The Noah Webster House &
West Hartford Historical Society

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Noah Webster Fact Sheet
(Part of educational pages for adults)

• The name, Webster, means “female weaver.”
• He went to Yale and was the only one of the Webster’s five children to go past grammar school.
• Noah and Nathan Hale were at Yale at the same time:  Hale was three years ahead of Noah.
• He socialized with Ben Franklin, who was known as quite a lively character.
• When he asked his father for money to study law, his father gave him worthless currency.
• Noah loved music and dancing.
• He once lived in a house in New Haven that belonged to Benedict Arnold.
• Noah and Rebecca had six daughters and two sons.
• He was invited to the White House for dinner but was uncomplimentary of this event.
• The dictionary took Noah 27 years to compile and was published when he was 70 years old.
• Noah’s, An American Dictionary, published in 1828, contained 70,000 words.
• As an adult, Noah was frequently in debt.
• Noah’s New Haven home was saved by Henry Ford and moved to Greenfield Village, Michigan
• Noah became more conservative in politics and religion as he aged.
• Though known as an abolitionist, he did not believe that blacks were equal to whites.
• Noah received less than one cent per copy from the 25 million of The Blue-Backed Spellers sold in his lifetime.
• Possibly as many as 100 million copies of the Blue Back Speller were sold through the end of the 19th century.
• Noah was very outspoken and frequently pointed out the flaws of others.
• Noah was not elected to the Constitutional Convention because of his open criticism of Connecticut leaders’ financing of the Revolutionary War.
• Noah’s remained committed to education throughout his life. He believed that the survival of the United States depended on its educated people.
• Noah died in 1843 at the age of 86. He is buried in New Haven’s Grove Street Cemetery.