ABOUT AMERICA250
America250 is a nonpartisan initiative working to engage every American in commemorating the 250th anniversary of our country. This multi-year effort, from now through July 4, 2026, is an opportunity to pause and reflect on our nation’s past, honor the contributions of all Americans, and look ahead toward the future we want to create for the next generation and beyond.
The themes of America250 bear resemblance to the fundamental question that Noah Webster put to his fellow citizens following the American Revolution, and would continue to help define throughout his lifetime: “What does it mean to be an American?”
The Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society is honored to celebrate this nationwide initiative by offering America250-themed programming beginning in 2024.
To Be an American: Noah Webster’s Sketches of American Policy
The Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society is pleased to offer an “America250” themed history presentation at your local library, senior center, history club meeting or social gathering.
Description:
In 1785, Noah Webster published “Sketches of American Policy”, a four-part essay that outlined his vision for a strong federal government, and a call to replace the weak Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first framework for a new government that was formally ratified in 1781.
Webster’s “Sketches” was read by many of the primary architects of the United States Constitution, and it preceded the publication of the Federalist papers by two and a half years.
Considering that Webster’s more famous contemporaries included George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, the claim of preeminence for Noah Webster, who never fought in any battle of the Revolution, nor held any national office, merits critical examination today.
Dr. Homer Babbidge, former American History professor and past UCONN President, once wrote that Connecticut’s own Noah Webster made it his life’s mission to:
… instill in the hearts and minds of his fellow citizens some of his own passionate love of liberty and to persuade them of the great truth of his life, that liberty could be preserved only through the strength that comes from unity.
Webster’s career… entitles him to an unchallenged eminence in American life, for his broadly conceived ideal of union… surpasses that of his more famous contemporaries.
This presentation will delve into the life and career of Noah Webster as essential to the founding of the American Republic….and will examine what Noah Webster and his extraordinary generation of American Revolutionary leaders overcame to construct & launch this metaphorical vessel known as the “United” States. Its unprecedented design, diverse crew of citizens and uncertain course through an often-turbulent sea of rival nations and hostile peoples was a grand experiment like none other before it.
How to Book this Program!
Contact the Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society at:
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 860.502.3257
Fee: $250.00
(One-hour public program & brief Q & A…at your location)
Mileage charges at the 2025 Federal Rate of $0.67/mile may apply for travel outside of a 20-mile perimeter from West Hartford, CT., not to exceed $30.00.
Payment: Convenient, fast & secure online payment is now available on the museum’s website at:
https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/EuyEYdj4By6DHkMYI3vPbA
OR MAIL A Check to the museum at 227 South Main Street, West Hartford, CT.
(Attn: Outreach Lecture)-Payments must be received prior to your scheduled event.
About the Presenter:
Craig Hotchkiss taught United States History at South Windsor (Connecticut) High School for 33 years, including Honors & Advanced Placement classes, and served as the History Department Chair for nearly a decade.
Upon retirement, he joined the team at the Mark Twain House & Museum as Education Manager where he presented scores of public outreach programs at schools, libraries, and other civic organizations throughout Connecticut and the entire Northeast. Mr. Hotchkiss was also the Site Director for the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Teacher Workshops at the museum for 5 years and taught a graduate level course Museum Education at Trinity College in Hartford.
About The Noah Webster House:
The Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society interprets the life & legacy of Noah Webster; American founding father, educator, author and lexicographer, and preserves his boyhood home (a National Historic Landmark) in West Hartford, Connecticut. The West Hartford Historical Society is a repository of three centuries of artifacts & archives from the town’s storied past. The historic house and exhibit spaces are open for public hours Monday through Saturday, 1:00 p.m.- 4:00 p.m.
For more information, visit our website at noahwebsterhouse.org or call us at: 860-521-5362.
We the People…of West Hartford
October 9, 2025- January 31, 2026
The Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society celebrates the diversity of West Hartford, Connecticut with an America250-themed photography exhibit: We the People.
Photographer Virginia Kemp presents large-scale portrait photographs, paired with written narratives to capture each person’s life story, their contributions to West Hartford (big and small) and ways in which the town has impacted their lives.
Kemp’s inspiration stems from her propensity “to be drawn to people’s stories”. Growing up in Michigan, she remembers being “the kid who hung on to her grandparents’ every word as they told tales from the past”. Kemp explains that she “loved to sift through old photographs and letters that lived at the family farm….trying to imagine the people and history attached to it all”.
Kemp carried this passion into her early career days as a clinical social worker. After many years and serendipitous turns in life, she’s still interested in connecting with others and the narratives of their lives…through the camera lens.
Join us on October 9, 2025, for an opening reception from 4:00pm-6:00pm at The Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society, 227 South Main Street, West Hartford.
Meet the artist and enjoy wine & light fare!
For more information, call 860.521.5362.
“The Original Promise of America”
2024 Lecture Series
July 18 ~ September 19 ~ November 21
OVERVIEW
This series of lectures will explore how the Revolutionary generation—Noah Webster’s generation—defined the purposes and prospects of their new nation. Noah will make occasional appearances; he played a considerable part in creating a distinctive national culture. But the talks won’t foreground him, nor will they bask in nostalgia for a simpler, more hopeful age. Studies of the past inevitably reflect the present; they can also illuminate paths into the future. While focusing on Revolutionary Americans’ thinking about the promise of the United States in its childhood, we will consider as well how much of their vision has survived, how much ought to be preserved, and why.
THE ORIGINAL PROMISE OF AMERICA: “THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS”
July 18, 2024
Many Puritans settled in New England and many Quakers settled in Pennsylvania seeking salvation—eternal happiness in the next world. But these religious folks sought to improve their lives in this world too, as did all other voluntary migrants to British America. Colonists and then Americans avidly pursued the earthly happiness of ensuring they always got enough to eat, of rising in society, above all of owning fertile land in a continent so lavishly stocked with it. Their America was “a place wher [sic] they might have libertie and live comfortably.”
THE ORIGINAL PROMISE OF AMERICA: “LIBERTY”
September 19, 2024
Early Americans universally celebrated liberty. The white men among them probably enjoyed more of it than any other people of their time. Yet even they distrusted liberty so much that they seldom allowed the word to go around unchaperoned. Orators, writers, politicians, and clergymen typically assigned “liberty” an adjectival minder: “ordered liberty,” “rational liberty,” “Christian liberty,” “temperate liberty.” The liberty Americans lauded had no resemblance to individualism, and it had absolutely nothing to do with license. The right kind of liberty was really self-government, “a freedom within bounds” set by laws, founded on property ownership, and ideally guided by virtue. Washington and Franklin, towering model citizens, personified American liberty as it should be.
THE ORIGINAL PROMISE OF AMERICA: “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL”
RESCHEDULED TBD
A few idealists claimed the American republic stood for the equal rights of all humankind. So did a few Revolutionary propagandists, among them the author of the Declaration of Independence.
The truth was otherwise. White men claimed the lion’s share of all that America offered, with little left over for the rest of humanity.
People of color fared the worst. Native Americans received nothing but broken pledges. The new nations promised only bondage to the vast majority of its black residents. By the time of the Revolution, slaves made up 20% of the colonial population. Jefferson and Washington each enslaved hundreds of Black people; even Franklin owned several servants. Nor did any of these great men “remember the ladies” when laying the nation’s foundations, as Abigail Adams famously urged her husband John to do.
But women and Black people knew America was very young and growing fast, a country of the future. From the beginning they claimed larger shares of American promises than their white male masters had ever dreamed of offering them.
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About the Presenter: Gene Leach is a long-time resident of West Hartford and taught United States history and American Studies at Trinity College in Hartford until his retirement in 2012. Gene came to Trinity College in 1975 with degrees from Harvard, Michigan, and Yale; at various points in his long tenure, he directed the American Studies Program, chaired the History Department, and directed the graduate programs in both fields. His scholarship has centered on American social thought and this country’s working class. Leach has written, lectured, and served on governing boards for several organizations devoted to Connecticut history and culture—including the West Hartford Historical Society!
