William Holmes McGuffey Museum

William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) was a Miami University faculty member  in 1836 when he compiled the first edition of the McGuffey Eclectic Reader in this house. His Readertaught lessons in reading, spelling, and civic education by using memorable stories of honesty, hard work, thrift, personal respect, and moral and ethical standards alongside illustrative selections from literary works. The six-edition series increased in difficulty and was developed with the help of his brother Alexander Hamilton McGuffey. After the Civil War the Readers were the basic schoolbooks in thirty-seven states and by 1920 sold an estimated 122 million copies, reshaping American public school curriculum and becoming one of the nation's most influential publications.