Happy Birthday, Noah Webster

Born: October 16, 1758

Noah was born in 1758 in West Hartford, Connecticut. His father was a farmer and weaver. Noah and his brothers helped on the farm. Not many people went to college but Noah got to attend Yale. He became a teacher. He did not like that American children studied out of  textbooks that came from England so he wrote his own. His Blue-Backed Speller taught children how to read, pronounce, and spell words. It was so good it stayed in use for over a hundred years. 

Noah Webster began his dictionary at the age of 43; he was 70 before it was finished. It had over 70,000 words. Noah introduced American spellings for words like color (in England it was colour) and music (instead of musick). He also added uniquely American words like "skunk," "tomahawk," and "dime." When he died in 1843, he was considered a great man.

http://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/oct06/abc.html

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