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Creator
Webster, Noah, 1758-1843
Call number
MssCol 3258
Physical description
6.2 linear feet (8 boxes, 15 volumes, 1 oversized folder)
Preferred Citation

Noah Webster papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library

Sponsor
Digitization was made possible by a lead gift from The Polonsky Foundation
Repository
Manuscripts and Archives Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.
Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online.

The Noah Webster papers consist of correspondence, writings by Webster on various topics, diaries, and miscellaneous papers. Correspondence, 1776-1843, and diaries, 1784-1820, relate to his career as lawyer, educator, editor of newspapers, Federalist agitator, lexicographer, and etymologist. Included are his writings on banking, the history of political parties, federalism, and suffrage. Also, papers concerning his American Dictionary of the English Language, Amherst College, epidemics, etymology, legislation in Connecticut, amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and other matters.

Biographical/historical information

Noah Webster (1758-1843) was an American lexicographer, educator, lawyer, and editor. His first dictionary, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, was published in 1806. He is best known for the more comprehensive American Dictionary of the English Language, finished in 1825 and published in 1828.

Webster must be counted among the founding fathers of the United States. Historians continually note the wide sales of Webster's 'blue-back spellers,' and the monumental achievement of his American Dictionary published in 1828. Webster's Grammatical Institutes of the English Language, of which the speller was the first part and originally published in 1782, followed by the Grammar in 1785 and the Reader in 1786, sold some 15,000,000 copies before his death in 1843. With these and other literary and scientific efforts, Webster stimulated the educational programs of the early American republic. He is also remembered for his participation in the fight for an American copyright law, which he personally promoted in the thirteen original states, resulting in its incorporation in the Federal constitution.

A descendent, by his father of John Webster, Governor of Connecticut in 1656, and by his mother of William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth in 1621, Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, Oct. 16, 1758. He entered Yale College in 1774, and, after serving in the militia raised to oppose Burgoyne, graduated in 1778. He then pursued the study of the law in the intervals of school-teaching and, in 1781, was admitted to the bar.

In 1783 he published a series of papers in the Connecticut Courant, signed Honorius, in vindication of the Congressional soldier's pay-bill, and in the same year issued his First Part of the Grammatical Institute of the English Language, or Webster's Spelling Book. The profits from this publication, at less than a cent per copy, helped support Webster during the later stage of his career during which he compiled the American Dictionary. In 1785, he traveled the Southern States, and presented General George Washington with his Sketches of American Policy, an early proposal for a new Constitution of the United States.

Webster resided in Philadelphia and served as superintendent of the Episcopal Academy through November of 1787. From December of that year to November of 1788, he published the American Magazine in New York City. Webster married Rebecca Greenleaf in 1789 and resided in Hartford, CT until 1793, when he returned to New York City to bring out a magazine on behalf of the policies of George Washington's administration. The daily paper entitled the Minerva was begun in November of 1793, and was later accompanied by a semi-weekly paper entitled the Herald. The names were later changed to The Commercial Advertiser and The New York Spectator and continued under other editors.

From 1798 to 1812, Webster lived in New Haven, CT, pursued philological studies, and, in 1807, began the preparation of his American Dictionary of the English Language (first edition, 1828, 2 vol.) the improvement of which was his great endeavor and occupied the rest of his life. From 1812 to 1822, he resided at Amherst, MA, and played an instrumental role in the establishment of Amherst College. In 1822 he returned to New Haven, and, with the exception of a visit to Europe from June 1824 to June 1825, remained there until his death on May 28, 1843, his 85th year.

Scope and arrangement

The Noah Webster Papers include accounts, correspondence, diaries, and manuscript writings. The diary, many of the letters, and some miscellaneous writings were published by Emily Ellsworth Fowler Ford in Notes on the Life of Noah Webster (1912, New York) to which reference should be made for a further description of the Webster manuscripts. A bibliography of Webster's publications was later completed by Emily Ellsworth Ford Skeel, edited by Edwin H. Carpenter, and published as Bibliography of the Writings of Noah Webster in 1958 by The New York Public Library. In 1953, Harry Warfel edited and published the Letters of Noah Webster which added to the letters already published in Ford's 1912 edition. Richard M. Rollins' Autobiographies of Noah Webster, 1989, includes excerpts of Webster letters, publications, manuscripts, the unpublished Memoir of Noah Webster, LLD held in Yale's Sterling Library, as well as the diaries held in the Webster manuscripts of the New York Public Library.

The Noah Webster papers are arranged in five series:

  • Series I. Correspondence
    1776-1843

    Webster presented himself in his correspondence as a prophetic civil servant speaking for his nation's highest ideals: God and the American people. Through his correspondence one gains a sense of his involvement with political and religious concerns. Much of the correspondence from his later years is addressed to members of his family, especially to his brother Abraham, son William, and members of his daughter Julia Webster Goodrich's family. Letters to and from Webster's wife, Rebecca Greenleaf Webster, are arranged separately in subseries C.

    Notable correspondents listed in chronological order include: Nathaniel Appleton, Jeremiah Atwater, Moses Atwood, Simeon Baldwin, Jeremy Belknap, Frederich J. Bradley, Charles Chauncey, Henry Clay, Harriet W. Cobb, Thomas Dawes, Thomas Dawes, Jr., C.D. Ebeling, Edward Everett, William Fowler, Benjamin Franklin, James Greenleaf, Eunice W. Hubbard, Henry Hudson, John Jay, William Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Kent, Rufus King, John Lathrop, Joseph Lyman., Jared Mansfield, Josiah Meigs, William Montgomery, Jedidiah Morse, George Ord, Seth P. Staples, Timothy Pickering, Edward Pope, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Quincy, David Ramsay, Benjamin Rush, Richard Rush, Benjamin Silliman, Samuel Smith, Horatio Southgate, Ezra Stiles, Caleb Strong, Jonathan Trumbull, Benjamin West, John Wheelock, and Oliver Wolcott.

    Some of the important letters from Webster's distinguished correspondents have been removed from the collection. A letter from George Washington, from Mount Vernon, July 31, 1788, on the subject of military operations, is held in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Other letters from the Webster manuscripts have been filed with separate collections in Manuscripts and Archives Division of The New York Public Library, such as the Thomas Jefferson papers and the Benjamin Franklin papers. These letters appear on the last reel of the microfilm. As the collection was heavily used by the Fords, their notations and transcriptions can be found on documents within the correspondence series.

  • Series II. Writings
    1797-1844

    The writings of Noah Webster are divided by topic and arranged alphabetically within each topic. The series includes manuscript drafts of writings on assorted topics including etymology and orthography, legislative matters, and politics and history.

    Items of note among the writings of Noah Webster include Webster's manuscript draft of the printed circular of February 25 1807, addressed "To the Friends of Literature in the United States." This advertisement described Webster's work in gathering material for the dictionary and also the financial burden it entailed. He asks for contributions from individuals and learned societies to continue his work. The series also includes Webster's etymological research, the "synopsis of words." Around 1810, Webster began work comparing words having the same or cognate radical letter, in about twenty languages, for the purpose of obtaining a more correct knowledge of the primary sense of original words, and of the affinities between English and other others languages. He spent ten years in this comparison of radical words, and arranged them in classes under their primary letters. The synopsis was never published, but in the preface to the unabridged An American Dictionary of the English Language he refers to its role in the Dictionary's final form.

    Legislative writings include drafts and propositions to the Connecticut and Massachusetts legislatures.

    The miscellaneous writings cover a wide range of topics, including scientific research. The newsclippings contain a collection of Webster's editorials from Connecticut newspapers from 1836-1842. Writings on politics and history include unpublished manuscripts on governance.

  • Series III. Subject files
    1782-1844

    The subject files are made of correspondence, accounts, legal papers, printed material, and other documents arranged by topics of interest to Webster, including his American Dictionary and Speller, Amherst College, copyright law, Webster family genealogy, and pestilent disease.

  • Series IV. Personal miscellany
    1784-1842

    Materials in the personal miscellany series are arranged alphabetically and include documents and artifacts such as; Webster's personal accounts, accounts with printers of his books, a commonplace book, his diaries, diplomas and honorary degrees, legal documents, a notebook, and his passports and wills.

  • Series V. Websteriana
    1836-1880

    The Websteriana series consists of materials relating to Noah Webster collected by the Ford family to augment Webster's own papers.

Administrative information

Custodial history

The collection of Noah Webster's manuscript material was collected by Gordon Lester Ford and his sons, Worthington Chauncey Ford and Paul Leicester Ford, between 1840 and 1898. Ford obtained the bulk of the collection through Webster's son, William, the last 'Webster' descendent. J. Pierpont Morgan presented the Ford collection, including the papers of Noah Webster, to the New York Public Library in 1899. Ford's collection included many volumes now separated from the manuscript material and held in the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library.

Source of acquisition

Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1899

Processing information

Compiled by Manuscripts and Archives Division, 2015

Related Material

Emily Ellsworth Ford Skeel papers, 1871-1958. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. William Greenleaf Webster papers, 1820-1865. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.

Using the collection

Location

Manuscripts and Archives Division
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Brooke Russell Astor Reading Room, Third Floor, Room 328

Alternative form available

Entire collection available on microfilm.