Noah Webster 250

Yale University will mark the 250th birthday of alumnus Noah Webster with a series of events on October 16-17 that range from special exhibits, lectures, and tour to birthday cupcakes inscribed with words that first appeared in Webster’s landmark 1828 dictionary.
Click here for a complete schedule of events.

Webster, a longtime resident of New Haven, is perhaps best known for his American Dictionary of the English Language. Noah Webster 250 will also highlight some of his lesser known contributions: his fight for copyright laws, his efforts to lay the groundwork for public and private education; his studies of climatology, epidemiology, and ecology; and his role as a “Founding Uncle” in advising a new nation’s leaders on the formulation and ratification of America’s Constitution.

Harvard history professor and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore (Ph.D. ’95) and pollster Stan Greenberg are among speakers who will celebrate the man who made such words as “chowder,” “lengthy,” and “caucus” part of our language. Other presenters include Yale’s Chief Research Archivist Judith Schiff; biographer Joshua Kendall (B.A. ’81); Merriam-Webster editor at large Peter Sokolowski; and Yale professors Howard Lamar, Fred Robinson, Curtis Patton, and Joanne Freeman. Reporters Paul Bass and Rick Hancock and Yale Daily News editor in chief Andrew Mangini ’09 will join moderator William Hosley, Executive Director of the New Haven Museum, in a panel discussion that revisits Webster’s activist tradition of “civic journalism.”

Sponsors for Noah Webster 250 include the Daniel S. Lamont and Harvard Lectureships; Merriam-Webster Inc.; Yale University’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs; the Proprietors and the Friends of Grove Street Cemetery; Manuscripts and Archives of Yale University; the New Haven Museum; and La Cuisine caterers.