JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

 The source for this is a lovely article “Colonial School Books” by Clifton Johnson in the New England Magazine, volume 30, 1904, who sifted and read his way through a number of primers and turned out this work by “Fenning”, which urns out to be Daniel Fenning of the Universal Spelling Book, first printed in 1762.   This turns out to have been a best seller and kin to another British speller, Thomas Dilworth’s New Guide to the English Tongue (70+ editions in American before 1800!), both of which dominated the market until the first American-born speller was written by Daniel Webster in 1783.  In any event Fenning for whatever reason listed historical tidbits, one of which is this chronology, which is slight and charming and, well, a little elusive:

[I cannot locate the reference for this–it obviously was re-set by someone in a more modern typeface; I’m sorry to say I cannot locate who. It wasn’t me. See HERE for a lexisnexis document on American Primers.]