Although colonial Americans did not spell consistently, we should not assume that they were careless writers. The invention of the printing press and the Reformation’s encouragement of literacy helped to standardize spelling, but European nations and their colonies only slowly established consistent spelling rules. As late as the Revolution, the mix of cultures and languages and the small but growing number of presses slowed the progress of spelling standards in America.

Not all residents of Anglo-America used English as their first language. The British colonies contained French- and German-language schools, and many Americans read non-English newspapers and attended non-English religious services. In 1751, for example, Benjamin Franklin expressed concern about the proliferation of German-language newspapers, legal documents, and street signs in culturally diverse Pennsylvania. Even after the Revolution, a significant number of Americans continued to speak a native language other than English. In 1777 the Articles of Confederation were printed in French, and the Continental Congress printed some proceedings in German. According to the 1790 census, about 20% of the new nation’s population spoke a language other than English as their first language. Because of the assortment of languages in the new nation, residents placed little emphasis on standardization of spelling.

In the early republic, however, language became an important consideration in creating a culturally distinctive nation. As they tried to create their own identity, a few Americans began to distinguish American language from English through changes in spelling and punctuation. One of the biggest proponents of language reform was Noah Webster, a New England lawyer and scholar. Webster argued that even the smallest regional differences in spelling and pronunciation could turn into political difference, resulting in dangerous factions. He traveled around the U.S. giving lectures about standardizing the English language, and in his travels he met Benjamin Franklin, who shared Webster’s concerns about language reform. Franklin proposed deleting the letters c, w, y, and j and adding six new letters to the American alphabet. Webster, however, did not like the idea of adding or subtracting letters, but rather he wanted to simplify the spelling of words—changing favour to favor, for example, or replacing the -re with -er in centre/center and theatre/theater, in order to match spelling with pronunciation. Webster’s speller, which he first published in 1783, and his American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) helped to facilitate homogenization. Also in this time period, printers began to standardize spelling in order to make the printing process more efficient.

Not all of Webster’s standardization ideas took. For example, words such as “through,” “bureau,” and “laugh” are still not spelled as they sound. Moreover, American reformers instituted spelling standards gradually. Manuscripts from the 19th and 20th centuries still reveal irregular spelling, although we can attribute much of that to inconsistent access to education and uneven educational standards. Luckily these days we have spell check!

Father Junípero Serra was born Miguel Joseph Serra in Spain in 1713. Educated as a friar in the Order of St. Francis, he immigrated to New Spain in 1749, where he worked as both a missionary and a university administrator. In 1769, Serra led a group of Franciscan monks into Alta California, and there oversaw the founding and maintenance of a chain of missions along the Californian coast. Mission San Gabriel was the fourth mission to be built in this chain. While Serra selected the site for the mission (a site that was eventually changed) he did not personally visit the mission station until September 1772, a year after its founding.

Serra oversaw a mission system that rapidly transformed the environment and living situation of California's indigenous communities. The friars, and the soldiers sent to accompany them, brought European domestic animals—cows, pigs, and sheep—into the region where they quickly reproduced past the point of containment. Non-native species of grasses and weeds were transported via supplies from New Spain and overran the local flora upon which Native communities depended for food. Thousands of indigenous people were pushed by these events to move to the missions in order to secure the means of their subsistence.

The friars forced Native people to work for the missions, often growing the crops upon which the mission community depended. The Franciscans strove to convert Native people to Catholicism, requiring that individuals attend mass, memorize catechisms, confess their sins, and accept harsh physical punishment for behaviors the friars considered sinful. Kinship structures were deeply disrupted by the friars' attempts to remake Native families according to a Christian, Spanish model. This situation was further compounded by mortality rates at the missions, which vastly outpaced those in other areas of the Spanish empire or Europe itself. Infants and children were especially vulnerable. The rampant spread of diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea among the Native population made it hard for communities to replace the members they lost.

Native people were not passive in the face of such change. Many individuals sought to preserve their traditional spiritual belief systems—some of which, like that of the Luiseño, mapped easily onto the central ideas of Catholicism, and some of which did not—as well as offering political resistance to the authorities of New Spain. The environmental and epidemiological changes brought about by the missions, however, made it difficult for families or communities to survive without some connection to the missions, be it wholesale removal or trade.

Serra died in California in 1784. In 1987 he was beatified by Pope John Paul II, a prerequisite for the attainment of sainthood. Controversy persists as to whether Serra should be sainted, given his administration of a mission system that was so destructive to the lives of California's Native people.