Noah Webster

Born in West Hartford, Connecticut in 1758, Webster graduated from Yale in 1778 and passed the bar but couldn't find legal work. He opened a private school and wrote the "Blue-Back Speller," textbooks that taught generations of American children to read. A fervent supporter of the Revolution and the Constitution, he believed American nationalism required its own intellectual foundation, distinct from European values. Alexander Hamilton recruited him to New York in 1793 to edit a Federalist newspaper; he returned to Connecticut in 1798 and served in the state legislature. In 1806 he published A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, then began the larger project that consumed him: An American Dictionary of the English Language, finally published in 1828, which popularized distinctly American spellings and secured his place as the "Father of American Scholarship and Education." He died in 1843 while working on a second volume; George and Charles Merriam bought the rights and carried his name forward.