BUTLER INSTITUTE Historic letters have good home

Other McGuffey items are at Mill Creek Park and at a Michigan museum.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- On her most recent visit to the Butler Institute of American Art, Helen Bair Owen left with a happy tear in her eye.
"I can't believe it," she said. "I just can't believe it."
"Are you happy?" asked friend Richard Scarsella.
"Oh, I'm happy. I'm floating on air," she answered.
Scarsella is president of the William Holmes McGuffey Historical Society of Youngstown. Bair is a member, and the 92-year-old great-niece of McGuffey.
During the June museum visit, the duo donated to the Butler letters written by McGuffey and other family members. The letters will support a portrait of McGuffey that was also donated.
The portrait, circa 1960, came from the collection of Tom Rogers of Youngstown, Scarsella said. It was painted by Mildred Garver.
'Eclectic Readers'
McGuffey, 1800-1873, was the son of Alexander and Anna (nee Holmes) McGuffey of Coitsville Township. Beginning in 1836, McGuffey began to publish a set of seven "Eclectic Readers" that educated generations of schoolchildren.
"McGuffey is a giant in social and cultural history," Scarsella said. "The reader has educated more Americans than any other in American history."
The educator's letters had been kept by Owen's great-grandmother, Harriet Love, of Sharon, Pa., who was McGuffey's sister, until her death in 1921. They have never been seen by researchers or historians until now.
After Love's death, the letters were retrieved by Owen and an aunt.
Over the years, Owen kept them at her New Wilmington, Pa., home and feared that they would be lost or damaged by fire. The society bought them five years ago and transferred them to a safety deposit box as society members searched for a more suitable home.
Among the items are McGuffey's 1870 will, letters written to his sisters and letters written by his brother, Alexander McGuffey, a Cincinnati attorney. Alexander McGuffey also wrote an anthology of literature that was turned into the Fifth Eclectic Reader and the Sixth Eclectic Reader, because the publisher knew they would be big sellers.
Christmas-day letter
Among those dear to Owen's heart is a letter McGuffey wrote to his sister on Christmas Day, 1865, after the Civil War, when he was a teacher at the University of Virginia. The letter tells of the devastation the war caused newly freed slaves who had nowhere to go. McGuffey feared thousands would die by the next Christmas.
Scarsella read an excerpt and placed the yellowed handwritten letter on a table.
"Isn't that a heart-wrenching story?" he said.
Another letter is written by Alexander McGuffey to sister Nancy, the youngest of the 12 children, who was attending Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa.
Owen laughs when she hears his words: The brother tells Nancy that her forays into public speaking are unacceptable for a woman, unless she wants to "unsex" herself.
As Owen signed the letters over to the Butler, she told stories about the great-grandmother who received many of the letters and read them aloud to her family. She was a "little biddy" with a "nasty disposition," Owen said. She was, however, very intelligent and a good speller -- a son-in-law who was an attorney tried to slip her up on new aviation terms during World War I, but she spelled every one correctly. The great-grandmother died when Owen was 11, but she still remembers that the woman often sat rocking by a bay window with her sister, Margaret.
Owen told of the days when her mother and aunts would plan visits around the country to dig up genealogy. And she told of how the family tree bug bit her, and how she was elated when she and an aunt went to the University of Virginia and saw the home where McGuffey lived with his wife, Laura.
Very appreciative
Dr. Louis Zona, executive director of the Butler, said the museum was honored to accept the letters.
"The contributions [McGuffey] made were monumental as far as education is concerned," he said. "And the fact that he is from Youngstown should make us very proud."
He referred to the letters as "precious items that should be preserved in our community." Although the Butler focuses on American art, he added, it is also "steeped in American history" and the letters are an appropriate tie to that history.
The artwork and letters will be displayed in the library of the Beecher Center addition.
Donating assets
Scarsella said the society has been donating its assets because its membership is shrinking and those left want to ensure that items stay in the area and are accessible to those seeking history.
The 78-acre McGuffey farm in Coitsville was donated to Mill Creek Park and is now the McGuffey Historical Preserve. Other archives are at the Melnick Museum in the Davis Visitor and Education Center at Mill Creek Park's Fellows Riverside Gardens. The letters would have been there as well, but the museum lacks a curator and temperature-controlled archives.
Other items, including a McGuffey schoolhouse and a replica of the Washington County, Pa., home in which he was born, are kept at the Henry Ford Museum & amp; Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich.
Scarsella said the letters also were in danger of leaving the local area because there was little interest from agencies the society approached. Then, the Butler stepped in.
"You have no idea how thrilling it is to know all this stuff I have valued over the years is in safekeeping," Owen said.