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The Sharon Historical Society & Museum collects, preserves, and shares Sharon’s stories.
We are open Wednesday through Friday (12-4pm) and Saturday (10 am-2pm).
We will be closed Nov. 25th-30th, and Dec. 23rd-Jan. 4th
18 Main St, P.O. Box 511
Sharon, CT 06069
Telephone (860) 364-5688
We are seeking candidates for a Processing Archivist position. Start date January 1, 2021.
![It was Monday, October 1st, 1781, at a session of the Sharon Literary Club, the first literary society in American history.
Chairman of the club was Cotton Mather Smith, the town’s pastor. His beautiful 21-year-old daughter, Juliana, was editor of the club’s magazine.
During the meeting, the parson’s study, parlor, and kitchen were crowded with almost a hundred attendees, all sitting huddled around a large fire as the latest issue of the club’s magazine was read aloud.
As the session wore to a close, the final speaker stepped forth: Noah Webster, the famed lexicographer whose name still graces the cover of Webster’s dictionary. At that time, the relatively-unknown Webster ran a small private school in Parson Smith’s attic, teaching both men and women in “reading, writing, geography, music, mathematics, Latin, and Greek.”
At the club meeting that night, he recited his latest essay to the crowd, never taking his eyes off Juliana while doing so. Webster had found a woman who reflected every one of his passions and values. She was a woman of letters, a writer as well as an editor. For a man who would dedicate his life to words, there could scarcely be a better match.
Alas, she did not share his feelings.
In the following months, Noah asked her hand in marriage. Juliana declined.
Of Webster, Juliana wrote in a letter to her brother, “In conversation, [Mr. Webster] is even duller than in writing, if that be possible.” Though she did add, “but he is a painstaking man and a hard student. Papa says he will make his mark.”
And so he would. It is not clear why Noah Webster closed his successful private academy in Sharon, though historians continue to speculate that his broken heart played a role.
Webster’s Speller and Dictionary would have a profound impact on the language that all Americans use today, and the parson’s prediction would prove correct.
Perhaps Webster’s heartbreak in Sharon served to motivate him to greatness.
As a Saturday Evening Post writer would remark in 1883, “Unlike most disappointed swains, he did not turn to puerile poetry for relief. It took a whole dictionary to express his feelings.”](https://i0.wp.com/sharonhist.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png?w=800&ssl=1)