Joseph Emerson Worcester
JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1758 October 16, Monday: At the battle of Clostercamp, the French were triumphant over the combined forces of Great Britain, Prussia, Hanover, Brunswick, and Hesse-Kassel. Noah Webster, Jr. was born in the front, upstairs bedroom (then described as “parlor”), probably in its 4-poster “guest” bed, in a square, white house on South Main Street in what is now West Hartford, Connecticut to Noah Webster, Sr. and Mercy Steele Webster.1 You can still visit the family farm where he was born, at 227 South Main Street (unless today happens to be Wednesday). It is probable that Noah initially attended South Middle School in Hartford, and Hopkins Grammar School of Hartford under Mrs. Wales. He would be one of the approximately 150 young scholars prepared for college by the Reverend Doctor Nathan Perkins, pastor of his village church, entering Yale College at the age of 14. It would be said of this lexicographer that, “if you had met him in China you would have known that he hailed from Connecticut” (also famous in West Hartford would be Dr. Joseph Emerson Worcester, Webster’s lexicographic rival, who would refuse to sacrifice the 1. On his mother’s side he was a great-great-great grandson of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony, a Pilgrim First Comer. On his father’s side he was a great-great grandson of a Puritan, John Webster, who had emigrated from Warwickshire settling initially near Boston and then in 1638 migrating to “Newe Towne” (Hartford, Connecticut) as part of Hooker’s band.
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