Ohio History Journal

MAUCK BRAMMER

Winthrop B. Smith: Creator of the

Eclectic Educational Series

William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) is generally credited with the phenomenal

spread of moral eclecticism throughout the United States during the middle third

of the nineteenth century. Much of the credit should go, however, to his canny

publisher, Winthrop B. Smith, who was the first to recognize the evocative magic

of the word "eclectic" as an advertising device. He also wrested complete owner-

ship of the McGuffey readers from the author, and he and his partner, William T.

Truman, parlayed it into the beginning of an incredibly successful series of text-

books based on the eclectic concept. Starting from scratch in 1833. W. B. Smith

by 1868 had developed the world's largest textbook house through a succession of

partnerships. These included the following: Truman & Smith (1833-1843); W. B.

Smith (1843-1845); W. B. Smith & Co. (1845-1863); and Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle

(1863-1868). Smith's aggressive business policy, however, was motivated not so

much by belief in an educational philosophy as by the ambition of a Connecticut

farm boy to become a financial success.

Cincinnati, during the time of Smith's residence, in spite of the cattiness of Mrs.

Trollope, was the "Queen City of the West." With a population of nearly 25,000

in 1830, it could boast of more than strategic and transportational virtues. By this

time there were numerous public, private, and parochial schools, academies, and

colleges. Public libraries and a number of circulating libraries served the descen-

dants of a mixed European population. Music, both sentimental and highbrow, was

popular, and one theater could claim 800 seats. There were picture galleries, the

beginning of an art museum, a Haydn Society, several literary clubs, and a very

active group of booksellers, printers, and publishers. "By the 1830's," wrote Walter

Sutton, "Cincinnati was the recognized capital of the western book trade,. . . ."2

Too frequently rough privations of frontier living are associated with lack of

culture. This was certainly not true of Cincinnati in 1833 when W. B. Smith arrived.

1. American Book Company is a direct descendant from Truman & Smith, having been formed in

1890 by the descendants of textbook concerns discussed in this text plus Wilson, Hinkle & Co. (1868-

1877) and Van Antwerp Bragg & Co. (1877-1890) together with three New York concerns, Iuison,

Blakeman & Co., A. S. Barnes & Co., and D. Appleton & Co.

This paper is adapted from Mauck Brammer, "American Book Company: Our Heritage and Our

History." A typescript is in the New York office of American Book Company.

2. Walter Sutton, The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati As a Nineteenth-Century Publishing and

Book-Trade Center (Columbus, 1961), 67.

Mr. Brammer is retired managing editor of American Book Company.

46                                                                  OHIO HISTORY

At the time, the city was astir with intellectual groups well aware of the cultural

refinements of the East and even of Europe. This was particularly true in educa-

tion. Largely through the efforts of Dr. Daniel Drake, one of Cincinnati's early

leaders and historians, and other intellectuals in and about Cincinnati, the College

of Teachers was founded in 1834 as a discussion group and was later known as the

Western Literary Institute. They brought together the leading exponents of educa-

tion from Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana, and Tennessee

into what was the "first important teachers' association in America."³ Among these

educators were the three authors upon whose work W. B. Smith was to found his

colossus of textbook publishing: Joseph Ray, a medical doctor and mathematics

professor at Woodward College in Cincinnati; William Holmes McGuffey, a Pres-

byterian minister and professor of language and moral philosophy at Miami Uni-

versity (1826-1836); and Alexander Hamilton McGuffey, William's brilliant younger

brother who had been graduated from Miami at sixteen, was professor of "Belles

Lettres" at Woodward, and was reading law.⁴

About this time an evocative new concept in education, the eclectic method origi-

nating in France, was adopted by the teachers' association. The philosophy of Eclec-

ticism, formulated by the Frenchman Victor Cousin, attempted to reconcile all

philosophies, ancient and modern. Cousin's educational theories became immensely

popular and appeared in English translation in Boston in 1832 and quickly spread

westward. In practical use his disciples simplified the theories to the basic meaning

of eclectic, that is, a selection containing "the best in each and greater than any."⁵

It was thus that Eclecticism came to include the generally accepted moral precepts

of the time, as separate from debatable church theology, and was a doctrine largely

accepted by the mixed European nationalities of the Midwest and South.

In 1833 Winthrop B. Smith chose the Queen City as the site for his first business

venture. In a document from the American Book Company files, probably largely

dictated by him, entitled "Copy of Paper Furnished by W. B. Smith, March 26th,

1876," he tells his own story:⁶

Winthrop B. Smith, son of Anthony Smith [and Rebecca Clarke Smith], of Washington,

Litchfield Co., Conn., was born in Stanford, Conn., 28 Sept., 1808 where his Father tem-

porarily resided. When Mr. Smith was two years old his Father returned to his native

Washington, [Conn.], where he continued to reside until his death at the age of ninety-two.

The son, subject of this sketch, continued in Washington, was brought up on a farm,

receiving a New England Common school education. At the age of sixteen [he] went to

New Haven, apprenticed as a clerk to the mercantile house of Jonathan Nicholsen & Co.

When twenty-one [he] went to Boston where he was employed as a bookkeeper in a lead-

ing publishing house. With a natural fondness for books, and book-publishing, of which

he seemed to have an almost intuitive knowledge, in 1833 [he] went to Cincinnati and en-

gaged in the business of book selling with the late Mr. W. T. Truman, with whom he was

associated for a short time.⁷

3. Harvey C. Minnich, William Holmes McGuffey and His Readers (New York, 1936), 23.

4. Henry H. Vail, A History of the McGuffey Readers (Cleveland, 1911), 36-37.

5. Minnich, McGuffey and His Readers, 65-68.

6. W. B. Smith, "Copy of Paper Furnished by W. B. Smith, March 26th, 1876." The original of

this paper is not known to the author. An unpaged handwritten copy is in the New York files of

American Book Company.

7. The Boston firm is not named in any papers in the company's files or archives. It is significant,

in view of Smith's final success as a stockbroker, that he learned his bookkeeping with this firm. Italics

not in original.

Winthrop B. Smith                                                       49

In a letter of August 22, 1833, to Durrie & Peck of New York and New Haven,

ordering two hundred dozen spellers, Mr. Smith laments the effects of an outbreak

of cholera on business as leaving it "dead, dead, dead." Undismayed, however, he

continues: "We have just moved to a pretty good store and we design to do a snug,

careful, and safe business. We intend to trust no man unless we have the means of

knowing him well, and then not for long."11

By the spring of 1834, Truman & Smith had extended their business to book

publishing. They began with "careful, and safe" ventures--two devotional works,

a hymn book and a children's Bible. By the midyear, however, they had published

two textbooks, one a regional reissue of a Roswell C. Smith English grammar and

the other a work in arithmetic by a Cincinnati teacher, Joseph Ray. The Ray arith-

metic book was to start W. B. Smith on his way to success. It was the first American

textbook to include the word "eclectic" in its title and thus became the founder of

the Eclectic Educational Series, the title Smith thereafter used to identify all his

publications.¹²

An original work by Joseph Ray of Woodward College, An Introduction to Ray's

Eclectic Arithmetic, was registered for copyright in the Federal District Court of

Ohio on June 21, 1834, and actually deposited on July 4. Its immediate success led

Truman & Smith to consider a full Eclectic Educational Series, and they immedi-

ately began a search for an author for an eclectic set of readers. Their first attempt

was to interest Catherine Beecher. She had recently come to Cincinnati for a rest,

joining her family there after pioneering in higher education for women in the

East, only to be persuaded to open the Western Female Institute at Cincinnati.

Since Miss Beecher was mainly interested in higher education, she turned down

the offer. Lyman Beecher and his son-in-law, Calvin E. Stowe, members of the

Western Literary Institute and College of Professional Teachers, hearing of the

opportunity, sent Smith to one of their friends, William Holmes McGuffey of Miami

University at Oxford, Ohio, where he had been teaching since 1826. McGuffey,

with work already started on readers of his own, accepted the authorship.¹³

To understand W. B. Smith's business acumen it is necessary to look into the

contrasting financial arrangements made with Joseph Ray and William Holmes

McGuffey. By 1834 Ray had given up his practice of medicine and had decided

upon a career of teaching and the writing of textbooks. As Woodward College was

really a high school, his salary for teaching could not have been as much as the

$600 a year McGuffey received at Miami. Even at the low cost of living of those

times, some form of "moonlighting" for extra income was indicated. Ray chose

textbook writing rather than medicine as his major source of income. Like many

other authors, including those of today who have created successful textbook series,

he soon found it necessary to devote his life outside the classroom to revision and

extension of the series. Arithmetic and mathematics texts required much work; they

could not, as in readers for the middle grades, make use of many selections from

popular literature.

On January 2, 1834, Joseph Ray signed a contract with Truman & Smith that

stipulated the writing of two books, a short work for which he was to receive one-

half cent per copy sold, and a larger work for two cents per copy. This royalty was

11. W. B. Smith to Durrie & Peck. August 22, 1833. American Book Company files. Italics not

in original.

12. Minnich, McGuffey and His Readers, 66.

13. Ibid., 31-32.

52                                                            OHIO HISTORY

of McGuffey (and Smith) about copyrights for literary property conveniently pro-

vided an opportunity, they thought, to crush the Truman & Smith threat. On Oc-

tober 1, 1838, Benjamin F. Copeland, publisher, and Samuel Worcester, author,

both of Boston, brought suit through the United States courts against Truman &

Smith and McGuffey for unlawfully copying the plan and much of the contents of

the Worcester Readers. A temporary injunction with a claim for $20,000 in damages

was secured by December 25, 1838, during which time Copeland and other eastern

publishers had rushed eastern-made books West to supplant McGuffey.¹⁸

What a blow this must have been to the self-esteem of that great exponent of

moral philosophy, William Holmes McGuffey! By this time he had left Miami Uni-

versity to take up the presidency of Cincinnati College, a short-lived experimental

school, and was in no position to withstand a scandal. While his friends, among

them Catherine Beecher, rushed to his defense in print, W. B. Smith was more

practical. Since the readers were now Truman & Smith property, Smith hurriedly

compared the McGuffey and Worcester books, and at Truman & Smith's expense

substituted for every selection that might possibly infringe upon Worcester (accord-

ing to H. H. Vail there were seventeen). Working at great speed, the publishers

produced in the three hectic months between suit and injunction a "Revised and

Improved Edition" with which they succeeded late in 1838 to replace the first edi-

tion. Thus, when the legal machinery slowly approached a deadline, Truman &

Smith could prove that the supposedly offending first edition of the McGuffey

readers no longer was in print, but they did appease eastern rivals with the payment

of $2000 damages, only ten percent of their demand.¹⁹ This cost Truman & Smith

two times what they had paid McGuffey for the copyright plus complete resetting

of the type, a heavy expenditure that came at the lowest ebb in W. B. Smith's fi-

nancial career.

Having weathered a cholera outbreak in 1832-1833, a financial panic in 1837,

and the legal battle of 1838, W. B. Smith proceeded undaunted to continue to de-

velop his Eclectic Educational Series. In addition, moderately successful were a

Political Grammar by E. D. Mansfield, the Moral Instructor by Catherine Beecher,

and the Young Minstrel by Lowell and Timothy Mason, but the major properties

continued to be the collection of books in Ray's Mathematics Eclectic Series and

the readers in McGuffey's Eclectic Series.

Before the dissolution of the Truman & Smith partnership, Ray had rewritten

his two original texts into three and provided a key to accompany them, arranging

for continuing royalty payments on all, even on the key. The major additions to

the Eclectic Education Series were, however, in the McGuffey series. A Primer pre-

pared under the supervision of William Holmes McGuffey, for which he accepted

a "satisfactory consideration" in lieu of royalty, appeared late in 1837. Ready in

time for inclusion in the "Revised and Improved Edition" of 1838, it became ex-

ceedingly popular.

A more important addition was the Eclectic Progressive Spelling Book of 1838.

The leading speller of the day was, of course, Webster's "Old Blue-Back," long

since basic to American education, and McGuffey had chosen it for the orthogra-

phy of his readers. W. B. Smith, unable to arrange for the western rights to the

Webster book, decided to have one of his own. William Holmes McGuffey was not

18. Sutton, Western Book Trade, 180-181; Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 42-43.

19. Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 43-45.

Winthrop B. Smith                                                           53

interested in writing it and persuaded his younger brother Alexander Hamilton to

prepare the manuscript. For this work Alexander accepted an outright fee of $500.

Basing his work on Webster and tying it closely with his brother's readers, he added

a new feature by numbering the vowel sounds and then relating the syllables of

words to a combined phonic and numbering system. This speller, issued as part of

the McGuffey Eclectic Series, took its place as a prominent part of the series but

did not become a phenomenal success until after the 1846 revision by Alexander,

assisted by Dr. Timothy Stone Pinneo, the company's house editor.20

With McGuffey now thoroughly occupied in difficult college administration,

Alexander was further persuaded to undertake the preparation of the Rhetorical

Guide, the basis for the later Fifth and Sixth readers, the books which were to form

the literary taste of the Midwest and the South. Those McGuffey adherents who

lament the limited royalty arrangement that the author accepted originally should

note that Alexander Hamilton McGuffey, by this time a lawyer and house attorney

for W. B. Smith, who had seen his brother's work become widely popular in a few

years, still did not hesitate to accept $500 in lieu of all royalty for the Rhetorical

Guide, and even that on a three-part note.21

H. H. Vail has indicated that Smith and Truman did not form an ideal partner-

ship. Smith's apparent propensity for getting involved in legal action over his text-

books, first with the quarrel over the regional publication of Roswell C. Smith's

grammar and then with McGuffey's naive plagiarism, may have disturbed the more

churchly Truman. It is more likely, however, that Truman was most disturbed by

the overpowering egotism and self-centered drive of W. B. Smith. By 1843, what-

ever the reasons, Smith had determined to shed his partner and to try his "almost

intuitive knowledge" of book publishing entirely on his own.

H. H. Vail's story of the dissolution of Truman & Smith is too simple. "It is

said," Vail wrote, "that Mr. Smith went early one morning to their humble shop

on the second floor of No. 150 Main street, and made two piles of sample books.

In one he put all the miscellaneous publications of the firm, big and little--the

Child's Bible and Sacred Harp among them--and on top of the pile placed all the

cash the firm possessed; in the other, were half a dozen small text books, including

the four McGuffey Readers. When Mr. Truman arrived, Mr. Smith expressed the

desire to dissolve the partnership, showed the two piles and offered Mr. Truman

his choice. He pounced on the cash and the larger pile and left the insignificant

schoolbooks for Mr. Smith, who thereupon became the sole owner of McGuffey's

Readers."²²

There are several errors in Vail's account, including placing the date at 1841.

A more significant fact is that there is a document in the American Book Com-

pany's files of dissolution of the partnership, dated April 28, 1843. In that agree-

ment, W. B. Smith demonstrated his utmost shrewdness in a deal that dwarfs any

supposed injustice to McGuffey. That document transfers to W. B. Smith Truman's

half interest in Ray's two [perhaps three] arithmetics, the McGuffey Speller, and

the five McGuffey readers for the astonishing figure of $500 plus Smith's share of

the less popular Truman & Smith text and trade books!²3 Could any Connecticut

Yankee be more astute in business deals?

20. William E. Smith, About the McGuffeys (Oxford, Ohio, 1963), 10.

21. American Book Company contract files in New York.

22. Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 41.

23. "Document of 1843" in American Book Company contract files in New York.

54                                                                  OHIO HISTORY

W. T. Truman took his books and moved out, continuing bookselling and pub-

lishing from 20 Pearl Street, issuing both trade and textbooks, but not for long and

with no great success. Truman died within a few years. His widow then took over

the business and through a new partnership of Truman & Spofford managed to

continue until 1858.24 Smith, however, retained the original shop, revising and ex-

tending his Eclectic Educational Series wherever he could, often on terms favorable

to himself. One way he did this was to have house editors revise and extend the

McGuffey readers as part of their salaried assignment, continuing to pay McGuffey

small fees for his approval and the use of his name.²⁵

It is difficult to realize now that W. B. Smith had a family life, particularly as

he completely ignores it in his 1876 memoir. Through the Methodist Episcopal

Church he had met Mary Sargent soon after his arrival in Cincinnati. The Sargents

were an old New England family who had moved to Philadelphia, and Mary was

the daughter, one of several children, of the Reverend Thomas F. Sargent. Born in

Philadelphia March 26, 1812, Mary had gone to Cincinnati with her family in Oc-

tober 1832,where her father functioned briefly in a new pulpit. Along with Mary

came two younger brothers, both destined to be Smith's partners, Edward Sargent,

born April 2, 1820, and Daniel Bartow Sargent, born December 17, 1824.

Winthrop B. Smith and Mary Sargent were married November 4, 1834, about a

year after the death of her father. Mary and Winthrop set out bravely on the pat-

tern established by her parents, producing eight children in all, four of whom were

to survive to adulthood: Lilian, Winthrop, F. Percy, and Herbert. By 1844, the

Smiths gave up residence in downtown Cincinnati, already overcrowded, rowdy,

and noisy. With the Eclectic Educational Series promising to become a bonanza,

W. B. Smith was able to purchase seventeen acres on an undeveloped hillside in

Clifton, beautifully situated on a promontory overlooking the city. There he built

an Italianate villa with a square tower and verandas on three sides. Along with

Salmon P. Chase and others, he became one of the incorporators of Clifton as a

village and in time one of "the barons of Clifton."²⁶

In the new firm of 1843, W. B. Smith was the sole owner and proprietor. An

old, untitled, and unsigned manuscript in the company's files summarizes the situ-

ation in 1843. Although the firm had now grown to thirty employees, "the care and

preparation of new books and the revision of old books, the labor of introducing

the books into schools by means of traveling agents, and the manufacture of stock

at first all came upon the head of the firm. He had confidence in himself and in

the success of his enterprise and he strained every nerve and risked every dollar

he had in the world." Even his bitterest critic, Mrs. Alice McGuffey Ruggles, ad-

mits that "he himself worked like a beaver, . . . ."27

W. B. Smith, however confident, could not go on very long doing everything.

The untitled document continues, "he gradually brought around him those whom

24. Sutton, Western Book Trade, 188, 340.

25. Miscellaneous documents assigning authorship rights in lieu of "satisfactory consideration" in

American Book Company contract files in New York.

26. The W. B. Smith estate in Clifton Heights was sold in 1868 to his successor Obed J. Wilson,

who christened it "Sweet Home," celebrated it in pedestrian verse, and lived there until his death in

1914. The house was razed in 1967-1968 to make room for a deluxe housing development.

27. Untitled, undated, and unsigned eight-page document in American Book Company files in

New York. Internal evidence shows that it may have been written after the death of W. B. Smith as

notes for a commemoration. Even though it seems to have been prepared as a publicity release, the

source of its publication has not been found; see also Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 98.

Winthrop B. Smith                                                             55

he could trust to perform parts of the work. . . ." Among these were his wife's two

brothers, Edward Sargent and Daniel Bartow Sargent, and Lowell Mason, Jr., a

son of one of his earliest authors. Of most interest to the Educational Series was

the addition of two editors, Timothy Stone Pinneo and Obed J. Wilson.

Joseph Ray, in spite of increasing ill health, continued actively to revise and

extend his series. The burden was great, however, and in 1849, a new contract for

the Little Arithmetic authorized W. B. Smith "to make or cause to be made any

such renewals or revisions as to him may seem proper, without cost to said Ray,

or his heirs, and the revisions, if made during Ray's life, to have his approval." On

April 13, 1855, Ray saw that he could not continue, and gave W. B. Smith complete

control of his seven (or eight) titles but with current contractual arrangements to

continue. Thus Ray and his heirs continued to receive royalties; in 1868, thirty-four

years after the first Ray publication, these royalties amounted to $6,314, the largest

by far for any author of the firm.²⁸

In addition to Ray's original works, W. B. Smith continued to add titles to the

Ray Mathematics Course within the overall Eclectic Educational Series, now a gen-

eral title for all Smith publications, whatever their nature, until that series provided

best-selling works from beginning arithmetic to calculus. Not surprisingly, these

new authors were given royalty contracts that terminated with the life of the

copyright.

Had McGuffey, like Ray, devoted most of his life to revision and extension of

his series under a continuing royalty contract, he would in 1868 have been drawing

even more than Ray. While it is impossible to estimate accurately what the total

may have been, it could hardly have been less than $500,00029 and might have

been twice that amount by McGuffey's death in 1873. Why were the facts so dif-

ferent? First, it is evident that McGuffey considered textbook writing a side issue

to teaching, lecturing, and preaching when he signed his first contract in 1834.

Second, the 1838 accusation of plagiarism had a lasting effect on his interest in

further attempts at eclecticizing. "However others may have felt, Dr. McGuffey

was embarrassed and confused by the lawsuit," revealed two of the Timothy S.

Pinneo descendants.³⁰ Third, during the period from 1836 to 1843, Dr. McGuffey

had more than he could handle in the presidencies of Cincinnati College (1836-

1839) and Ohio University (1839-1843); the problems were largely economic and

political and were becoming too much for a financially naive moral philosopher.³¹

He had been, therefore, more than willing to let his brother Alexander pinch hit

for him and to accept the direction of W. B. Smith in the future management of

his series, receiving fees for advice, promotional appearances, and any other such

chores as W. B. Smith found desirable.

With W. H. McGuffey no longer available for creative work and with his brother

Alexander beginning to show more interest in his law firm than in teaching and

28. Handwritten copy of Wilson, Hinkle & Co. Royalty payments for 1868 preserved in American

Book Company contract files in New York.

29. Assuming arbitrarily that the Joseph Ray royalties had averaged the same since 1834, the total

would have been $216,676. By 1848 the Ray heirs were drawing royalties on seven works. The McGuffey

readers had by this time tripled the Ray series in number, although four of them were paying royalties

to Dr. Pinneo. It is easy, therefore, to understand the complaint of Mrs. Ruggles that W. B. Smith

had outsmarted McGuffey of millions.

30. Jean Gregory Byington and Alice Gregory Powys, "An Inside Story of the McGuffey Read-

ers," Elementary English, XXXX (November 1963), 744. This statement gains validity when it is real-

ized that it is made by direct descendants of Dr. Pinneo.

31. Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 83-84.

56                                                             OHIO HISTORY

ghost-writing, W. B. Smith solved his problem by hiring a house editor to do the

work, Timothy Stone Pinneo, whom he engaged in 1843. Pinneo, another Con-

necticut product, the son of a prominent minister, had the advantages of a Yale

University education. With ambition to become a doctor temporarily stalled by

pulmonary troubles, he tried his hand at poetry and drama. Unsuccessful at that,

he did find improved health through winters in Florida and Maryland and was

able to continue his studies, completing a M.A. at Yale. Sent by his family to Cin-

cinnati, he received his M.D. in 1834 from the Medical College of Ohio. Returning

to Maryland to practice medicine, he eventually became dissatisfied with working

in a slave state and moved to Ohio to teach at Marietta College. There he became

acquainted with W. B. Smith, and in 1843 became a fulltime member of the Smith

organization.32

During his long association with W. B. Smith, Dr. Pinneo was chiefly responsible

for many new publications, extending the McGuffey series into high school, adding

elocution readers,and helping to revise the Spelling Book. All the additions to this

series, according to H. H. Vail, even though written by others, "passed through the

hands of Dr. McGuffey," for which William Holmes, then Professor of Moral Phi-

losophy, first at Woodward College and then at the University of Virginia, received

"satisfactory compensation" in fees. By this time the name of McGuffey had be-

come more meaningful than the term "eclectic," and all the revisions and additions

continued to carry his name as author. In time, even Alexander Hamilton McGuf-

fey's name was dropped (with his own approval) from the Spelling Book and the

Fifth Reader, and the public was led to believe by the canny Mr. Smith that Wil-

liam Holmes McGuffey was the author of all the books.³³ It may be interesting to

note that Dr. Pinneo secured royalty contracts from W. B. Smith for the High School

Reader, the two Eclectic Speakers, a revision of the Spelling Book, and a grammar

of his own, contracts that brought him $983 in 1868. Only the Elementary Gram-

mar, however, was published under the Pinneo name.

By the time Dr. Pinneo returned to the East in 1862, W. B. Smith had trained

Obed J. Wilson to take his place. Another New Englander, this time from Maine,

Wilson had gone West after graduation from Bloomfield Academy to become a

teacher in Cincinnati. In 1851, he joined W. B. Smith as a traveler and quickly

became both chief of the agency and chief editor. Marrying a fellow Cincinnati

teacher, Amanda Landrum, and finding themselves childless, the two devoted their

lives to editorial and literary work, being chiefly responsible for the McGuffey

revisions of 1863, 1865, and 1866. Wilson devoted his major energies to becoming

part of the firm. Neither he nor his wife appear in the 1868 royalty list and their

names do not appear as authors of any Eclectic Educational Series text.

"At the opening of the War in 1860," the American Book Company's document

continues, "Mr. Smith was infirm in body although vigorous in mind. The first

effect of the opening war was a great depression in business and disturbance of

prices. Materials such as paper, cloth, leather, boards, super, and even the thread

that was used in sewing doubled and trebled in prices."³⁴ The first severe shock to

W. B. Smith was the failure of his New York representative, Clark, Austin, Maynard

32. Vail, History of McGuffey Readers, 47-48; Byington and Powys in "An Inside Story of the

McGuffey Readers," 746-747, appear to suggest an earlier date, possibly 1842.

33. Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 101.

34. Untitled, undated, and unsigned eight-page document in American Book Company files in

New York.

58                                                            OHIO HISTORY

that originally signed by W. H. McGuffey). From W. B. Smith & Co. there were

eight lesser items. The textbooks were A Class Book of Geography by Emerson E.

White; The Young Singer by Locke, Aiken, Mason, and Baldwin; A School Geome-

try by E. E. Evans; The Instructive Speller by D. F. DeWolf; and Object Lessons

[in grammar] by D. M. C. Lilenthal and Robert Allyn. There were two specialties:

Chemistry for Farmers by C. B. Chapman and The Homeopathic Domestic Physi-

cian by J. H. Pulte.

This was the Eclectic Educational Series developed largely by W. B. Smith that

by 1863 had managed to outsell all competitors. Actually, the major income came

from the McGuffey readers, the Ray Mathematics Course, and the Pinneo English

grammars, in that order. Through his "almost intuitive knowledge" of textbook

publishing, his resolve to "trust no man" but himself and his family, his under-

standing of the evocative power of words like "eclectic" and "McGuffey," and his

concentration on mass markets, W. B. Smith had made the Eclectic Educational

Series, in popular appeal, at least, the leading educational instrument of our nation.

"For many years previous to Mr. Smith's retirement," the 1876 document goes on,

"W. B. Smith & Co. had sold millions of copies of school books, every page and

every line of which gave and give healthful, moral instruction to the young. The

influence of such a firm, the untiring enterprise of its founder, the wide extent of

its beneficial effect in supplying a great want can scarcely be estimated."

McGuffey descendants and partisans hint sourly that W. B. Smith retired a

millionaire as a result of sharp dealing with the author. Perhaps the untitled and

unsigned document from American Book Company files may be closer to the truth.

Smith's publishing dynasty, it says, "has been accused of 'retiring a millionaire

every three years' but the facts will hardly justify this saying. Mr. Smith did not

retire a millionaire after his herculean labor of nearly twenty-five years [actually

more nearly thirty] in founding and building up the business. He had a compe-

tency, which he has since made a fortune by the most prudent and skillful man-

agement and he still lives to enjoy the fruits of his labor."⁴⁰

Some idea of his "competency" is given in two arrangements of 1868.41 As his

health continued uncertain and that of one of his brothers-in-law poor, Smith and

Daniel B. Sargent agreed finally to close out their special interests and Edward

Sargent retired from the firm. The amounts received by the three were:

E. Sargent      W. B. Smith      D. B. Sargent

Balance to credit on

private ledger                                  $173,713        $ none listed     $ none listed

Capital stock                                        80,000           50,000           30,000

Estimated share of

profits from Jan. 1

to April 20, 1868                            27,500           10,000            6,000

---------       ----------                            --------

$281,213         $ 60,000         $ 36,000

This record would seem to indicate that W. B. Smith and D. B. Sargent had,

unlike Edward Sargent, withdrawn their balances in the private ledger (dividends

40. Untitled, undated, and unsigned document in American Book Company files in New York.

41. An April 20, 1868 document now in contract files of American Book Company in New York.

Winthrop B. Smith                                                         59

on stock, etc.) annually. Whatever the case, Smith had, including the sale of his

estate in Clifton, a considerable "competency" upon retirement.

The publisher had obviously done much better than McGuffey, although the

moral philosopher did not die poor. Starting sometime during the post-war days,

Alice McGuffey Ruggles reports "the publishers of the Readers had begun to pay

him [McGuffey] a small annuity, as their postwar profit soared. He was able to lay

aside for a rainy day and to help the needy of Charlottesville, white and colored . . .

William had left Laura [his second wife] very comfortably off, provided she was

careful, and she had always been that. She went to live with her spinster sisters,

who kept a private school in Charlottesville. One summer they all three made a

tour of Europe."⁴² And before his death in 1873, McGuffey had made a contract

with Wilson, Hinkle & Co. for a two-volume work on moral philosophy, a task he

was unable to finish, for $500 down against a royalty often percent net on all copies

sold.⁴³

But W. B. Smith was not through as a money-maker in 1868. As Cincinnati no

longer held him, he sold his estate in Clifton to his partner Obed J. Wilson and

moved with his wife and remaining children to Philadelphia, her original home,

where he managed to put his "competency" to work. With his son F. Percy Smith,

he entered a new field: Winthrop and Percy Smith, Brokers in Stocks, Bonds, and

Specie, and Public Accountants of 37 South Third Street. In 1881 this new firm was

described in a local "puff sheet" in glowing terms. "Among the prominent houses,

well known in financial circles, that of Messrs. Winthrop & Percy Smith is among

the most active. . . . The copartners are members of the Stock Exchange, and no

firm in the city has a higher reputation for judgement, business tact and success."⁴⁴

W. B. Smith thus surmounted ill health, extended his fortune, and survived until

December 5, 1885, dying seventeen years after retiring from textbook publishing.

The 1876 company document provides an appropriate epitaph: "Winthrop B.

Smith . . . will long be known and kindly remembered for the good he has done."⁴⁵

42. Ruggles, Story of the McGuffeys, 118, 121-122.

43. Contract preserved in American Book Company's files in New York.

44. Richard Edwards, The Industries of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1881), 129.

45. Smith, "Copy of Paper Furnished by W. B. Smith," March 26, 1876.