William Holmes McGuffey facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
William Holmes McGuffey
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| Born | September 23, 1800 |
| Died | May 4, 1873 (aged 72) |
| Occupation | Educator, Academic Author |
| Known for | McGuffey Readers |
William Holmes McGuffey (September 23, 1800 – May 4, 1873) was a college professor and president who is best known for writing the McGuffey Readers, the first widely used series of elementary school-level textbooks. More than 120 million copies of McGuffey Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster's Dictionary.
Contents
Early years
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'." 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.
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.
Career and life
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. 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.
In 1845 McGuffey moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. A year after McGuffey's first wife Harriet died in 1850, he married Miss Laura Howard, daughter of Dean Howard of the University of Virginia.
Although McGuffey was born in Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio, two free states which had abolished slavery, Virginia was at that time still a slave state. According to anthropologist Benjamin Ford in Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University, McGuffey and his first wife Harriet "did not embrace slavery," but owned as many as three slaves while at Virginia. One of these enslaved individuals was William Gibbons (owned by the father-in-law of his second wife anatomy professor Henry Howard and hired out to the McGuffeys). Gibbons was literate (though sources disagree about whether he was self-taught or instructed by McGuffey's daughter Maria), and later became an important minister in Charlottesville and Washington, D.C.
McGuffey is buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery, in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Legacy
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ron Powers notes that the Readers affected the first mass-educated and mass-literate generation in the modern world. The books made Shakespeare's plays widely known in America. Author Hamlin Garland said I got my first taste of Shakespeare from the selected scenes which I read in these books. Students were encouraged to memorize, and read aloud, classic orations such as Antony's Oration over Dead Caesar's Body and Henry V. to His Troops. Shakespeare's tragedies were represented by The Hamlet Soliloquy. The McGuffey canon contributed to an American belief in Shakespeare's authority as second only to the Bible.
- 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. Enslaved workers of University of Virginia faculty, including the McGuffey household, lived in McGuffey Cottage, which is preserved behind Pavilion IX at the University of Virginia. 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. 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.
McGuffey Awards
Named for William Holmes McGuffey's influential primers that first appeared in 1836 and remained in print until 1921, the McGuffey longevity awards recognize long-lived, still-in-use textbooks of excellence.
