University of Virginia Library

WILLIAM HOLMES McGUFFEY

McGuffey Hall takes its name from William
Holmes McGuffey, Professor of Moral
Philosophy for twenty-eight years, from
1845 to 1873. He was born in Washington
County, Pennsylvania, 23 September 1800,
the son of Alexander and Anna Holmes
McGuffey, a pioneer couple of Scotch-Irish
stock. The boy was trained at home, at the
Old Stone Academy under the tutelage of
the Rev. Thomas Hughes, and at Washington
College, afterwards Washington and
Jefferson College. He early developed a
prodigious memory. In 1826 he graduated
with honors. At once he became Professor
of Ancient Languages in Miami University
in Oxford, Ohio. After six years he was
transferred to the chair of Mental Philosophy.
Meantime he had been licensed as a
minister of the Presbyterian Church. In
1836 he became the first President of Cincinnati
College, but the financial panic of
1837 adversely affected the new institution,
and after three years McGuffey accepted an

offer to became President of Ohio University
in Oxford, Ohio. The four years he
held this post were prosperous for the
growth of the institution, but here too he
was hampered by a local failure to accord
support, and in 1843 he resigned from his
second presidency to accept a position at
Woodward College, a school founded in
emulation of the great public schools of
England. It was from Woodward College
that he was called in 1845 to succeed Professor
George Tucker as Professor of Moral
Philosophy at the University of Virginia.
Here he remained during the prosperous
years of the 1850's, through the desolation
wrought by the war, and into the years of
adjustment and reconstruction that followed.

That was a time characterized by an
earnest and responsive attitude on the part
of the students, particularly of those during
the war and postwar years, and Professor
McGuffey was eminently fitted to meet
their needs. He was a purposeful teacher,
his teachings were infused with moral

force, and he came to Virginia in the maturity
of his intellectual life. He exerted himself
to make his students think and reason
for themselves, and though his courses were
formidable, the ratio of those failing to pass
was the lowest in the University. As a minister
he never held a stated charge, but on
Sundays he preached frequently. He taught
and preached directly, using notes merely.
Toward the end of his life he estimated
that he had preached on some 3,000 occasions,
but that none of his sermons had
been written out.

While at Miami University he had married
Harriet Spining, the daughter of
Judge Isaac Spining of Ohio, and they had
two daughters and three sons. She died in
1853 in Charlottesville. In 1857 he had
married again, this time to Laura Howard,
the daughter of Professor Henry Howard
of the Medical School at the University of
Virginia. They had one daughter, who died
in infancy. At the University the family
lived in Pavilion IX, West Lawn, behind
which still stands the imposing McGuffey

ash. Professor McGuffey continued active
teaching until within a few weeks of his
death, on 4 May 1873. He is buried in the
University Cemetery. For many years the
Columbus McGuffey Society has arranged
that a wreath be placed on his grave on the
anniversaries of his death.

The truth was that his fame extended
far beyond the bounds of the University
of Virginia. Coming of a pioneer family, he
had been a pioneer of education, an educator
with a preacher's zeal, and a preacher
of morality and good taste, who, strange as
it may seem, produced a best seller. His
best seller was the McGuffey Eclectic Readers.
Begun in 1838 when he was President
of Cincinnati College, the series extended
to six readers, with a high school reader
and a speller added. They were compiled
with an uncanny knowledge of youthful
aptitudes and capacity, the contents were
chosen for their cultural and moral instruction,
they were amply illustrated, and they
were steadily revised by the substitution of
fresh material-those revisions were continued

into the years at the University of
Virginia. There is an appealing story of
one of his methods in this process. It is said
that he would invite to parties at his pavilion
on West Lawn children of the neighborhood
of the appropriate ages, and, after
games and refreshments, would gather the
children about him and read to them selections
chosen for the age limits. Whenever
their attention was keen, the selection was
accepted as a candidate for inclusion in a
Reader; but whenever the children became
inattentive and restless, that selection was
discarded. The Readers went through edition
after edition, they were adopted in
thirty-seven of the then existing States, and
their sale reached the estimated figure of
122,000,000 copies. Their influence in
shaping the American mind of the midnineteenth
century is specifically recognized
by historians of the period.

Indeed the mid-twentieth century is witnessing
a revival of interest in Readers
modeled upon the McGuffey pattern, and
this has had its inception at the University

of Virginia. The purpose is to combat the
tendency towards juvenile delinquency by
instilling right principles in the formative
years, with the difference that the "thou
shalt" and "thou shalt not" precepts of the
original series are modified by enabling the
pupils to discover the moral principles by
themselves. The Golden Rule Series, in
eight graded texts, compiled with devoted
care by the late Professor Ullin Whitney
Leavell, Director of the McGuffey Reading
Clinic at the University of Virginia from
1946 to 1959, and published by the American
Book Company, bids fair to rival the
success of its predecessor, the McGuffey
Readers. The new series has already been
adopted by forty-one States and the District
of Columbia. This is an effective memorial
to Professor McGuffey. It has previously
been mentioned that one of his outstanding
characteristics was an extraordinary memory.
He himself is being extraordinarily
remembered.