Facts about Noah Webster
- 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 not impressed with his visit.
- 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 in Dearborn, Michigan.
- Noah became more conservative in politics and religion as he aged.
- Noah helped form the Society for the Promotion of Freedom in 1792, which was an early abolitionist group.
- Noah received less than one cent per copy from the 25 million “Blue-Backed Spellers” sold in his lifetime.
- Possibly as many as 100 million copies of the “Blue-Backed. 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 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 85. He is buried in New Haven’s Grove Street Cemetery.
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