Noah Webster, author of the dictionary, wrote an account of the mustering-out of Gen. Washington's Continental Army. Contemplation of the motley, polyglot army gave him the idea for his dictionary. Among his comments was the observation that the Pennsylvania troops included German-Americans who not only spoke no English, but were accustomed, at home in their wooded valleys, to open fire at once when they heard English being spoken in the thicket, on the assumption that those thieving Scots-Irish (rednecks) were at it again.