Part 1 (1/2)
Noah Webster
by Horace E Scudder
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
The village of West Hartford lies about three rouped about two cross-roads, one leading froe street, following the line of the Connecticut River and raton and New Britain on the south The changes in the place for the last hundred and fifty years have not been great; the Farton road, to be sure, as it leaves Hartford, keeps a city character and shows trie, but the village has not moved to meet the city, and its houses and one or two churches and post-office have adeneral air of the place can scarcely be different from what it was in 1758, when Noah Webster was born there, October 16 The house in which he was born is still standing, about asouth; it is upon a broad table-land, and the wide fields which lie below it, stretching away to Talcott Mountain, where the western view ends, are the fields which Webster's father planted
The ancestral stock was substantial Noah Webster rerandfather Daniel, and Daniel was five years old when his grandfather died, as one of the first settlers in Hartford and Governor of Connecticut The faenerations, as farood citizens The place where Webster was born was sold by his father in 1790 to the fahty acres then, but has been broken in upon from time to time The senior Webster sold it because he was poor He lived his life of ninety-one years in a Connecticut village, leaving it only when he led a con in the Revolutionary War His square, upright toraveyard, and cority and piety He was Deacon Webster and Squire Webster, and reached thus the highest offices in state and church which a little New England village could offer
Upon the senior Webster's stone is the name of his wife Mercy, who is comprehensively disposed of as ”his consort, equally respected for her piety and virtues” She was a descendant of Williaovernor, and thus the two lives which ri from other sources All the Websters were a sturdy race Noah Webster, senior, died in his ninety-second year; Noah the son in his eighty-fifth; his two brothers lived for eighty years or more, and his two sisters for seventy Out of the scanty leaned, but it is enough for our purpose to know that the man, whose fortunes we are to follow, inherited the Puritan land constitution
He had, what every New England faive a boy who had any quickness of intellect, the education that was at the door He worked on his father's fare school where rarely a book was used except a spelling-book, a psalter, a Testament or a Bible When he was fourteen years old he had shown that he was of the college kind, and studying for two years with Dr Perkins, the village minister, and in the Hopkins Grae in 1774
There were about a hundred and fifty students in New Haven at that ti of a Professor of Divinity, who performed the duties of President, a Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, and three tutors Joel Barloas a classmate, and so were Oliver Wolcott, Zephaniah Sh judicial positions afterward in the young republic In Dr Stiles's Diary there is an entry June 14, 1778, Webster's senior year ”The students disputed forensically this day a twofold question; whether the destruction of the Alexandrian Library and the ignorance of the Middle Ages, caused by the inundation of the Goths and Vandals, were events unfortunate to literature They disputed inimitably well, particularly Barloift, and Webster”
There is sorave record It was a rotund kind of learning which was cherished by Dr Stiles and siuardians of the old traditions of scholarshi+p, and in the absence of much commerce with their intellectual peers beyond the lie made believe very hard that its students were scholars, and its scholastic life the counterpart of historic universities But it is easy to believe that the fate of the Alexandrian Library and the performances of the notorious Goths and Vandals, those favorite and di the education of the young Yale student as had the events of the war then going on Webster had entered college in the fall of 1774; in the spring of 1775, while he was still a Freshman, he had his little initiation into Revolutionary society General Washi+ngton was on his way to Cae, to take command of the American arh New Haven, and Webster has left a little sketch of the scene
”These gentleed in New Haven, at the house of the late Isaac Beers, and in thethey were invited to see a e perforratification at the precision hich the students performed the custoenerals as far as Neck Bridge, and this was the first instance of that honor conferred on General Washi+ngton in New England
It fell to my humble lot to lead this company withand pardonable little vanity of Webster's, who, as the reader will discover later, liked to think that he had a hand in pretty much every important measure in the political and literary history of the country in those early days, and reton appeared, Webster was ready with the prelusive fife The three years which folloere years of excitee life at New Haven was broken up, and the classes were disposed in various towns, the Junior class, in which Webster belonged, being stationed at Glasobry and placed under the charge of Tutor Buckland, especially the southern part, was thrown into a feroyne's movements, anddown from the north Webster's father was captain in the alarm list, and Webster shouldered his musket as a private in his father's company The episode was probably in the summer vacation, and put a stop to his work on the faroyne's defeat released the young volunteer, but an education which was divided between the camp and the cloister was pretty sure to be fruitful in soe, scattered as if by the enees, was likely to think with all the eagerness of youth upon questions of political ethics, and of the broad grounds of human freedom There are tords often used in the ephemeral literature of that day,--_slave_, _free_,--words used soeneral current of hts
Webster, in one of his reminiscences, recalls the wretched condition of affairs when he was in college: ”So impoverished was the country at one tie could not supply the necessary provisions of the table, and the students were compelled to return to spend several oods were so scarce that the farmers cut corn-stalks and crushed them in cider-mills, and then boiled the juice down to a syrup as a substitute for sugar” The years which followed his graduation were, if anything, stillWhen he went hoht-dollar bill of the Continental currency, worth then about fifty cents on the dollar, and left him to his own resources His plan was to study law, but his first business was tothe winter of 1778 in Glasobry, where he had gone with his class the year before In the su in the family of Mr, afterward Chief Justice, Oliver Ellsworth, and picking up a little law
In the hard winter of 1780 he taught in his native village, and in the next suister of deeds in Litchfield, where he read law, and then was admitted to the bar in Hartford
There was, however, no business People were too poor to go to law, and the whole country was depressed by its condition The struggle for independence had not been a short, sharp one, marked by an intense flame of enthusiasm; the end was reached less by heroic endeavor than by heroic patience and the wisdonominy into which Continental currency had sunk measured the hopelessness hich those who lived by wits rather than bythe law, Webster resuives notice of what he expected to do in his school:--
”On the first of May will be opened, at Sharon in Connecticut, a school, in which children , writing, and arithmetic, but in any branch of acadeard that is paid to the literary i people of rank and fortune, and the general inattention to the grae, are faults in the education of youth that entleentlelish language, geography, vocal music, &c, may be waited on at particular hours for that purpose The price of board and tuition will be fro to the age and studies of the scholar; no pains will be spared to render the school useful NOAH WEBSTER
”SHARON, _April 16, 1782_
”N B The subscriber has a large convenient store in Sharon fit for storing articles of any kind, where they may be secured at a moderate expense”
One would like to know if R---- P---- was one of the young ladies upon whom he waited at so teacher, with a coe, very careful in dress and precise in speech, sparing no pains not only to render the school useful but hi lady, who found, however, a stronger attraction in a soldier lover, soldiers having then, as later, a singular advantage in such rivalries This precise-speaking young school-uessed from two consecutive entries in his brief diary, a little later:--
”_Feb 18, 1784_ At evening rode to Wethersfield [fro] with the ladies, who rees” [Does any one now need to be told why?]
”_Feb 19_, P M Rode to East Windsor; had a clergyes allected”
The demure mouth hich this last sentence is spokenat Sharon he took the opportunity to study French with a M Tetard, a French Protestantin New Rochelle
From the scanty records which remain I have traced thus far Webster's early life and education, but it is fair to find in his subsequent career traces of the influence which New England surroundings cast about every New England boy The simplicity of life which characterized a province so uniform in its character was especially evident in the Connecticut Valley Here, longer than in the cities and on the sea-board, native English and Puritan stock retained the form and pohich an unbroken succession in blood and a freedom from external pressure had made possible The fa whom he lived, and whose lives passed into his character, were a part of the great land between 1630 and 1640, and frolish law and custom, modified by theocratic doctrines, and partially shaped by a struggle with the wilderness, built a state which was to be one of the great forces in Aricultural life, which was more productive in the valley of the Connecticut than elsewhere, deterely the social life of the colony, land States, emphasized the individual worth, and allowed free play in self-governer period than in Massachusetts; the inevitable surrender of the ecclesiastical power of the Congregationalists was deferred until a much later date; and to-day it is in Hartford that one will find ationalise in the hteenth century was very self-centred Ree then,--the de life determined the round of days Every one from childhood fell of necessity into his or her place as one of the workers, out doors and in, and the sianization made the farmer a mechanic as well There was the blacksmith's shop, where a rudely trained skill supplied the more special needs; but the farmer himself not only used his tools, but mended and to some extent eneral, necessity had taught his hands to shape and his fingers to be dexterous The boy made his own traps and small tools and carts, and early learned that handiness and adaptability without which he would be likely to go through life in a destitute condition There is to be found still, especially in the back country, a curious survival of this old economy in the hired man, who shi+nes in literature in the person of Mr Jacob Abbott's Jonas, the embodiment of practical wisdom, learned not so much from books as from the daily school of farm and shop life The hired man of that time was the occasional unattached member of society, or one as forced out of the family hive by the excess of hands and the deficiency of land
Commonly the family itself supplied the necessary laborers, and these all in their youth, no ive, were, as a ular farm company