Noah Webster - Hartford, CT - Dead Poets' Society Memorials on Waymarking.com

A 6' diameter relief sculpture featuring the head and upper chest of lexicographer and author Noah Webster was created by Carl H. Conrads and installed on the east façade of the State Capitol building around 1885. The fourth from the left of six marble, roundel, sculptures depicts Noah Webster wearing a jacket and high-collared ruffled shirt, in bas relief, and his head in high relief inside a recessed circle. The inscription NOAH WEBSTER frames his head.

Noah Webster was born on October 16, 1758 in West Hartford, CT. He graduated from Yale College in 1778. He taught school for a while and then studied law under Oliver Ellsworth, passing the bar examination in 1781.

Noah Webster has become, literally, a household name for over 100 years. Before Webster there was no standard for spelling in the United States. He addressed this problem by compiling the first dictionary in America. Over his lifetime he published 385 editions of the "Blue-Backed Speller", first published in 1783, which was used to teach generations of Americans to read.

Politically, Webster was a Federalist. He founded and was the editor of America's first daily newspaper the American Minerva. Later he published the semi-weekly paper The Herald, A Gazette for the Country to become The New York Spectator. In his later years Webster became a devout Congregationalist. He wrote a Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings on Moral, Historical, Political, and Literary Subjects (1790) and Value of The Bible and Excellence of the Christian Religion (1834).

Noah Webster died on May 28, 1843 and is buried in Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, CT.