He also championed the democratic principle that the general practice of a nation, rather than the opinions of a privileged elite, should be the voice of authority in matters of usage and grammar.
Noah Webster was born in West Hartford, Connecticut, to Noah Webster, a farmer and justice of the peace, and Mercy Steele Webster, a descendant of William Bradford. The fourth of their five children, Webster entered Yale College in 1774, where he was tutored by Timothy Dwight and Ezra Stiles. After graduating in 1778, he studied law while he taught school to support himself; he gained admission to the bar at Hartford in 1781. But faced with slow legal business, he returned to teaching, an unwelcome change for a young man eager for fame. While instructing students in Sharon, Connecticut (July-October 1781), and Goshen, New York (1782-Spring 1783), he took a patriot's dislike to British primers, and conceived of a plan to advance the interests of America and his own reputation. He began writing the textbooks that carried the War for Independence out of the battlefield and into the classroom.
This is a free page. This page contains 176 words. This
biography contains 2,223 words (approx. 7 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Noah Webster Access Pass.
