William Holmes McGuffey

Greersburg Academy

William Holmes McGuffey was born the son of Alexander and Anna (Holmes) McGuffey near Claysville in West Finley Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania, which is 45 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. In 1802 the McGuffey family moved farther out into the frontier at Tuscarawas County, Ohio. He attended country school, and after receiving special instruction at Youngstown, he attended Greersburg Academy in Darlington, Pennsylvania. Afterwards, he attended and graduated from Pennsylvania's Washington College, where he became an instructor. He was a roving instructor, traveling through the frontier of Ohio, Kentucky, and western Pennsylvania. He was "one of an army of half-educated young men who tramped the roads and trails drumming up 'subscription scholars'."[2] These half-educated young men would travel to and from different settlements looking for a part-time teaching job. They would teach in log-cabins to children whose parents would pay for their education. The teachers would educate the children until the parents ran out of funding or until the parents did not care to have their children educated anymore. One of the small settlements where he taught was Poland, Ohio.[3]

He was close friends with Washington College's President Andrew Wylie and lived in Wylie's house for a time; they often would walk the 3 miles to Washington College together.[4]

McGuffey's house in Oxford, Ohio

McGuffey left Washington College in 1826 to become a professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. A year later, in 1827, he was married to Harriet Spinning of Dayton, Ohio, with whom he had five children. In 1829 he was ordained at Bethel Chapel as a minister in the Presbyterian Church. It was in Oxford that he created the most important contribution of his life: The McGuffey Readers. His books sold over 122 million copies. He was very fond of teaching children as he geared the books toward a younger audience.

His home in Oxford is a museum and National Historic Landmark.

In 1836 he left Miami to become president of Cincinnati College, where he also served as a distinguished teacher and lecturer.[5] He left Cincinnati in 1839 to become the 4th president of Ohio University, which he left in 1843 to become president of what was then called the Woodward Free Grammar School in Cincinnati, one of the country's earliest public schools.[6]

McGuffey's grave obelisk at the University of Virginia Cemetery in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In 1845 McGuffey moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. A year after his first wife Harriet died in 1850, he married Miss Laura Howard, daughter of Dean Howard of the University of Virginia. McGuffey is buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery, in Charlottesville, Virginia.

McGuffey Hall at Ohio University, named for William McGuffey

McGuffey High School in Claysville, PA

The William H. McGuffey Primary School in Charlottesville, VA bears his name. The historic building is currently an artist-run cooperative arts center, currently known as the McGuffey Art Center.

Ohio University's Department of University Advancement is housed in a building named McGuffey Hall.

At Miami University, McGuffey Hall is a large academic building home to several education-related departments, including the College of Education, Health, and Society and the Teacher Education and Educational Leadership departments. The university ran the McGuffey Laboratory School from 1910 until 1983 on its campus. When the school closed, some of the parents started The William Holmes McGuffey School Foundation which operates an independent progressive school in Oxford called the McGuffey Foundation School. The school was later renamed the McGuffey Montessori School.

The McGuffey School District in Washington County, Pennsylvania is named for William Holmes McGuffey. The industrialist Henry Ford cited McGuffey Readers as one of his most important childhood influences. In 1934 he had the log cabin where McGuffey was born moved to Greenfield Village, Ford's museum of Americana at Dearborn, Michigan.

In 1998 the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission installed a historical marker at McGuffey High School/Middle School noting McGuffey's historic importance.[7]

• Biography Reference Bank. The H. W. Wilson Company, 2007.
• John Hardin Best. "McGuffey, William Holmes"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
• Richard D. Mosier. Making the American Mind: Social and Moral Ideas in the McGuffey Readers (1947)
• John H. Westerhoff III. McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America (1978).

• Media related to William McGuffey at Wikimedia Commons
• William Holmes McGuffey - Digital collection maintained by the Miami University Libraries
• William Holmes McGuffey & McGuffey Eclectic Readers collection. Walter Havighurst Special Collections, Miami University Libraries.
• Works by William Holmes McGuffey at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about William Holmes McGuffey at Internet Archive
• Works by William Holmes McGuffey at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• William Holmes McGuffey Museum National Historic Landmark at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
• "McGuffey, William Holmes" . Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900.