Noah Webster and His Wife

Did you ever wonder why Americans spell the word "color" one way, while the British spell it "colour?"

There are lots of ways American spellings differ from the British: center vs. centre, theater vs. theatre, wagon vs. waggon, etc.  American spellings seem simpler and more intuitive than their British counterparts.

The American versions of these words were codified by Connecticut's own Noah Webster. Webster was born in Hartford in 1758 to a well-off farm family, and was home schooled by his mother in mathematics, music, and spelling (of course). Webster attended Yale and got a law degree, but after floundering around for a while he eventually found his true calling as an educator, opening a school in Goshen and writing a speller, a grammar book, and a reading book for his students.

Webster strongly supported the American Revolution, and carried his political opinions into his educational work. He felt America should be free of European ornamentation and ostentation, so he simplified the spelling of words. Get that letter "u" out of "glamour" and "colour" - it's too showy! His spelling book sold over 15 million copies and created the tradition of spelling bees. He also thought America should be a rational nation, so his grammar book and reading book drew on secular stories rather than the Biblical tales that had been used in schools previously.

In 1825 Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language, which had taken him fifteen years to compile.  An American Dictionary contained 12,000 words which had never appeared in dictionaries before, including common American words like "skunk" and "squash" that had been omitted from British dictionaries.

Noah Webster

Noah Webster clearly had a very impressive intellect, and made an enormous impact on the life of all Americans. As a result, folktales about his life were once very common. They have now mostly disappeared, but David E. Philips includes this one in his wonderful book Legendary Connecticut.

One day Noah's wife Rebecca needed their pretty young maid to run an errand, but she couldn't find her anywhere. Rebecca looked in the kitchen, she looked in the barn, and she looked in the orchard but the maid was nowhere to be seen.

Rebecca Greenleaf Webster

The only room left unchecked was Noah's study. The door was shut, and Rebecca knew this meant her husband was hard at work on some intellectually strenuous project. The errand was urgent, though, so she quietly opened the door to her husband's study to see if the maid was inside.

She was, and Noah was passionately kissing her.

Rebecca cried out, "Noah, I'm so surprised!"

Noah turned to his wife, and always eager to demonstrate his masterful vocabulary said, "I beg to differ with you, my dear. I am surprised. You are astonished."

Neither tradition nor Legendary Connecticut record Rebecca's reply, but I'm sure many of her words were of the four-letter kind.

October Horror Mania: Midnight Mary

I've been super busy at work lately, but I wanted to end this month with one more tale of Yankee style horror: Midnight Mary!

If you visit New Haven Connecticut's Evergreen Cemetery, you might stumble upon the somewhat ominous grave stone of Mary E. Hart. The epitaph reads

At high noon
Just from and about to renew
Her daily work, in her full strength of
Body and mind
Mary E. Hart
Having fallen prostrate
Remained unconscious, until she died at midnight
October 15, 1872
Born December 16, 1824

Above this, large bold letters spell out the following:

THE PEOPLE SHALL BE TROUBLED AT MIDNIGHT AND PASS AWAY

In his book Legendary Connecticut David E. Philips explains that because almost nothing is known about the real, historical Mary E. Hart, many legends have arisen to explain her spooky funerary monument.

Most of them are pretty gruesome. For example:

• A few days after Mary was buried, one of her aunts had a dream that she was still alive in her coffin. To calm the aunt's fears, the family opened Mary's grave. They were horrified to see her body twisted in a painful position and her fingers shredded and bloody. The aunt had been right! They reburied Mary and put up the gravestone to detract attention from her premature burial.

• Mary had been a witch while she was alive, and threatened on her death bed that anyone who disturbed her grave would die at midnight. Naturally, three teenagers went to her grave at night to test the theory. Ha! Nothing happened. Until, seven years later, one of them was found dead with his throat ripped out. Seven years later the second died the same way. Finally, after another seven years, the last interloper died as well. The throat-ripping murderer was never found.

• Three sailors visiting New Haven decided to see if the legend of Midnight Mary was true. When they didn't report back for duty the next day police searched the cemetery. Their hats were found near Mary's grave, but their bodies were found impaled on the iron fence surrounding Evergreen Cemetery. Something had frightened them, and all three had died while trying to escape over the fence.

There are a couple Midnight Mary videos on YouTube. This first is a trailer for a horror film. I love that it starts "Sometimes summoning the dead isn't such a good idea." Sometimes?!



And this is footage of some brave college kids who go to see Mary's grave. How will it end?




Have a safe and happy Halloween!