Ohio History Journal

OHIO IN McGUFFEY'S TIME*

 

By GEORGE W. RIGHTMIRE

 

Indians--Wayne's Treaty, 1795

The Ohio of McGuffey's time was very new; it began in

1788 at Marietta, and the next year at Cincinnati, but little prog-

ress was possible until Territorial issues were settled with the

Indians--not only the Indians, but the British, who held many

posts long after the Treaty of 1783, in violation thereof, and

exerted a strong influence over the northwest country.

After suffering two severe defeats from the Indians in this

Territory, the United States Government sent a strong force

under Anthony Wayne, and the Indians were routed at Fallen

Timbers in 1794. At the same time John Jay was treating with

England for the evacuation of these posts on the frontier, and

when Wayne made the Treaty of Greenville with the Indians the

next year, British aid was gone, the Indians stood alone, defeated,

and the treaty cleared the present State of Ohio of Indians south

of a line connecting Fort Recovery and East Liverpool.

 

Early Settlements--Cultural Centers

This free and peaceful area included all the rivers emptying

into the Ohio practically to their northern watershed. Over thirty

thousand square miles of virgin forest and rich agricultural lands

became available for the wave of settlers which had been impeded

by Indian hostility, and squatter, surveyor, speculator, and bona

fide pioneer came with questing eye and giant strides to exploit

the new lands.

Marietta became the center of New England culture, and

just how effective was this influence in southeastern Ohio may be

read in Wayne Jordan's careful, many-angled analysis in the Ohio

State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly of March, 1940.

 

* Address before the Columbus McGuffey Society at its Annual Meeting, March

26, 1940.

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The outreach of their cultural stimulus far surpasses their com-

parative numbers.

The second center of settlement was Cincinnati, where the

two Miamis face the Licking, a point of wilderness military

strategy earlier, and the meeting point of the movement of settlers

now coming from the Kentucky settlements around Lexington

and the down-river movement from the East. Eastern rivers car-

ried the settlers as far as the Pennsylvania portages, and from

there travel followed the Ohio River, and within the State, the

tributaries of the Ohio became the foci of settlement, whence the

pioneers spread in every direction. We therefore see the pioneer

following along the Muskingum, the Hockhocking, the Scioto, the

Great and Little Miamis, and below the Ohio along the Licking

and the Kentucky.

Not only did the Kentucky people overflow into Ohio at

Cincinnati, but they turned off northeastward from the upper

Licking and crossed the Ohio near Manchester, working their

way in across country to the Scioto, and also following up the

Ohio and Scioto rivers. Each river basin became a land of

promise for the pioneers who came early by groups; New Eng-

landers favored the Muskingum and Hockhocking; the Pennsyl-

vania-New Jersey group favored the Miamis; the Virginia-South-

ern group flowed into the Scioto country and the Virginia Military

District. But these were not all; foreign immigrants came in

considerable numbers from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales,

Scandinavia, Holland, Germany, and some French at Gallipolis

and in the French Grant.

Rapidly settlements were made along the river valleys; reach-

ing Dayton on the Great Miami; passing Waynesville on the

Little Miami, and leaving that stream farther up for Xenia;

following the Scioto through to Columbus; up the Hockhocking

to Athens and Lancaster, and along the Muskingum to Waterford

and Zanesville. Smaller tributary streams invited the pioneer, and

great networks of farmer's homes, villages, and more pretentious

towns spread over southern Ohio within twenty years after

Wayne's Treaty.

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Settlement went on more slowly in the portion of Ohio

north of Wayne's Boundary Line, where the Indian was still

strong, and from whence he was finally removed only after

several more treaties. By the 1820's that country was quite safe,

and settlements grew encouragingly, beginning as early as 1796

at Cleveland, extending through the Western Reserve, and found-

ing at Ravenna, Warren, Youngstown, and in the western part

more slowly until after Perry's victory, which finally made north-

western Ohio safe for the pioneer.

 

Routes by Road, River and Canal

Travel to the Ohio country came through Pennsylvania by

way of Forbes' Road, a very direct route from Harrisburg to

Pittsburgh; by way of the Potomac to Cumberland, and there

taking Braddock's Road across to the Youghiogheny and down

to Pittsburgh; or by a road which turned south from Forbes'

Road to the Potomac and then on through Cumberland and by

way of Braddock's Road. On all these routes of travel rivers

were used wherever available. Once having reached the tribu-

taries of the Ohio, progress by way of Pittsburgh in boats or

on rafts or what-not was easily made down the Ohio.

Settlers coming by way of Kentucky from Virginia and

Maryland primarily, followed far up the James, struck across

southwest by way of the Wilderness Road, crossing the Holston,

Clinch and French Broad to Cumberland Gap, thence coming to

the upper Kentucky River, where a mass of settlements had grown

up by 1800 around Boonesborough, Winchester, Lexington, Frank-

fort; and then through Danville, Harrodstown and Bardstown on

the road to Louisville; or by way of Georgetown, Paris, and

Mayslick, on the road to Ohio at Maysville; and down the Lick-

ing to its mouth and so across to Cincinnati.

Early river travel was soon improved by the introduction

of the steamboat in 1811, and during the next fifteen years 233

steamboats appeared in the Ohio River trade.

In 1825 the legislature began to provide for canals across

the State from Cleveland to Portsmouth and from Toledo to Cin-

cinnati, with many laterals covering eastern Ohio. In the next

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fifteen years over 600 miles were built, and travel and commerce

in the State flourished amazingly. The age of speed had not yet

come, but intrastate travel and transportation moved joyously,

although at snail's pace. We read of no particular complaints

about slow travel; the world afforded no better, and the traveler

was not impatient. But there was no manana spirit, and when

the railroad eventually came it was accepted with boundless en-

thusiasm and understanding.

Once on Ohio soil, how did the traveler move across country?

If he came down the Ohio to Wheeling he might land on the Ohio

side and pick up Zane's Trace, which reached the dignity of a

"poor road" for teams by 1800; following this route through the

wilderness he came to present-day Cambridge, Zanesville, Lan-

caster, Chillicothe and West Union to Aberdeen on the Ohio. This

cut straight across country and disregarded travel by water.

Up to 1830 and much later, in places, the roads of Ohio were

"poor," and even stage roads, e.g., from Chillicothe to Portsmouth,

were impassable at the worst seasons of the winter. How bad

the road travel was may be read in W. C. Howells' Recollections

of Life in Ohio, from 1813 to 1840. When Charles Dickens in

1842 crossed Ohio from Cincinnati to Sandusky, he was good-

humored and complimentary about the macadam stage-coach road

between Cincinnati and Columbus, and compared amiably the

Miami Valley with beautiful garden-like Kent in his home coun-

try; but even he could not find words to describe the ride from

Columbus to Tiffin--roads of corduroy and mud, and fords that

were abominable. By 1818 the Federal Government had com-

pleted the National Road from Cumberland to Wheeling; by 1833

it reached Columbus, and a few years later it reached Springfield.

Almost all the available land for cultivation was that from

which the dense forests had been cleared. Clearing was of course

a very slow business. Early travelers have told us that one could

travel, without interruption, in the dense shade from Cumberland

to Illinois, which statement reveals the difficulties with which the

settler struggled. Yet it is surprising how rapidly the clearing

went forward.

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OHIO IN MCGUFFEY'S TIME: RIGHTMIRE          119

 

Early Homes--hillicothe and Cincinnati

For years most of the farm houses were log, with almost no

sunlight and very pale artificial light, with one door, low clap-

board roof, and outside wattle chimney. There was no end to

the wood easily available for both heat and light.

In the villages and towns the log house prevailed in earlier

times, but later came wooden buildings of sawed boards, some-

times with clapboard sides, and here and there a very substantial

frame home, well painted, with two floors, having the best the

times afforded in kitchen utensils, furniture, interior decorations,

windows, and neat enclosing fences. The homes of Governor

Thomas Worthington and Duncan McArthur at Chillicothe were

notable, and Fortesque Cuming thought that town was not "ex-

ceeded in beauty of plan or appearance by any town I have seen

in the western part of the United States" (in 1810). Cincinnati,

from the early 1800's was spoken of as a well-laid out, well-built,

sanitary town--"The Queen City of the West." It was much

commended by early travelers and received high compliment from

Dickens in 1842.

Outside of a few of the older and more favorably circum-

stanced towns, the homes were drab inside and out, primitive in

their facilities, with negligible decorative objects, pictures, or hang-

ings--containing the merest rudiments of civilized life. Verily

the life of the pioneer was hard, and generally his manners and

habits were in tune; but we must respect him and his funda-

mental accomplishments, for, as Hamlin Garland has said, "he

was adequate."

Books in the Western Country

These early homes contained few books: perhaps the world's

best seller, the Bible, was universal; John Foxe's Book of Martyrs,

and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress were widely distributed.

Lindley Murray's grammar and reader were well known, as were

Maria Edgeworth's readers. Indeed Howells does not speak of

books in the home, although he gives a brief enumeration of

school books. Some books of general circulation were published

in Pittsburgh, especially Zadoc Cramer's Navigator--a kind of

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thesaurus of river knowledge, weather lore, travel on the Ohio,

descriptions of the country bordering the Ohio--just the matters

an alert pioneer going down the Ohio would want to know about.

This book was rewritten and brought down to date with solicitous

frequency. Around 1825 Nathan Guilford of Cincinnati pub-

lished annually an almanac crowded with facts of all sorts and

interlarded with literary extracts and educational mottoes and in-

junctions, after the style of Poor Richard's Almanac, which he

called the Sayings of "Solomon Thrifty." It circulated very

widely in southwestern Ohio.

 

Newspapers--Mail

Newspapers were set up in very many places and the small

sheet weekly, or semi-weekly, went into many homes. The circu-

lation of papers outside of those printed in Cincinnati, was very

limited, perhaps rarely crossing the county lines. It can not be

said that the newspapers were literary, knowledge or political

factors, but in a society almost without books and reading mate-

rials, we may be sure that the almanac and the jejune newssheet

were gentle stimuli--any more explosive agency would have been

unpredictable. When we are reminded that about eighteen days

were required to deliver mail from New York to Charleston,

South Carolina, and longer if to the interior of North Carolina

or Tennessee, we shall appreciate the slow progress of the post

along the dirt or corduroy, or storm-soaked roads of interior

Ohio. And when any publication at last arrived it was probably

the only fresh reading material in sight until the next one would

be due.

Daniel Boone's English

Certainly this was not a reading population, nor, generally

speaking, was it a writing people. Dean Harvey C. Minnich, in

his William Holmes McGuffey and His Readers, reproduces a

letter written by Daniel Boone in 1789, and ascribes to Boone's

weird English a long life in the western country. Perhaps that

kind was widely prevalent in early Ohio, since Kentucky people

flowed into the Virginia Military District and down the Licking

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OHIO IN MCGUFFEY'S TIME: RIGHTMIRE          121

 

into the country between the Miamis. There were many German

people in southwestern Ohio, with a tendency to hold on to their

native speech, and the younger generation was acquiring a hybrid

tongue--German and English of the Boone type, or even a lesser

order. Mixed with this was some Irish and Scotch speech, widely

variant from true English, and a general habit of carelessness

found in an isolated or pioneer people.

 

Roads--Wagon Travel--Taverns

Communication or locomotion in the best style known was

apt to be uncertain, even casual. The roads were mostly of

native earth with ridges and vast holes--a "dust bowl" in a drouth

and a "mud hole" after a storm. The surest travel was by horse-

back; moving was done in Conestoga wagons, the "Prairie

Schooner" of a later era; occasionally a "spring wagon" was

seen; travelers usually went by stage-coach, with two or four and

frequent relays.

One of the social institutions of the time, on every important

road and at frequent intervals, was the tavern. The keeper was

usually a "character" who met the traveling public easily, and

turned criticisms or complaints eventually into levity and tolerant

understanding. There was the one dining room, the common

table and the common service, and travelers report a generous

menu, but frequently comment upon the inadequate cooking and

lack of "taste." The bedrooms were also common--strangers not

only in the same room but often several of them in the same

bed. It was the ultimate in "socialization."

Of course liquor was served; liquor was almost universally

drunk--whiskey, which was distilled in many places. It even

passed as currency or a medium of exchange. This was long

before the hectic days of Frances Willard, but was the reason

why her reform movement was so widely supported when it

swept into this western country.

Mutual Help among Neighbors

In the rural sections neighbors were of mutual help; in the

busy harvest several families might combine to cut the wheat or

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hay, or any other urgent crop; or they might go together for

threshing or might even work together in taking corn or wheat

to the mills which were operated sometimes by horse-power, but

most frequently by water-power. A common occasion for mutual

help was at house-building or barn-building time. In the early

days these were built of logs hewed and notched, and called for

much man-power. Howells is very interesting at this point.

 

Home Industries--Scanty Social Life

The rural home was the center of spinning, weaving, and

all the operations needed to turn flax into linen, or wool into

cloth, and both into clothing; homespun was the order of the

day, and the women looked after this grand division of domestic

life. One can imagine little idle time anywhere in the early Ohio

home.

The towns and cities afforded opportunities for social gather-

ings, for casual meetings, for stated church services, and for a

life generally which had many social mitigations. The rural dis-

tricts, in the early times, presented a very tenuous social atmos-

phere. Any traveler was of curious interest and the appearance

of the circuit-rider was an occasion. The district schools had not

yet reached a vigorous life, but later they became an educational

and social center for the young people.

 

Religion--Denominations--Camp-meetings

Religion was a mighty force in the lives of these frontier

people and many denominations were represented among the pio-

neers and the ministers who accompanied them into the wilder-

ness. The Presbyterians came early and predominated in the

Scioto and the Miami districts of Ohio and the Lexington-Tran-

sylvania districts in Kentucky. Their ministers were younger men

coming from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and represented the

best traditions in education, doctrine and preaching of Princeton

--fundamental, Calvinistic. But there was something in the west-

ern atmosphere that generated liberalism, and some degree of

independence in thinking, perhaps eventuating in emotionalism.

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OHIO IN MCGUFFEY'S TIME: RIGHTMIRE         123

 

The conditions of pioneer and frontier life developed intro-

spection; no adequate outlet for normal human social reactions

existed, and the preaching tended more and more to be adjusted

to the wilderness type of intelligence, and supplied the materials

for thinking and the emotional appeal which their situation

awaited.

So we find in the early 1800's a religious awakening in Ken-

tucky which developed into the Great Revival and spread over

into the Ohio country. Ministers began to take liberal ground,

breaking away from the old doctrines; schisms occurred, each

with its devoted following, and conservative Presbyterianism was

rudely shocked. Controversial literature was widely spread and

read, forming the chief intellectual subject matter for some years.

The revival meetings, the camp-meetings, and other religious gath-

erings, furnished the social opportunities so desperately needed.

The preaching vocabulary grew lurid; new doctrines were evolved,

and eloquently impressed in ideas and figures and grossly concrete

illustrations. People came for miles and stayed for days at a

camp-meeting, living in their wagons and bringing food and prov-

ender with them from home. Many experienced remarkable con-

versions; many were "under the influence" of the Spirit, signified

in highly emotionalized conduct, mysterious and unforeseeable,

and even children became hysterical or began to "exhort" and call

sinners to repentance. Some were "shaken" by the powerful

preaching, and really a new sect called "Shakers" developed out

of these strange and unprecedented spiritual and physical commo-

tions. The whole western country was buzzing with this new

religious experience and enthusiasm, and it remains one of the

social phenomena of our early history, felt in Indiana and Illinois

also with devastating psychological effects. We are here in the

presence of one of the greatest formative influences socially, re-

ligiously and intellectually, of early Ohio days, which was felt on

both sides of Wayne's Boundary Line.

But the Presbyterians did not have the field to themselves;

the Methodists grew rapidly, were perfectly attuned spiritually

and organizationally to the revival and the camp-meeting; their

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circuit-riders went everywhere on schedule; their class-leaders,

exhorters, preachers, presiding elders and bishops omitted no

effort to get to the people in their homes, however isolated, and

in their rude community churches. These religious leaders exer-

cised tremendous power at camp-meetings, fanning the flames of

revival into a devouring conflagration. On these and all other

possible occasions they distributed controversial, doctrinal and

pastoral tracts, and their vigorous and elemental oratory had a

rousing and intellectually agitating effect, hard, in these times,

to comprehend.

The Baptists were in this western country in large numbers

also, and their people traversed the same general experiences as

the Presbyterians and Methodists. The Congregationalists were

strongest in the Marietta region and the Western Reserve. The

Episcopalians and the Catholics came in at an early day but were

little interested in the camp-meeting and the revival, holding on

to their orthodox procedures and doctrines. The Quakers were

effective also, and made lasting impressions in eastern and south-

western Ohio. New sects came out of the Presbyterian and Bap-

tist schisms. The Lutherans came chiefly from Germany and

Scandinavia, and throve vigorously after 1830. All found con-

genial homes in this western cultural climate. Verily, religion

was a mighty social and ethical force, and the great names of

Finley, McNemar, Asbury, McKendrie, Dow, Campbell, Lundy

and Bishop Chase are written large in early Ohio history.

 

Education--Schools--Colleges

What can be said for education in McGuffey's time?

There was practically none at public expense beyond the

meager revenues derived from the dedication of Section 16. Pupils

paid tuition in money or in "kind." School buildings were poor

things and very infrequent; the school term was an uncertain

quantity, and attendance was discretionary. Notwithstanding the

Ordinance of 1787 and the liberal provisions of the Constitution

of 1802, the legislature did nothing until 1821, when a statute was

passed providing that the townships should be divided into "Dis-

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OHIO IN MCGUFFEY'S TIME: RIGHTMIRE          125

 

tricts" in each of which a committee should be chosen to operate

the "District School." This committee of school "Directors" did

little to establish common schools under this statute, which lacked

coercive provisions.

In 1825 the legislature, under the educational leadership of

Nathan Guilford of Cincinnati and Putnam of Marietta, decreed

a county tax for the common schools and tightened the duties

imposed upon the directors a few years before. This statute was

obtained only by "log rolling" with the supporters of a bill to

appropriate money for canal building. Since this money was in

the State treasury already and was derived from the sales and

leases of Section 16, it belonged to the common schools, and

"swapping" of votes was necessary to turn it over to canals, giv-

ing to the schools a county tax instead. Probably the enthusiasm

for a new system of transportation outran the urge for education,

and, if so, it is excusable in the light of the conditions hereinbefore

set forth. But in the next few years the statute was amended

frequently and substantially with a resulting confusion among

school authorities as to their powers and duties. Vitality in the

school system was "low" and we seemed to be in the "backwash"

of the trading of votes; but canal building was under way, so why

worry? By 1837 the support for common schools was rallied

again, and the legislature provided for a chief educational officer

for the entire State, calling him the Superintendent of Education

of Ohio. The new Superintendent was from Cincinnati, where

he was well known as an intelligent promoter of schools--Cincin-

nati being far ahead of any other section of the State in its public

schools--Samuel Lewis, who became a crusader with all the de-

termination and enthusiasm of Godfrey of Bouillon, and Pope

Urban. In one summer and autumn he rode on horseback over

Ohio, more than 1,500 miles, visited 300 schools, made innumer-

able addresses to all kinds of citizens, learned what the people

were thinking and hoping, and out of all these experiences he

shaped a magnificent report which so interested the legislature

that it sat for two evenings to hear him read and explain it.

Tradition says that William Holmes McGuffey shared this devoted

labor and service with him.

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Out of this came the notable school legislation of 1838, which

codified the school laws, and created the Equalization Fund, which

in later times has become the life-blood of the Ohio common school

system. But notwithstanding these masterly efforts, Ohio did not

achieve an adequate school code until 1853, eight years after Mc-

Guffey left Ohio. This code abolished "rates" for school attend-

ance, and made schools "free," adequate and responsive, so far as

legislation could do so. In these early times most of the teaching

was indifferent; teacher training had not yet arrived, and the

whole school procedure was primitive, and administration de-

sultory. A better condition was found in some of the more im-

portant cities where a closer community spirit was more solicitous

and creative.

Privately established academies provided a secondary educa-

tion and furnished the training needed to qualify for college study.

Of course these were supported by the fees, and flourished until

the public high school began to make its appearance in the 1850's.

Fourteen such academies were established by 1820 with a wide

distribution over the State.

The first colleges were on a public foundation: Ohio Univer-

sity at Athens, founded in 1804, but having its first graduates

eleven years later; Miami University at Oxford, founded in 1809,

but not substantially organized and ready to function until 1825,

and accordingly McGuffey was one of its earliest faculty members.

Ohio, however, became a college State because of the educational

enthusiasm of the religious denominations, and in the '20's and

'30's six such permanent colleges were established. Other colleges

were established in this period which were somewhat ephemeral,

so that the total number is given variously in the records. Each

decade thereafter down to the present day expanded the number.

For long years the attendance of students was very small, and

by 1840 the total number at sixteen colleges, which the authority

reports at that time, was 1,577, and many of these were sub-fresh-

men. By 1859 there were twenty-two colleges reported with a

total attendance of 3,800 students, of whom 2,100 were sub-fresh-

men. It must be said that the chronology of the founding of Ohio

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OHIO IN MCGUFFEY'S TIME: RIGHTMIRE         127

 

colleges is baffling, because of changes in name or scope, or both,

of many of them, so that the number just mentioned will be found

to include some that later passed away or some that assumed full

college rank only at a later date. But the total attendance is tiny,

when one considers the growing population of the State: in 1800,

45,360; 1810, 203,760; 1820, 581,434; 1830, 937,903; 1840, 1,-

500,000 (approximately). That means 1,577 students in a popula-

tion of a million and a half; Ohio was not yet college conscious.

The great mass of this population was below Wayne's Boundary

Line, as were almost all of the colleges.

School Books

Note for a moment some of the text-books to be found in the

common schools in the '20's and '30's: Lindley Murray's gram-

mar and reader, S. G. Goodrich's ("Peter Parley") readers, Ly-

man Cobb's juvenile readers, the New England Primer, and Noah

Webster's speller. Of educational moment also are the publishing

houses of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Louisville; in Cincinnati alone

in 1826 there were printed almanacs, readers, arithmetics, Bibles

and other religious books, Ohio Reports and others, mounting any-

where from 500 copies of Reports to 61,000 almanacs. Cincinnati

was a great distributing center. By 1840 there were 159 printing

presses and 40 binderies in Ohio, and so the means of producing

books and newspapers were generously present in the State but

distribution lagged and a general public interest was scarcely in-

choate.

McGuffey's Activities and Influence

When McGuffey came to Miami University in 1826 he was

just beginning a vigorous youth; he came from the cultural influ-

ences of Washington County in southwestern Pennsylvania. He

knew Greersburg Academy, Washington College, Jefferson Col-

lege, and the other centers of education and social life which had

been stimulated there for forty years by the Presbyterian Church

and a line of remarkable individuals. This elevation of spirit he

brought with him and his students and associates increasingly be-

came the beneficiaries of his impressive personality. One of his

favorite teaching activities, voluntary, was training the young men

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in virile English composition and public speaking--not the artificial

flowery system that has so often made its way under the name

"elocution," but the straightforward, sincere speaking which con-

vinces by its substance and clarity, not by its forced dramatic

flavor.

He believed in common schools with good teachers, and iden-

tified himself with efforts for an adequate school law providing

organization, county taxation, and State "Equalization." He was

a prime mover in a teachers association for the development of

professional training and opportunity, and a professional spirit

solicitous of the highest type of educational service. Such ideals

brought him into the group of eminent Cincinnatians, including

such remarkable spirits as Dr. Daniel Drake, the Beecher family,

Calvin E. Stowe, Charles Hammond, Edward D. Mansfield,

Samuel Lewis, and Joseph Ray of arithmetic fame.

He knew the rural and urban society, sensed deeply the need,

as well as the desire, for cultural stimulus, and thought that this

want could best be supplied by carefully selected, skilfully graded,

and illustrated readings, which in the general intellectual lag of

the pioneer era would meet the interests and pleasure of persons

of all ages.

The Cincinnati publishing house of Truman and Smith, which

was directly succeeded by a long line of firms of different names,

carried on their business on an expanding scale, which opened to

them the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Michigan,

Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. When they brought out McGuffey's

readers they faced a potential market of nine million people. Mc-

Guffey and the publishers knew conditions of living through these

states, and were familiar with the emotional urge and the social

starvation made evident by the sweep of religion through the west-

ern settlements; they saw the need as intellectual education, the

provision of the imponderables in the rather drab, work-a-day lives

of the middle-west people. McGuffey's readers furnished school

lessons, home training, and pleasure for more than fifty years.

Their simple moral and social teachings could never be forgotten,

and the select literature of the higher volumes satisfied and stimu-

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OHIO IN MCGUFFEY'S TIME: RIGHTMIRE         129

 

lated the cultural cravings of the adult. History nowhere else re-

cords such a civic, social and cultural phenomenon.

Any man who makes a notable contribution to the life of his

time and to posterity, must be recorded as not only a creator, but

also a creation of his times, a product of the environment and the

forces which make it what it is. McGuffey played this dual role;

he took the past under tribute and transmitted its spiritual riches

in a remarkable organization to a generation in need, and in want,

and eager to appropriate them. Today, a century after his readers

began to appear, McGuffeyism has become almost a cult.

Society believes in memorials; it establishes "Halls of Fame."

In the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, the

parapet has twenty niches, each furnished with a statue of the

"man of the century" down to the twentieth, which will await its

occupant until the year 2,000 A. D. No one is chosen hastily and

the fierce glare of the appraising years thus reveals the dross or

the pure gold of character in each selection. New York University

sponsors a Hall of Fame, to which the great ones, determined pe-

riodically by rigid choice, are ceremoniously admitted. Statuary

Hall in the national Capitol is designed for two representatives

selected by each state from among its greatest men and women.

To be sure, the McGuffey Elms at Ohio University are an

enduring memorial to William Holmes McGuffey; the McGuffey-

ana at the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society Mu-

seum, at Miami University, at the Detroit Public Library, and at

the Ford Museum in Dearborn, are memorials of deep recognition

and stirring interest. But there is still lacking an imposing statuary

group for which McGuffey's life and work provides an inspiring

study. Your pure sentiment has already formulated such a plan

and is enthusiastically carrying you forward to its fruition.

No man fits more constructively and understandingly into his

era than does McGuffey; the people of eight great mid-western

states became his beneficiaries and the sale of his readers reached

the stupendous total of one hundred forty-five millions. Does not

he, like Horace's Minerva, merit a "monument more enduring than

bronze," a hallowed niche in a "Hall of Fame"?

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