By LINDA M. LINONIS

By LINDA M. LINONIS
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- At one time, the National Federation of McGuffey Societies boasted a membership of 100,000. Now, there are 50 members.
They belong to the William Holmes McGuffey Historical Society based in Youngstown, where the organization's namesake lived and learned at a parson's school on Wick Avenue.
Counted among the number are five McGuffey relatives -- Faye Lyons, Laurel Mills, Helen Bair Owen, Tom Rogers and Dan Smith.
The membership, led by president Richard S. Scarsella, is dedicated to keeping McGuffey's legacy as "the schoolmaster of the nation" alive.
McGuffey authored "Eclectic Readers," first published in 1836 and never out of print since. Scarsella said the books "appeal to people on many levels." The series, Scarsella said, was dedicated to "literacy for illumination of the mind, body and spirit." And the books, self-evident in their success, have touched the minds of millions. The books became the standardized reading text for most schools across the United States during the mid- to late 19th century.
Why were they so successful? Scarsella said one reason is that the books didn't "dumb down" to their audience. Instead, McGuffey's well-written and engaging text, illustrated by pictures, motivated readers to want more. McGuffey taught his readers by using ideas of thrift, hard work, patriotism, evil and good and other virtues, and social, economic and political tenets in realistic situations and scenes.
Teaching tool
For example, A is for Ax is the first lesson in the First Reader. The ax, often seen as the tool that tamed the American frontier, also was associated with the hard work ethic of settlers on the frontier.
Scarsella said McGuffey expounded the idea of education as "self-improvement" and that education was "a privilege and not an entitlement." His books, Scarsella said, "reflect the American dream" of attaining goals through hard work.
McGuffey also did something unusual for the times ... he "tried out" his lessons on neighborhood children before using the material in his readers. One might say he tested his product with a market sampling of a small group before publication.
Group's effort
Preserving this vital piece of local lore is the mission of the society members, who include current and retired teachers and others with a love of local history.
The society doesn't maintain its own building, so the McGuffey archives are stored and displayed at the Melnick Museum in the D.D. and Velma Davis Education and Visitor Center at Mill Creek Park and at the Butler Institute of American Art.
The group meets four times a year and relies on member support and other donations. It does have fund-raising projects including the sale of coupon books. The society was able to buy the archives, collected by Mrs. Owen of New Wilmington, Pa., with those funds.
Mrs. Owen's great-grandmother, Harriet McGuffey Love, was one of 12 sisters of William Holmes McGuffey. She said the archive information was collected over a period of some 20 years or more when she, her mother, Clara Spear Thomas, and her aunts Mary McGuffey Spear and Helen Spear Thomas visited libraries in Philadelphia, York and Harrisburg, Pa., where the McGuffey family had lived.
Alexander McGuffey, father of sons William Holmes, Alexander Jr. and Henry, was an Indian scout in The French and Indian War, Mrs. Owen said. As payment for this service, Alexander received the property eventually known as the McGuffey Farm located in the Coitsville area.
Mrs. Owen credits Scarsella with keeping the historical society going. She added that the book, "William Holmes McGuffey: Schoolmaster to the Nation" by Dolores P. Sullivan of the Youngstown area, also is a tribute to McGuffey.
Making known his rich history and educational contribution is important, Mrs. Owen said. "I'm very much pleased that the McGuffey Readers are still in print. So many people have used them to teach their children to read. And the Amish schools also used them," said Mrs. Owen, who also was a teacher.
Mrs. Owen also noted that automaker Henry Ford admired McGuffey's "Eclectic Readers" and published a set in the 1920s through the American Book Co. In the early 1930s Ford invited the McGuffey extended family to Dearborn Inn in Michigan for a stay, Mrs. Owen recalled. One of the McGuffey cousins, Betsy Ernst, forgot a long slip to wear under her evening gown and subtstituted a nightgown. "We square danced and were wined and dined by Mr. Ford," Mrs. Owen said. "And Betsy liked to tell the story about how she danced with Mr. Ford in her nightgown."
Mrs. Owen also explained that McGuffey wrote the first four readers and a primer and speller. His younger brother, Alexander Jr., wrote the fifth and sixth readers after being contacted by a Cincinnati publishing company.
Other efforts
The historical society is not the only organization preserving McGuffey's legacy. The William Holmes McGuffey House Museum in Oxford holds McGuffey readers, spellers, primers and other memorabilia. This is the house where the McGuffey family lived while the head of the household was a professor at Miami University. It also has the octagonal table on which McGuffey wrote his readers.
Scarsella started another project to preserve the McGuffey heritage. A teacher at East Middle School, he has involved fifth- and sixth-graders in a letter-writing campaign to the U.S. Postal Service to have McGuffey commemorated on a stamp.
In another way, storyteller Regina Rees, a teacher at Warren G. Harding High School in Warren, helps promote the McGuffey legacy. She met Scarsella at a community event, and the two shared an appreciation of McGuffey "as a pioneer in literacy," Rees said.
The storyteller has a repertoire that includes a couple of her favorite McGuffey lessons. She has performed for the society and has used McGuffey stories in presentations to community organizations and for students. Capitalizing on her natural instinct for telling stories, Rees said she sometimes uses costumes, hats, puppets ... "whatever it takes" and "depending on what the story requires" to get the message across.
Though not an official member of the society, Rees said she appreciates the society's mission to keep the McGuffey legend alive. "He contributed so much to education ... and even how students learn to read today," she said.
Rees admitted that some of McGuffey's moral messages may not be politically correct in today's world, but how he used fiction, nonfiction, vocabulary and phonetics as teaching tools is something special.
"I think we need to remember McGuffey ... he's one of the best-kept secrets of the area," Rees said.
linonis@vindy.com
XContact information: Write the society at P.O. Box 9561, Youngstown, Ohio 44513. Call (330) 726-8277.