Noah Webster

I was really born on October 16, 1758 but the myspace people wouldn't accept that (wouldn't is a contraction), in the West Division of Hartford. My family was an average colonial family. My father farmed and worked as a weaver. My mother worked at home. Me and my two brothers, Charles and Abraham, helped our father with the farm work. My sisters, Mercy and Jerusha, worked with our mother to keep house and to make food and clothing for the family.Few people went to college, but I loved to learn so my parents let me go to Yale, Connecticut's only college. I left for New Haven in 1774, when I was 16. My years at Yale coincided with the Revolutionary War. Because New Haven had food shortages during this time, many of my classes were held in Glastonbury.I graduated in 1778. I wanted to study law, but my parents could not afford to give me more money for school. So, in order to earn a living, I taught school in Glastonbury, Hartford and West Hartford. Later I studied law. [Additional fact: in 1784 Connecticut started the first law school in America, which graduated me]I did not like American schools. Sometimes 70 children of all ages were crammed into one-room schoolhouses with no desks, poor books, and untrained teachers. Their books came from England. I thought that Americans should learn from American books, so in 1783, I wrote my own textbook: A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. [Additional fact: In 1783 I also produced what is considered to be the first dictionary created in the US] Most people called it the "Blue-backed Speller" because of its blue cover.For 100 years, my book taught children how to read, spell, and pronounce words. It was the most popular American book of its time. Ben Franklin used my book to teach his granddaughter to read.In 1789, I married Rebecca Greenleaf. We had eight children. I carried raisins and candies in my pockets for the children to enjoy. We lived in New Haven, then moved to Amherst, MA. There, I helped to start Amherst College. Later we moved back to New Haven.[Additional fact: Dec. 9, 1793 I founded New York's first daily newspaper.]When I was 43, I started writing the first American dictionary. I did this because Americans in different parts of the country spelled, pronounced and used words differently. I thought that all Americans should speak the same way. I also thought that Americans should not speak and spell just like the English.I used American spellings like "color" instead of the English "colour" and "music" instead " of "musick". I also added American words that weren't in English dictionaries like "skunk" and "squash". It took me over 27 years to write this book. When finished in 1828, at the age of 70, my dictionary had 70,000 words in it.I did many things in my life. I worked for copyright laws, wrote textbooks, Americanized the English language, and edited magazines. When I died in 1843 I was considered an American hero. (I am so awesome that i can write this when I am freakin' dead).