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. This John Webster had become Governor of Connecticut. Noah’s father had been born at Hartford on March 25, 1722 and was a farmer, soldier, Deacon, and Justice of the Peace; he would live to the age of 91. Noah’s mother had been born in October, 1727 and would die on October 5, 1794 at the age of 67. These parents produced five children: Mercy, born November 8, 1749; Abraham, born September 17, 1751; Jerusha, born January 22, 1756; Noah; and Charles, born September 2, 1762. Both elder sisters would marry early. Elder brother Abraham would become a farmer in New York State near Utica; younger brother Charles would enter business. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER tradition and elegance of language to anything so mundane as usage). 1784 August 24, Tuesday: In England, Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s daughter Emma was born. In Bedford, New Hampshire, Joseph Emerson Worcester was born. Neither he nor any of his 13 siblings would be permitted to leave home to begin their formal education until the date of their 21st birthdays. All but one of these 14, including Joe, would become teachers. Joseph would rise to fame as a lexicographer but, unlike his competitor Noah Webster, Jr., would be disinclined to sacrifice the tradition and elegance of language to anything so mundane as usage. 1805 Having reached the age of 21 years, Joseph Emerson Worcester was allowed to leave home to attend Phillipps’s Academy, where he would sit with a class of 9-year-old colleagues. 2 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1809 Joseph Emerson Worcester went on from Phillips’s Academy to Yale College, where, at the age of 25, he would again be vastly older than other matriculants. ““Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1811 Joseph Emerson Worcester graduated from Yale College and began to teach at a private academy in Salem, Massachusetts. One of his pupils would be Nathaniel Hathorne [sic]. 4 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1813 Nathaniel Hathorne injured his foot playing ball, causing a lameness which for two years and four months would prevent regular school attendance. During this period he would be taught at home by Joseph Emerson Worcester (who would later become well-known as a lexicographer). 1817 Joseph Emerson Worcester’s A GEOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OR GENERAL GAZETEER. 1818 Joseph Emerson Worcester’s A GAZETEER OF THE UNITED STATES. ““Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1826 Joseph Emerson Worcester’s ELEMENTS OF HISTORY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 6 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1827 Joseph Emerson Worcester edited a new edition of JOHNSON’S ENGLISH DICTIONARY AS IMPROVED BY TODD AND ABRIDGED BY CHALMERS, WITH WALKER’S PRONOUNCING DICTIONARY COMBINED. “THE POET” [Emerson’s ESSAYS, 2ND SERIES]: “I look in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not, with sufficient plainness, or sufficient profoundness, address ourselves to life, nor dare we chaunt our own times and social circumstance. If we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await. Dante’s praise is, that he dared to write his autobiography in colossal cipher, or into universality. We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer; then in the middle age; then in Calvinism. Banks and tariffs, the newspaper and caucus, methodism and unitarianism, are flat and dull to dull people, but rest on the same foundations of wonder as the town of Troy, and the temple of Delphos, and are as swiftly passing away. Our logrolling, our stumps and their politics, our fisheries, our Negroes, and Indians, our boasts, and our repudiations, the wrath of rogues, and the pusillanimity of honest men, the northern trade, the southern planting, the western clearing, Oregon, and Texas, are yet unsung. Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres. If I have not found that excellent combination of gifts in my countrymen which I seek, neither could I aid myself to fix the idea of the poet by reading now and then in Chalmers’s collection of five centuries of English poets. These are wits, more than poets, though there have been poets among them. But when we adhere to the ideal of the poet, we have our difficulties even with Milton and Homer. Milton is too literary, and Homer too literal and historical.” ALEXANDER CHALMERS ““Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1829 Joseph Emerson Worcester took on the job of prepping a new cheaper edition of the WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY 00 for a fee of $2,000. It was titled THE AMERICAN SPELLING-BOOK: CONTAINING THE RUDIMENTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES BY NOAH WEBSTER and was published by William H. Niles in Middletown, Connecticut. The 71-year-old Noah Webster, when he would see the result, would be radically incensed at the ruthlessness with which Worcester had disposed of so many of the personal idiosyncracies of the previous publication. 8 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER THE MAINE WOODS: The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances. He ignorantly erases mythological tablets in order to print his handbills and town-meeting warrants on them. Before he has learned his a b c in the beautiful but mystic lore of the wilderness which Spenser and Dante had just begun to read, he cuts it down, coins a pine-tree shilling, (as if to signify the pine’s value to him,) puts up a deestrict school-house, and introduces Webster’s spelling-book. NOAH WEBSTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1830 Joseph Emerson Worcester’s COMPREHENSIVE, PRONOUNCING AND EXPLANATORY DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. An English translation of Jean-François Champollion’s work was offered by the Reverend Samson Reed.2 ““Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 9 HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1832 Joseph Emerson Worcester’s ELEMENTS OF GEOGRAPHY, ANCIENT AND MODERN: WITH AN ATLAS. A NEW EDITION (Illustrated by Alexander Anderson; Boston: Hilliard, Gray, & Company). This text was required for admission to Harvard College and has been found in Henry Thoreau’s personal library. ELEMENTS OF GEOGRAPHY Friend Luke Howard’s ESSAY ON THE MODIFICATIONS OF CLOUDS. / BY LUKE HOWARD, F.R.S. &C. / [FIRST PUBLISHED 1803.] / LONDON: / PUBLISHED BY HARVEY AND DALTON, / GRACECHURCH- STREET. / MDCCCXXXII. At Widener Library of Harvard University, this is now cataloged as “KE 31948” and bears the following inscriptions: B Sept. 1856 [BOOKPLATE WITH OLD HARVARD SEAL] “Christo et Ecclesiæ” “Bought / with the Fund bequeathed by Horace A. Haven / of Portsmouth, N.H. / (Class of 1842.) / Rec.d Dec. 2, 1851.” [ON TITLE PAGE] “From the Author — Manchester / 28 June 1842.” HOWARD PUBLICATIONS 2. The Reverend Samson Reed, foremost American member of the Swedenborgian New Church, would be referred to by Waldo Emerson as his “early oracle.” 10 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER JOSEPH EMERSON WORCESTER 1834 November 26, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Lyceum in Concord. Joseph Emerson Worcester was being publicly accused of having plagiarized the work of Noah Webster.