William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873)

William Holmes McGuffey, son of Alexander and Anna Holmes McGuffey, was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, on September 23, 1800. His father, Alexander, had been a brave and resourceful soldier and frontiersman. In 1802, Alexander brought his family to Trumbull County, Ohio, and settled in the Western Reserve. The McGuffeys were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, a sect that believed in education. Anna McGuffey, praying for her son William to become a preacher, taught him his first lessons. When he was older, he went to Youngstown, where he acquired some knowledge of elementary surveying and mathematics, and began the study of the Latin language.
The Reverend Thomas E. Hughs while traveling about the country, discovered this intelligent boy who earnestly desired an education. He took the lad into his own house at Darlington, where he could attend the "Old Stone Academy." To earn his board and room, young McGuffey worked in the house, did outdoor chores, and took care of Reverend Hughs' church. The meals the family shared with him were simple. For breakfast there was bread and butter with coffee; for dinner, meat and potatoes; for supper, milk and bread. At the academy he learned the facts that would enable him to pass the required examinations for teachers, at the same time learning enough Latin to enter college. At the age of fourteen, he taught his first school, receiving eighty dollars for a four month term.

From 1820 to 1825 McGuffey attended Washington College. His funds ran so low that he had to leave school before graduation to open a private school in a smokehouse at Paris, Kentucky. Washington College, however, graduated him with honors in 1826. He was then considered qualified to teach moral philosophy and the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages. Robert Hamilton Bishop, President of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, met the young teacher in Paris, and was so pleased with him that he recommended him to his Board of Trustees as a professor of languages. The following fall, William H. McGuffey, accompanied by his ten-year-old brother Alexander, rode into Oxford with his saddlebags stuffed with personal copies of books on moral philosophy and the languages he expected to teach.

The new professor was of medium stature, with a compact body, swarthy complexion, dark, coarse hair, blue eyes, his face plainly showing his rugged Scottish ancestry. He had a wide mouth, prominent nose, and high broad forehead. For many years he wore knee breeches, black silk stockings, and low shoes with gleaming silver buckles. An immaculate white linen collar folded over an ample black silk stock. While his contemporaries still clung to their hats of honest beaver fur, McGuffey wore the new-fashioned stovepipe hat of silk.

At Miami, the professors took turns at preaching in the college chapel on the Sabbath. Some of them, on their free Sundays, preached in country churches. In 1829 McGuffey was ordained to the ministry by the Oxford Presbytery at Bethel Church on Indian Creek, near the small village of Millville. The Rev. Thomas preached the sermon, and President Bishop of Miami gave the charge. McGuffey had been a member of the Presbyterian Church in Oxford since September 9, 1826.

McGuffey always told his students that country preaching was the best of training. It was in the country churches that he improved extemporaneous speaking and learned to put his ideas into simple words that even the illiterate could understand. While preaching at nearby Darrtown, he ran into trouble. A committee waited upon him to say that they liked his preaching but thought he was too stylish. He drove a horse and carriage, they said, and wore a silk coat. The suave professor showed them his "silk coat", proving that it was not made of silk, but of cheap shiny bombazine. He further convinced them that he needed his equipage. Without Charlie, his horse, and the carriage, his wife, being in delicate health, could not attend church at Darrtown with him. The committee retired discomfited and ashamed.

When McGuffey first came to Oxford, he found a pioneer village with only a few log and frame houses and one solitary brick house at the northeast corner of South (Collins) and South Main streets. There was a stump-dotted campus, containing "the college edifice" and a plain little red house for the President. The new professor took his meals at the Oxford Hotel, on East High Street, at the corner of East Park Place. At the other end of the block lived Charles Spining, a merchant. When Spining's attractive sister, Harriet, came down from Dayton to visit him and their sister, Mrs. Peter Monfort, she was introduced to Professor McGuffey. They fell in love and were married on April 3, 1827. The wedding took place at Woodside, the bride's home near Dayton. Woodside was the nine-hundred-acre estate of Judge Isaac Spining, a prosperous and highly respected citizen of Montgomery County. The estate is now a part of Wright-Patterson Field.

Harriet was a beautiful girl, with dark brown hair that lay in deep waves allover her head. The long curls she wore on either side of her face were held in place with small tortoise-shell combs. It was then the fashion for married women to wear caps. Harriet's new husband liked the custom so much that she wore caps the rest of her life. Some of her evening caps were very beautiful.

The McGuffeys went to board at the house of John Dollahan, the lone brick house on South Main Street. Harriet was unhappy in her cramped quarters, and her health declined. Dr. James Hughs, nephew of the Rev. Thomas E. Hughs, advised the young couple to go to housekeeping.

In 1828 McGuffey bought a four-acre tract of land (Outlot 9) on East Spring Street. On it was a small frame house in which the McGuffeys lived for a time. Two of their children were born in it. Later, the McGuffeys built a two-story brick house of six rooms, immediately in front of the old house, joining the two houses to make an elegant mansion, which they painted bright red. This was a more suitable dwelling place for the daughter of Judge Isaac Spining. They moved into the new house in 1832-33.

Two boys were born in the new house, William Holmes, on October 1, 1834, and Charles Spining, on November 8, 1835. Willie lived only two weeks, and Charles died in 1851. The two daughters-Mary Haines and Henrietta-were born on January 20, 1830, and July 10, 1832, respectively. Mary became the wife of Dr. Walker Stewart of Dayton, Ohio. Henrietta married Dr. Andrew Dousa Hepburn, a distinguished teacher at Miami, who for a short time was President of the University just before it closed in 1873.

McGuffey's house was conveniently located. The campus was ,just across the street, and It was only a short walk to the entrance of the college building which faced Spring Street. On the southwest corner of the second floor of that building was McGuffey's classroom. The present Harrison Hall stands on the site of the original "college edifice".

McGuffey wrote and compiled his first four Readers in his new home. They were made up of his own writings, clippings from periodicals, and selections from standard works. The famous octagonal table at which he compiled his Readers, his classroom table, his secretary, and a few other pieces of his furniture are again housed in the old home. Through the generosity of Mrs. Emma Gould Blocker, the house has been restored and is maintained by the Blocker Foundation. The west. wing, which contains the McGuffey Library was added to the house in 1860 by its owner at that time, J. H. Shuey. The old frame house has long since been removed.

Standing on the little portico at the north door, McGuffey assembled the children of the neighborhood for regular reading classes. In his dining room he tested his original theories about teaching children. He noted the pieces they liked best and carefully watched their pronunciation. He seemed to rove and understand children.

The ten years he spent at Miami were his formative and most productive years. Here he proved himself on the lecture platform, in the pulpit, in the written word. By 1833, he was a prominent member of the College of Professional Teachers of the Western Country. Its annual meeting at Cincinnati was the literary event of the year. Among the outstanding educators who were his friends were Dr. Daniel Drake, Edward Deering Mansfield, Alexander Kinmont, Milo G. Williams, Calvin B. Stowe, and Joseph Ray (author of Ray's Arithmetics).

McGuffey was generally liked by his students. Thomas Millikin (Miami class of 1838) expressed the feelings of many when he said that McGuffey was "a model teacher, studiously dignified and polite, elegant and accomplished in social life, critical and exact in knowledge, with unusual capacity to impart knowledge to others."

Some of the professors at Miami, including the patient President, however, found McGuffey difficult when dealing with the affairs of the University. They differed on a number of things, especially on the problems of discipline. With all his heart he wanted to teach the President's class in moral philosophy. As a gesture of conciliation, Bishop had given him the class in 1832, but still Professor McGuffey was dissatisfied.

Encouraged by his Cincinnati friends, he reigned in 1836 to accept the presidency of Cincinnati College, expecting to create an institution of learning that would equal or surpass any other in the West. He had brilliant professors on his faculty, and the college became the center of literary activity in Cincinnati and the surrounding country. But, as Edward Deering Mansfield said, it was endowed with genius and nothing else. A severe financial depression made it impossible for businessmen to honor their pledges to the college. McGuffey resigned the presidency in 1839 to become president of Ohio University.

At Athens, however, the people of the town fell out with him because he fenced the university grounds. The new president would not suffer his campus to be a cow pasture. The resentful Athenians influenced the state legislators to cut down the appropriations McGuffey needed to carry out his plans for the university. He resigned in 1843, returned to Cincinnati, and became a professor at Woodward College, which was really a good classical high school.

In spite of all his troubles, McGuffey's fame as an educator, author, and lecturer continued to grow. In 1845, he went to the University of Virginia as a professor of moral philosophy and political economy, which post he held for twenty-eight years. Some students loved him, some feared him, but all admired his erudition and enthusiasm. His proverbial sayings were long remembered.

In the summer of 1850, McGuffey took his wife back to Woodside, her girlhood home, hoping that her health would improve there, but Harriet died on July 3 and was buried in Woodside Cemetery. Her sorrowing family returned to Virginia. Some time later, Professor McGuffey married Laura Howard, daughter of the Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia. They had one child, Anna, who died at the age of four. McGuffey died at Charlottesville, May 4, 1873, and is buried there.
William Holmes McGuffey is no longer remembered for his lectures, his sermons, or his classroom instruction, but for his Readers. The first and second and the McGuffey Primer were published in 1836. The third and fourth Readers were copyrighted in 1837. According to family tradition, Mrs. McGuffey prepared the Primer, keeping her authorship secret from a sense of modesty and delicacy. Through her mother, Harriet Spining McGuffey was the descendant of distinguished Puritan preachers and educators. Two of their ancestors, John Davenport III and Abraham Pierson II, were closely associated with the founding and progress of Yale University. Pierson was Yale's first president. The McGuffey Fifth Reader, prepared by

Alexander McGuffey, was published in 1844. By that time, Alexander was an attorney and professor of belles-lettres at Woodward College, teaching English literature.

McGuffey's first contract with a publisher for his Readers called for a royalty of 10 per cent until he should receive $1,000. For revisions he received extra pay. After the Civil War, the senior partner of Wilson, Hinkle, and Company arranged to have an annuity paid to McGuffey for the rest of his life. Had McGuffey and his heirs received only one per cent per copy on the Readers, the total would have amounted to about $1,220,000 by 1920.

The firm of Truman and Smith (1834- 43) was the first to publish the Readers. W. B. Smith (1843-52), W. B. Smith and Company (1852-63), Sargent, Wilson, and Hinkle (1863-68), Wilson, Hinkle and Company (1868-77), Van Antwerp, Bragg and Company (1877-90), and the American Book Company (1890- ) successively published them. The American Book Company of New York and Cincinnati has revised and attractively modernized some of the Readers. The late Harvey C. Minnich, Dean Emeritus of the School of Education, Miami University, an authority on McGuffey, estimated that, on the average, each copy of the McGuffey Readers was read by ten people.

One bookstore in Dayton, alone, advertised in January, 1851., three thousand copies of the McGuffey First Reader, three thousand of the Second Reader, two thousand of the Third Reader, one thousand of the Fourth Reader, and one thousand of the McGuffey Spelling Book

In fact, the name McGuffey became fixed in the minds of later generations as a reader, not as a person. A man was heard to say, as McGuffey passed by: "There goes old Second Reader.' . While calling on Dr. Andrew D. Hepburn in Oxford one day, Whitelaw Reid (Miami, Class of 1856) inquired about a portrait on the wall. He was astonished to learn that it was a likeness of William Holmes McGuffey, father of Dr. Hepburn's wife.

"McGuffey had a daughter!" Reid exclaimed. "Why, I always thought he was a reader."

Certain it is that William Holmes McGuffey, through his Readers, has influenced the formation of American thought in the West more than any other American. The Federated McGuffey Societies of America, of which Dean Minnich was one of the founders, has done much to keep the name of McGuffey before the public. The bronze statue in McGuffey Court of McGuffey Hall on the Miami University campus is largely the result of Dean Minnich's endeavors. Today McGuffey memorials are found in numerous places.

Text by Dr. William E. Smith, 1973