September 2009

Language Links

Over the summer, an innovative fundraising idea by the Noah Webster House and West Hartford Historical Society received national attention. Make Your Mark encourages supporters to carve graffiti into the museum’s wooden classroom desks to give them an authentic look. It seems that schoolchildren of the late 18th and early 19th century were likely to leave their marks on their desks, just as modern kids are. Noah Webster himself wrote: "When I was a schoolboy, the greatest part of the scholars did not employ more than an hour in a day, either in writing or in reading; while five hours...was spent in idleness, in cutting tables and benches to pieces…"

The museum will even give you a knife to do the carving!