to find the thief who was stealing the mail traveling between New York, New York and Hartford, Connecticut.

In December 1793 Noah accepted the job of editing the American Minerva, the first daily newspaper in New York City continuing in that position until 1798 when a personal project finally started taking over his office.

Moving his family back to Hartford he started working fulltime on the two volumn Infectious Disease Set he had started in New York. Like all of Noah’s other writings his views and observations were considered quiet controversial in his day. Although we now know that many of his suppositions were wrong. He saw the need of such a set by the doctors of his day and created it. The next major project Noah Webster undertook is the one we all know him for today was spurred on by the two volume medical set. In his writing of the medical books he discovered a lot of words that were not defined in any of the dictionaries at his disposal.

However, before tackling An American Dictionary of the English Language Noah published a four textbook set called Elements of Useful Knowledge and a first, small dictionary. Armed with the knowledge of twenty other languages Noah started his dictionary in 1807. During the ensuing twenty years Noah watched his eight children grow-up, marry and have children of their own. Meanwhile he constantly checked previously published dictionaries, researching every single word to its root spelling and meaning. Noah and one of his son’s even spent a couple of years in France and England to look in books that were only available in those countries. It was 1825 in England when he defined the last word and gladly headed home to America and his family.

Samuel Converse of New York agreed to both finance and print the first 2500 copies of the two volumn set of An American Dictionary of the English Language. Meanwhile Noah wrote more textbooks between the first and second printing of the dictionary. Somewhere in there he suffered a set back when Samuel Converse went bankrupt causing the dictionary to be out of print for a few years. In 1838 Noah decided to mortgage his house to print the second edition of the diction. He managed to see two more printings of it before his death on 24 May 1843.

There are a lot of books Noah Webster contributed to our country, Sadly out of all his writings it is only for An American Dictionary of the English Language we remember him.