The first American dictionary

If you Google "first American dictionary", you will get various indications that Noah Webster’s dictionary holds the title. But in reality the one responsible for it was Samuel Johnson Jr. (no relation to the British Samuel Johnson that, ironically, is often erroneously pointed out as the author of the first English dictionary).

Samuel Johnson, Jr.'s, School Dictionary; Being a Compendium of the Latest and Most Improved Dictionaries was published in 1798, beating Webster by eight years.

The newspaper New York Times published a centennial commemorative text in 1898 entitled JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY.; Samuel's, Also, but an American Work and the First. It starts saying that:

The first dictionary by an American author published in this country was Samuel Johnson, Jr.'s, "School Dictionary; Being a Compendium of the Latest and Most Improved Dictionaries," printed in New Haven in 1798 by Edward O'Brien. The British Museum has a copy presumably perfect; Yale College Library has the Brinley copy, which lacks pages 157-168 out of 198, the total number. No other copies seem to be known.

(the complete text is available on pdf)

The misconception is so common that it intrigued Ammon Shea, author of the book “Reading the Oxford English Dictionary from A to Zyxt”, who wrote a post in the Oxford University Press’s blog discussing the reasons for the general perception that Noah Webster wrote the first American dictionary. Shea writes:

Many of the authors who make the claim that Noah Webster wrote the first American dictionary were likely aware of the fact that there may have been earlier ones, but for some reason choose to believe that Webster’s was the first one that was a ‘real’ American work, either because it appeared to have more patriotic orthography, or a greater deal of piety. Some others appear to have just relied on some sort of common knowledge which informed them that Webster must have been the first American lexicographer – why else would we hear so much about him?

I used to allow myself a great deal of umbrage when I found errors like this. Why I felt the need to do so is not quite clear to me – after all, I hadn’t made any great discovery myself; I’ve just managed to read one author who has a better grip on the facts than some others. Now I always find it interesting to discover commonly held beliefs that are just wrong – and it helps remind me that I have my own cherished and muddle-headed collection of things that I ‘just know’. And the more that time passes, the more I am convinced that ‘things that I just know’ is nothing more than a euphemism for ‘mistakes’.

Researching texts on English dictionaries shows how Lexicography history is often based on things people "just know".