PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN “[T]HE TASTE AND JUDGEMENT OF [WEBSTER] ARE NOT 1 GENERALLY ESTEEMED EQUAL TO HIS INDUSTRY AND ERUDITION.” 1. Per Joseph Emerson Worcester, competing American lexicographer. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: NOAH WEBSTER PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 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.2 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 tradition and elegance of language to anything so mundane as usage). 1767 April 17, Friday: Noah Webster, Jr. jotted in his diary: “O habit! O Education! Of what importance that our first examples be good and our first impressions virtuous.” 2. 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. 2 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: NOAH WEBSTER PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1774 September: 14-year-old Noah Webster, Jr. rode horseback to New Haven to matriculate at Yale College. 1777 May 26: Oliver Goldsmith’s pastoral THE DESERTED VILLAGE (in memory of his deceased brother). THE DESERTED VILLAGE While Noah Webster, Jr. was entering the Junior year of his college studies, invasion of the port city of New Haven by the British military holding the ports of Boston, Newport, and New-York came to be a real possibility. British General Burgoyne’s army was advancing down the Hudson River. For this reason, at the end of May the entire Junior class of Yale College began its studies far inland in Glastonbury, Connecticut with the depressed and depressing Reverend Joseph Buckminster, D.D. as their tutor: Sin is an abominable thing, which God’s soul hates and it is no less offensive in his children than in others. Was there no such thing as sin in the world, suffering would be a stranger. Fall: The Reverend Ezra Stiles was elected president of Yale College. Studying under the perpetually depressed and depressing Yale tutor, the Reverend Joseph Buckminster, D.D., in the hick town of Glastonbury, could not have been particularly intriguing. Despite the fact that as a student he was exempt from military service, Noah Webster, Jr. enlisted as a private in his father Captain Noah Webster, Sr.’s Hartford militia unit, on its way to resist the army of British General Burgoyne (the militia unit would not take part in any actual altercations). GO TO MASTER INDEX OF WARFARE “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: NOAH WEBSTER PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1778 June 14, Sunday: In President of Yale College Ezra Stiles’s diary, we find a reference to several students doing well in debating. Noah Webster, Jr. was among them. The Reverend Gilbert White of Selborne sighed in his journal, “White butter-flies unnumerable: woe to the cabbages!” September: Noah Webster, Jr. graduated from Yale College with the Class of 1778, which has been recognized as its most distinguished class up to the Civil War (among the classmates of Webster were Joel Barlow who would become a poet and Minister to France, Alexander Wolcott and Abraham Bishop who would become prominent in Jeffersonian politics, Zephonia Swift who would become Connecticut’s greatest jurist, Oliver Wolcott, Jr. who would succeed Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, Uriah Tracy who would become a US Senator, and Josiah Meigs who would become President of the University of Georgia). Shortly after the graduation ceremony, however, Captain Noah Webster, Sr. had handed him a virtually worthless $8 Continental note and declared, “Take this! You must now seek your living; I can do no more for you.” Thanks, Noah Senior! The son closed himself up in his room for a couple of days to think this problem through. During his study for the bar he would be obliged to take up teaching in Glastonbury, Hartford, and West Hartford. 1779 Spring: Noah Webster, Jr. taught in the Brick School House of West Hartford, Connecticut while residing with and reading law with Oliver Ellsworth (later Chief Justice of the United States, and, one of Ellsworth’s sons would marry one of Webster’s daughters). The schoolmaster assisted as he was able in the conduct of the law office. 4 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: NOAH WEBSTER PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1780 Summer: Noah Webster, Jr. moved to Litchfield, Connecticut where he resumed his study of law under Topping Reeve, founder of the famous Litchfield Law School, or Jedidiah Strong, the Justice of the Quorum and Recorder of Deeds for Litchfield. Noah also assisted the latter in the maintenance of his office. Winter: Noah Webster, Jr. returned to live in his father’s house in what is now West Hartford and for some months taught in a local school. 1781 April 3, Tuesday: Noah Webster, Jr. was admitted to the bar in Hartford after studying in Sharon, Litchfield, and Hartford and failing to be admitted in Litchfield (for some reason the entire class had failed, every one of the 19). From this point his name would include “Esquire.” July: Noah Webster, Jr. initiated his own school at Sharon, Connecticut, probably in the home of John Cotton Smith. The better Whig families, who had fled to Sharon when the British had taken over in New-York, would send their children to this school. September: Noah Webster, Jr. received an MA from Yale College. His dissertation topic was “On the universal diffuse of literature as introductory to the universal diffusion of Christianity.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: NOAH WEBSTER PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN October 9, Tuesday: Noah Webster, Jr. suddenly closed his school at Sharon, Connecticut (this may have been due to rejection as a suitor by local lass Rebecca Pordee). Austria declared armed neutrality in the war between Great Britain and the United States. American and French siege guns opened fire on the British defenders of Yorktown. 1782 In New York, a third revision was made to the 1778 Militia Act. Gaolers were once again made exempt from any military service. However, Quakers were to be required to pay £10 for exemption from military service. At the age of 22 a Massachusetts woman, Deborah Sampson, cut her hair and enlisted in the Continental Army, calling herself Robert Shurtliff and fighting in New York. She wrote letters for illiterate soldiers and did her best to avoid rough soldiers’ games such as wrestling (the one time she did wrestle, she was flung to the ground). After the war she would marry, and in 1838 her husband would become the 1st man to receive a pension from the United States government on the basis of his wife’s military service (Sampson’s maritime equivalents of this period included Fanny Campbell and Mary Anne Talbot). As a teacher, Noah Webster, Jr. was exempt from wartime conscription. However, it seems that when he arrived in Goshen, New York in this timeframe, he had but 75¢ in his pocket. He began to teach at the Farmer’s Hall Academy, to which several signers of the Declaration of Independence were sending their children. In this period he was struggling to compile a spelling book. 6 Copyright 2012 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: NOAH WEBSTER PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1783 Schoolmaster Noah Webster, Jr. put out his first book, A GRAMMATICAL INSTITUTE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, or the “Blue-backed Speller” as it was mostly called. This is also sometimes titled THE AMERICAN SPELLING BOOK. Some said that in this volume the poorly done woodcut of the author was such as to frighten children — it looks as if his head was being molested by a porcupine.