Ohio History Journal

THE FATHER OF THE McGUFFEYS*

 

 

By ALICE McGUFFEY MORRILL RUGGLES

 

The McGuffey Readers are becoming classics, and their au-

thors, William Holmes and Alexander Hamilton McGuffey,

legendary figures. But as yet little has been told about the father

of the two sedate gentlemen who first dispensed literature to the

American masses. This was Alexander ("Sandy") McGuffey,

in his youth one of the most famous scouts on the western

frontier.

He was born in Wigtownshire, Scotland, November 22, 1767.

Wigtown, sometimes called West Galloway, is the extreme south-

western corner of Scotland, jutting out between the Irish Sea

and the North Channel. The name derives from the Scandinavian

vik, meaning bay, because of the deep bays that cut into the wild,

rocky shores. A bleak country of bog and moorland where liv-

ing conditions have always been simple and difficult.

Wigtown has had its share of dramatic Scottish history, since

the days when the Norsemen harried its shores, down to the last

of the Jacobite expeditions, only seven years before Sandy McGuf-

fey was born, when three warships and seven hundred men were

lost in Luce Bay off the south coast.

In the fourteenth century the shire had been handed over

for a bad debt by Sir Malcolm Fleming, earl of Wigtown, to

one of the "Black Douglases," Archibald the Grim. My mother,

a grand-daughter of Sandy McGuffey, used to repeat to us as

children, the old rhyme,

 

* Copyrighted, 1938, by Alice McGuffey Morrill Ruggles.

(104)

• 1
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS                105

 

Hush ye, hush ye,

Little pet ye!

Hush ye, hush ye,

Do not fret ye,

The Black Douglas

Shall not get ye!

 

But whether this, and the eerie Scotch ballad of "Lord

Randall" which she often sang, were an inheritance from the

McGuffeys, or from her maternal ancestors the Drakes of Devon-

shire, is not known. Old English and Scottish folk-lore was

the common stock of all Anglo-Saxon pioneers in the Middle

West.

Wigtown's chief title to fame rests on its non-conformist

martyrs, to whom a monument was erected in 1858, on Windy

Hill, outside the county seat. This was three years after the

death of Sandy McGuffey in Pennsylvania. He never returned

to his native land, but his mother must have told him tales of

the Covenanters of Wigtown, their cruel sufferings and heroic

spirit.

In 1685 (the year of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes--

a bad year for Protestants) two Covenanters, a widow aged

sixty-four and a girl of eighteen, were tied to stakes in the sands

of Wigtown Bay and drowned by the rising tide. And at the same

time three men were hanged without trial.

But three years later the last of the Stuart kings was exiled,

and the Presbyterians, among them Sandy's ancestors, were free

to follow their faith.  Religious persecution was now a thing

of the past, but the eighteenth century held for Sandy's parents

other distressing problems. They belonged to the yeoman class

that was being gradually ruined by the introduction from Hol-

land and France of scientific methods of farming which only the

upper classes could afford to apply.

Members of the wealthy leisured class became gentlemen

farmers, and the small farmers were faced with the alternative of

becoming their virtual serfs or of emigrating.  The McGuffeys

chose the latter, being by nature proud, bold and independent.

• 2
 

106    OHIO ARCHEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

And lucky it was for their descendants that they made this deci-

sion, for under George II the landlords put through Parliament

a set of "Inclosure Acts," by which they took over for their own

use the common lands, always before open to all. The small

farmers lost their plowland and grazing fields, and the patches

of woodland, where their pigs had grubbed for acorns and where

they had cut their precious firewood.  Many became hopelessly

discouraged and lapsed into idleness or drifted north into the

recently rising industries. This period saw the foundations laid

for the terrible poverty and slums which cursed England in the

early nineteenth century.  The rural middle class was all but

wiped out. The more courageous turned their backs upon the

past and set out for Ulster, Canada or the American colonies.

In Wigtown conditions, always hard, became unendurable.

Sandy's parents, William and Ann McKittrick McGuffey, packed

their meager belongings, set sail and landed in Philadelphia, in

August 1774. Sandy was between five and six years of age.

Life in the new country was not as easy as they had antici-

pated, and William had barely made a start at farming in York

County, southeastern Pennsylvania, when the Revolution broke

out and he found himself marching away to fight. He was fight-

ing for a land in which he had lived less than a year, and which

could not be called a nation. But it is a safe guess that William

McGuffey's heart was in the struggle. By race, by faith, and by

circumstance, he would be inclined to sympathize with the rebels.

And it is known that General George Washington on his marches

more than once lodged at William's new home.

Sandy's most impressionable years were passed in an excit-

ing atmosphere of war and political upheaval. Soldiers swarmed

over the countryside, radicals debated at his mother's table and

wanderers from the West were forever drifting in to sit by her

fireside and spin yarns of the rich, untouched lands beyond the

mountains. Life was unsettled, thrilling and promising. Sandy

drank it in eagerly.

The war ended at last, his father returned and family interest

shifted from public to domestic affairs.  The McGuffeys were

• 3
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               107

 

Americans now, with a new allegiance for their new country.

But prosperity had still to be won.  Post-war conditions were

bad in the Eastern States for people without money or influence.

In 1789 they packed up again and joined the long procession

that, on foot or on horseback, had begun to pour through the

Cumberland Gap, along "Boone's Road" to the newly opened

Northwest Territory.

These pioneers were of two fairly distinct types--one, the

hunter or adventurer, carrying only his weapons, moving rest-

lessly on and on, a mere squatter if he lingered on the way; the

other, the home seeker with a family, a few belongings and a

definite ambition to build and set up as a freehold farmer. The

McGuffeys belonged to the second class.

Laboriously they trekked through steep passes, tangled forest

and mountain streams, burdened with the most necessary equip-

ment and with several small children, for William and Ann, like

all pioneers, were prolific.  The weaklings died off and the

survivors grew up tall, sinewy and hardy.

William  McGuffey settled in southwestern Pennsylvania,

Washington County, a pleasant and fertile valley land, near what

is now the West Virginia line. Wheeling was the nearest large

settlement.  This was the real frontier and Sandy, the oldest

boy, was ready for it.

He was fair and strapping, with blue eyes, ruddy skin, and

an open pleasing expression. In action he was strong as a moose

and lithe as a deer.  Life in the log cabin was busy and work

on the newly-staked farm unending.  But Sandy was too bub-

bling with resistless energy to stay around the place.  Wisely

his father let him have his fling.

All beyond the clearing lay virgin forest, silent, trackless

and exciting, or prairie, green and smiling in summer and at all

seasons teeming with game. Deer and buffalo were hunted for

their tallow and skins, beaver and otter for food and skins. Wild

turkeys and all sorts of small game were to be had for the taking.

From Wheeling to Cincinnati the Ohio River makes a great

clip. The country along both sides of this curve was the scene

• 4
 

108   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY of Sandy's adventures, as it was of the men whose exploits had filled his young ears--Daniel Boone, Simon Girty, the renegade, and the Wetzel brothers. This was the region over which Audu- bon and Johnny Appleseed ranged later, and Dr. Daniel Drake, the pioneer physician. The epic of that country, beginning with the glamorous LaSalle, probably the first white man to set foot there, remains to be written. When the McGuffeys arrived, the last of the expeditions against the Indians was getting under way. To Sandy the inde- pendent life of a scout, or "spy," and the peculiar never-to-be- foreseen excitements of the Indian warfare appealed intensely. When Samuel Brady, brother of General Hugh Brady of the regular army, and a leader among the settlers near Wheeling, announced a competition for special spy service, Sandy and his best friend, Duncan McArthur, were among the volunteers who entered.

Washington had announced his intention of ending once and for all the intolerable conditions on the border. It was to take his generals four years of effort to achieve this end, and Sandy and Duncan were in the thick of it all. Duncan was eighteen, four years Sandy's junior.  His ancestors had likewise been

• 5
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               109

 

raised on oatmeal and fighting in Scotland.  Both lads were as

ready to fight as eat.  They could paddle a canoe, shoot from

ambush with unfailing accuracy and thread their way through

the woods without a sound.

Brady's tests were rigid and thorough, on land and on water.

He made the candidates swim, paddle, run races, hunt and shoot.

He sent them into the woods to spy on Indians, as they supposed,

but older spies disguised as Indians followed them to find out who

would run away and who would stand and fight, and when and

why. To deal with Indians required quick and sure judgment.

The tests over, Sandy and Duncan were the winners, and returned

to their own settlement for hasty preparation and farewells. Spies

were sent out with all military expeditions, or were detailed to

patrol the country at large and report back to the block-house

stations if they had found Indians lurking.  There was keen

rivalry to obtain spy assignments. And on the fidelity and re-

sourcefulness of these men the very existence of the settlers

depended.

Sandy and Duncan dressed alike but differed in build. The

ranger's costume was a homespun suit with buckskin jerkin and

leggings, in winter a coonskin cap, and always a sheath knife or

tomahawk stuck in the belt. The dirk or the tomahawk had its

special uses for cutting one's way through the forest or hacking

trees for rude shelter.

Sandy, tall and rangy, was noted for his long legs--no one

could outrun him.  Duncan was heavier and of greater endur-

ance.  The two were inseparable--Damon and Pythias of the

frontier--and their luck became proverbial. They were to come

through their Indian service unscathed while brave and good

men were shot and scalped all round them. But it was not luck

that saved them. It was their natural quickness and intelligence.

They had mastered the Indian's technique of fighting, and added

to his methods the white man's brain power.

Four years of difficult and daring service they endured.

Dodging or fighting Indians, killing and skinning bears and pan-

thers, felling trees for rafts, navigating swirling rivers, these

• 6
 

110    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

were the common experiences of a frontier scout. And by

such experiences were young Sandy and Duncan tried and tough-

ened and sent back to their homes with their heads high.

Yet it is doubtful if they boasted of their exploits or were

greatly praised. Sandy's mother probably breathed a silent prayer

of thanks and his father greeted him with an added touch of re-

spect as man to man. But it was all in the day's work, and the

days were too full and too demanding for displays of emotion. In

a few weeks the scouts would be off to the woods again, hunting

and trapping on their own until the call for Indian service came

again.  The redskins seldom molested the whites in winter and

expeditions against them were not generally undertaken at that

season.

No letters have survived from Sandy McGuffey or his parents

and it is doubtful if any were written. Neither he nor they

were easy with their quill pens, and there was small chance of

letters reaching Sandy in his kind of life.   But a contemporary

letter from a father in Virginia to his son who was on the frontier

with a surveying party, is probably typical of the paternal attitude

of that era.  The letter is brief, affectionate, matter of fact.

 

GOOCHLAND Co. Oct.4,1788.

LOVING SON:--I received yours, favored by Mr. Underwood, wherein

you inform me that you had made a trip over the Ohio: That you had

tarried there but a few days. I am afraid that you venture too much.

Should you escape after doing what you are engaged, I would advise you to

drop venturing too much, etc. by your last, you say that you can finish all

you have undertaken by spring. God send you a safe return etc. I will

keep a cask of cider till the first of April expecting to see you, if God is

willing.

I am your loving father,

NATHANIEL MASSIE1

In his old age Sandy McGuffey recounted certain incidents

of his scout days to Daniel Drake, whose daughter Elizabeth had

married Sandy's youngest son in 1839. Drake, who had a flair for

history, promptly sat down and retold the story in a letter to his

grandson, Charles Drake McGuffey, then a little boy of four or

 

1 John McDonald, Biographical Sketches of General Nathaniel Massie [and

others] (Dayton, O., 1838).

• 7
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               111

five. But for Drake the father of the McGuffeys would be only

a name.

McArthur, who became a distinguished man, was the subject

of a memoir by his brother-in-law, John McDonald, another

scout. Piecing together these two contemporary records we have

an authentic, if fragmentary account of Sandy and Duncan's

adventures. "The dangers from their bold, vigilant and dexter-

ous enemy," wrote McDonald of his fellow scouts, "were only

an item in the catalogue of their sufferings. . . . The bodily com-

position of these men contained more than the usual quantity

of lime and iron, to enable them to endure the fatigue and hard-

ships they had to encounter."

Sandy has left a description of the Battle of Big and Little

Captina which is typical of the haphazard nature of Indian forays.

In the summer of 1791 he and Duncan were dispatched with a

small troop of ten other men on horseback under a certain

Captain Boggs to reconnoiter across the Ohio. On the fourth

day out they found Indian tracks and followed them down a

creek, Big Captina, and up the forks of another, Little Captina.

Suddenly the Indians fired from ambush and Boggs groaned

and fell. Sandy and Duncan (on foot, as spies) ran for a large

sycamore on the edge of the creek and from behind the trunk

fired at the redskins--Sandy, eight or nine times, of course re-

loading each time. The Indians fired back and one bullet knocked

some of the bark of the tree into Duncan's face. He remarked

coolly, "Didn't the fellow fire well?"

As the Indians now rushed forward in overpowering num-

bers, the spies turned and fled for their lives. Duncan was

chased down the creek by five Indians, while Sandy ran up a

hill with three after him. When he reached the top, he wheeled

suddenly and pointed his empty gun.   The Indians instantly

dropped to the ground and Sandy was off and away like the wind.

After the wars an Indian stopped Sandy one day in Wheeling

and asked to shake hands with him. "I was one of the three

who chased you up the hill," he said. Sandy shook hands and

• 8
 

112   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY suggested they have a friendly race on the spot. The Indian accepted and Sandy won. Another of Sandy's narrow escapes occurred one evening when he and Duncan and a third scout were stealing along a trail, single file, about seven miles from Wheeling. It was growing

dark when Sandy, who was leading, spied lying in the path before him the headdress of an Indian. Had he stooped to pick it up he would have been shot from ambush. But without pausing in his stride, he gave the thing a kick, shouting in his ringing voice, "Indians!" Several shots flew after him as he sped along and one smashed his powder horn and passed through his clothing. He and his companions got away, however, and the Indians did not follow. Duncan in a similar experience had not come off so well. Alone and fleeing from a surprise attack, his powder horn was shattered and the splinters penetrated his thigh, wounding him seriously. Running on and on, the blood flowing from his side,

• 9
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               113

he simply wore the Indians out, and gradually increased his dis-

tance from them. By the time he had crossed two or three

ridges, he found they had ceased to pursue him, and making a

detour he reached the river bank where his companions were

waiting for him with a canoe.

Duncan, and probably Sandy (though Drake does not say

so, was in the ill-fated expedition of General Josiah Harmar, a

popular soldier of the Revolution, who sailed down the Ohio

with a company of Pennsylvania volunteers to Fort Washington,

later Cincinnati.  Joined there by some regulars and more vol-

unteers from Kentucky, the whole body marched north through

what is now central Ohio, then unbroken wilderness. The going

was cruelly hard, as cutting through the undergrowth, torn by

briars and thorns and loaded with equipment, the men struggled

on by day, and at night were unable to sleep for the tormenting

gnats and mosquitoes.

When the army arrived within thirty miles of the Indian

villages they had been sent to destroy, a detachment of six hun-

dred, under the Kentucky colonel, was sent ahead for a surprise

attack. But the Indians, warned by their own spies, had fled

to the woods and swamps. Harmar, coming up with his main

army, joined in the work of burning and razing. The destruc-

tion completed, he ordered a return and departed, leaving a few

trusty spies behind. These, as evening shut in, observed the

Indians stealing back to their ruined homes, in a mood which is

easy to imagine.

Swiftly the white spies made their way through the woods

to the general, ten miles in retreat. He ordered two regiments

under the Kentuckian, Colonel John Hardin, to return to the site

of the villages, which were reached just at daybreak, and a fierce

and bloody battle took place at the junction of the St. Mary and

the St. Joseph rivers.

Hardin had divided his men into two divisions, entrusting the

second to a Major William Hall. Duncan (with his usual luck,

as it turned out) was in Hall's division. Hardin, crossing the

St. Mary, after brave fighting and heavy losses, was compelled

• 10
 

114    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

to flee. Hall's division chased the enemy several miles up the

other stream. "The horrors of this fight were divided," wrote

McDonald, "but the Indians had the fruits of an entire victory.

Without any further attempt to gain his withered laurels, Har-

mar immediately returned to Fort Washington and there the army

was disbanded. . . . The Pennsylvanians, in detachments went

up the Ohio river in keel-boats."

This indecisive Battle of the Rivers was only one of a

thousand that had been going on for fifty years. Charles Beard

calls the Indian warfare "always brutal and often futile." Mc-

Donald laments in his old age, "O poor human nature, what

miserable wretches we are, thus to punish and harass each other,

the frontier whites of that day were but little behind the Indians

in wiles, in cruelty and revenge."

McArthur had come through the Battle of the Rivers un-

touched. But on the way home he and a companion (one suspects

it to have been Sandy, though McDonald does not give his name)

met with other perils in a little Odyssey of their own.

There were at that time three ways of navigating on the

rivers, by canoe, raft or "keel-boat". The keel-boats, in which

the Pennsylvania volunteers were returning home, were large

enought to carry baggage as well as passengers, but light enough

to be rowed by six men at a rapid rate against the current. The

going was exciting, not only because of navigation but because

there were only a few scattered stations between Fort Washing-

ton and Wheeling where the boats could rest at night, and all

along the banks the Indians were on the alert to shoot as they

passed by.

Dangerous as the passage was, it was safer than being on

land, so Duncan and his friend, always "looking for trouble",

asked to be put ashore one morning to hunt, intending to "head"

the boat before night.  But the day was cloudy and being total

strangers to the country, they missed their direction. When at

sunset they came to the river bank, with bags bulging with wild

turkey and possum, they found themselves lower down, instead

of further up the river, as they had planned to be. There was

• 11
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               11₅

 

nothing to do but turn inland, and fortunately they found a

cabin, belonging to one William Brooks, three miles above what

is now Maysville, Kentucky.

Here they were given the cheer that never failed in the

poorest settler's cabin.  When danger was not threatening the

frontiersmen were a merry lot, affectionate among themselves,

always hospitable and courteous to strangers.  And no man,

woman or child would ever accept pay from a guest. Game and

fish made a succulent supper to spread before a blazing fire,

where later a shakedown bed would be made up for the way-

farer.

From Brooks, the young men learned that the nearest settle-

ment above them on the river was two hundred miles away and

could only be reached by the crossing of many streams.  But

undaunted, they set off at dawn, determined to overtake their

boat, now twenty-four hours in advance.  All day they trailed

along close to the shore, and late in the evening at the mouth of

the Big Sandy River, they discovered to their joy their keel-boat in

sight, only two or three hundred yards above them.

They shouted and hallooed at the top of their lusty lungs, but

could not make themselves heard because of the tremendous

roaring of the angry waters.  The Big Sandy was very high

with recent rains and thrust its dangerous current nearly across

the Ohio, into which it flowed. Through the night at intervals

the scouts continued to call but as the sun rose they had the mor-

tification of seeing their companions push off without them.

There was no time to be lost in fruitless repining.  They

set out, tramping up the bank of the Big Sandy several miles,

camped, cut logs and constructed a raft on which with much dif-

ficulty they crossed the river and then hurried on at top speed,

still hoping to overtake their boat. But it was no use. All the

streams above Big Sandy were swollen, too, and each time, the

scouts had to stop and build another raft.  In this way they

were so much delayed that when they at last reached the settle-

ment at Big Kanawha, they were told their boat had been gone

for several days.  Here they gave up the pursuit and rested

• 12
 

116    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

their weary bodies a few days before commencing their arduous

journey on foot to Wheeling, which they reached about the first

of December. From there they made their way home, unscarred

by battle but ragged, footsore and worn.

The longest and most dangerous trip Sandy and Duncan

ever made was when they were sent ahead of General Arthur

St. Clair's army to reconnoiter as far north as Lake Erie. Samuel

Brady was the third man selected for this scouting party, and as

usual they traveled by night and lay hidden by day. Concealed

in the swamps near what is now Sandusky, they observed great

numbers of Indians landing by canoe from Canada to join others

who filled the woods all round them. The country, Sandy

records, was alive with Indians equipped for battle and in their

most dangerous mood.

Brady, the senior scout, decided these conditions must be

reported to the general without an hour's delay, so the three

started to return south, skirting the Indian camps with all speed

and secrecy.  One night they traveled forty miles, cutting their

way through the trailless underbrush, torn by thorns and briars.

Afraid of betraying their presence by shooting game, they

choked and ate two small dogs which they had with them.

"Had they used a knife to kill them," explains the record, "they

would have yelled."

Reaching St. Clair's headquarters on the third day, they

made their report and immediately returned to the woods to con-

tinue their work. But their efforts had been all in vain. The

general ignored their reports, advanced too soon and was over-

whelmingly defeated. It was not until nearly four years later

that General "Mad" Anthony Wayne brought the Indians to

terms and made a lasting peace.

The red man, notwithstanding "his soul is great--his arm is strong--his

battles full of fame," . . . was compelled to yield to his more civilized

neighbor. . . . No more sentinels were necessary to guard the plowman at

his labor. . . . The nation owes a debt of gratitude to the men whose march

was in the van in those trying times. Their memories should be held in

veneration by the millions who now reap in peace and quiet the fruits of

their toil.

• 13
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               117

 

So wrote McDonald in 1838, fearing that he and his kind

might be forgotten in the crowded histories of the future.

Sandy and Duncan, being among the sentinels no longer

needed, determined to strike out farther west and settle in the ter-

ritory they themselves had helped to make safe for clearing.

Another great migration was under way to the new lands which

the Government was offering for a song. Both young men had

married when their scout service ended, and both their wives

were Scotch girls from their fathers' settlement.  Duncan mar-

ried Nancy McDonald, sister of his friend John. Sandy's choice

was Anna Holmes, the comely and clever daughter of Henry

Holmes who owned the largest farm in the countryside.

Anna's mother was Jane Roney Holmes, sister of Hercules

Roney, a fighter of Indians as doughty as his name. Henry

Holmes was English, his wife Irish, and they had been married

in Ireland. Jane died at sixty but Henry lived on to a hundred

and four. Life in the settlements was extraordinarily healthy

and these Scotch-Irish Covenanters were a clean-living lot. The

women sometimes wore out with care and child-bearing but the

men, if they escaped tomahawks and bullets, lived on like the

patriots of old.

Sandy and Anna had probably long been sweethearts and

they brought to marriage a common heritage of physical and

moral strength. When their son William Holmes was two years

old, they set out for the Ohio country. The Pennsylvania set-

tlement was growing crowded; it was no longer frontier. Sandy

felt the urge to push on. Besides William, he and Anna had two

other children, Jane the first-born and Henry the baby.  The

father must provide land and opportunity for his brood.

Sandy on this journey must have thought back to the

voyage from  Scotland with his own parents and wondered

whether his Jane would remember this migration. William of

course was too young. The future compiler of the Readers prob-

ably rode strapped to his mother's saddle, while his father

walked beside another horse, laden with their clothing and im-

plements.  Little Jane was tucked in somewhere, and the baby

• 14
 

118    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

slept or cried or fed in his mother's arms. A wagon was out of

the question, for there would be no roads where they were

going, nor any houses, schools or churches.

Sandy and Anna were leaving behind them the comparative

comforts, primitive as they were, of western Pennsylvania, and

would have to begin at the beginning, as their parents had done

before them. But both had the pioneer spirit at heart, and in

the wilderness they could enjoy the freedom and independence

that were bred in their bones.

A rifle, an axe, a hoe and a wife--with these four traditional

requisites of the pioneer settler, Sandy set to work.

He bought land in the northeastern part of Ohio, now

Trumbull County, about five miles from the present site of

Youngstown.   He had left behind him his "Beautiful River,"

with which his early life had been bound up. But other turbu-

lent streams ran near his new home. Instead of Indians, he had

floods to fight, instead of wild animals, droughts and pests. His

first attack was on the solid forest that covered his land.

He became a farmer, building houses, roads and bridges with

his own hands, raising a large family and remaining poor, hardy

and happy, like his father.

Sandy's wife had more book-learning than he, and it was

she who gave her children their first lessons, and who, by faith

or luck or mother wit, secured for her brilliant son William a

chance to become an educator.

How she was praying loudly and ardently in her dooryard

on a summer's evening that a proper education might be forth-

coming for her eldest son, and was overheard and her wish

granted by the headmaster of the Old Stone Academy in Penn-

sylvania, who most opportunely happened to be riding by, is a

twice-told tale.

William in his turn undertook the education of his youngest

brother, Alexander the second, who also shared his mother's

desire for learning.  Between them the brothers were to pro-

duce what have been called the most influential volumes in

• 15
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               119

 

America. From their father they inherited endurance and reso-

lution, from their mother, initiative and intellectual ambition.

Alexander, the Scout, lived to a green old age, returning in

later years to the banks of the picturesque Shenango River in

western Pennsylvania. Anna, the love of his youth, had died

years before. Sandy married again but all that is known of his

second wife is that her name was Mary Hemphill Dickey and

that she was "a very estimable lady." Some reports have it that

she was too illiterate to write her name.  Mary must have had

cares of her own, for Sandy's old parents lived with them, his

mother to the age of ninety, his father to ninety-four.  Their

lives had bridged two continents and three eras of history.

It was to the Pennsylvania homestead that on September

22, 1847, another pioneer came to visit Sandy and to hear from

his own lips the story of his early life. This was Dr. Daniel

Drake of Cincinnati, who had founded the first medical college

west of the Alleghenies.

Drake was at this time sixty-two, eighteen years younger

than McGuffey, but the background of their lives had been the

same. During the years of Sandy's scouting, Drake's parents,

in the backwoods of Kentucky, were going through struggles such

as William and Ann McGuffey had experienced a few years

before. Dan, the eldest son, had been sent to Cincinnati in 1800

(two years before Sandy and his young wife set out for northern

Ohio) "to be made into a doctor and a gentleman."

The meeting between the two pioneers in their old age pre-

sented a curious contrast.  McGuffey had remained a yeoman in

dress, manners and culture.  Drake was suave, polished and

scholarly. He had studied under Dr. Benjamin Rush in Philadel-

phia and had married an eastern woman, a niece of Colonel Jared

Mansfield, professor of mathematics at West Point.  Drake's

children, and now his grandchildren, who were Sandy's as well,

were being brought up as gentlefolk, with servants, private

schools and all the luxury that had sprung up so quickly in the

growing West.   It was for one of these grandchildren that

Dr. Drake wrote down his interview with their unknown grand-

• 16
 

120    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

father, and recorded a chapter of American life already far in

the past.

Both men had seen "the transformation of a wilderness, the

abode of wild beasts and men more wild and savage than they,

into nine great states filled with prosperous farms and civilized

cities."2

Drake says of McGuffey, "He was then seventy-eight years

of age; his hair was white, but his complexion was healthy and

frame robust; his memory was not decayed, and his understanding

was strong and sound."

The description of Alexander's appearance tallies with a por-

trait in oils which used to hang in the home of my grandfather,

the second Alexander McGuffey, in Cincinnati.  The rosy old

face had an air of freshness and innocence that is characteristic

of his clan. Precocious when young, the McGuffeys, in one

sense, never grow up nor grow old.

Dr. Drake could not resist ending his letter with a moral,

after the fashion of his day. In fact he furnishes little Charley

to whom he was writing, with a three-headed moral, for good

measure.

Now, my Petit-fils, while you know personally one of your grand-

fathers, you have a short biography of the other. I hope you will read it

attentively, and in doing so, you will learn a few things that may be

useful to you.

First, that a great deal of active exercise makes a person strong, swift,

healthy and of long life.

Second, that when there is danger, as was the case when your grand-

father was young, you should not fear it, but go straight ahead, and try to

overcome it.

Third, that for men to be esteemed they must be honest and fear

God. This, as I was told, was the character of your grandfather and his

neighbors loved and respected him because of it.

Your affectionate grandfather-maternally,

DAN DRAKE.

The later career of McArthur was as different from his

friend McGuffey's as that of Drake. When the young men

gave up scouting, Duncan had no more education than Sandy.

But he went to school for a few weeks and learned the "Rule of

Three" so as to be able to study surveying.  By speculating in

2 Ibid.

• 17
 

FATHER OF THE MCGUFFEYS               121

 

land he made a great deal of money and acquired a fine estate,

"Fruit Hill," near Chillicothe, Ohio. He served in the War of

1812 and rose to be a general. Later he was elected governor

of Ohio. In 1812 he and Sandy met for the last time. McAr-

thur, like Drake and the sons of Sandy McGuffey, was able to

change the caste of his family, as it were, over night. And the

McArthurs have distinguished themselves in the military service

of their country down to the present day.

"Sandy" died in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, March 1,

1855, aged eighty-eight. He left little money and his sons, Wil-

liam and Alexander, were like him in their indifference to wealth

and their preference for unpretentious life.  Everyone knows

that they made no money out of the Readers but it is not so well

known that Alexander, who had compiled the Speller and the Fifth

and Sixth Readers, asked to have his name taken off the title-

pages when the books began to be famous.

These brothers carried into a civilized era something of the

frontier spirit of simplicity and independence in living. It is not

too much to suggest that the cheerfulness which they were the

first to introduce into American school-books derives from their

father, who lived his long life with healthy, zestful enjoyment.

Sandy's heritage lacked the gloomy strain of the American Puri-

tans who had been brought up on the New England Primer and

the Book of Doom.    His frontier was sprinkled with genial

Virginians, and his people, by their prompt migration westward,

had escaped contact with certain narrowing influences of colonial

life.

The second Alexander McGuffey (Alexander Hamilton--not

named for the statesman, I have always understood, the Hamil-

ton middle name coming from some kinsman in Scotland) had

an innate love of beauty and form which influenced him in leav-

ing the Presbyterian Church for the Episcopal.  And William

Holmes, in his books, his preaching and his college lectures,

showed no trace of the fanatical, harsh or vindictive spirit which

too often characterized the followers of Calvin.

Very likely, too, the favorite teachings of the Readers, those

• 18
 

122   OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

reiterated lessons inculcating patriotism and inveighing against

war, root back into conversations between Sandy and his sons

during the long winter evenings on the farm. Sandy was not

didactic--that strain must have come in with Anna Holmes--but

he may have spun yarns and exerted an influence none the less.

Who better than he could know the worth of his country, the

cruelty of war, and the blessing of fruitful work in peace?

• 19