The William Holmes McGuffey House is a depository of McGuffey readers, spellers, and primers, and of thousands of children's textbooks published before 1900. In the house are McGuffey memorabilia also. The famous octagonal table upon which McGuffey wrote his readers is here. Most of the furniture in the house belonged to Mrs. Emma Gould Blocker who, through the Blocker Foundation, made possible the restoration of the house and its maintenance by Miami University as the McGuffey Museum.

The Museum stands on Outlot 9, Oxford, which was sold to Robert Blair in 1810 at the first public sale of college lands at the Butler County courthouse. Blair forfeited the purchase, and the same year Merikin Bond of Cincinnati became the second owner. Bond built a small frame house on the northeast conier of the four-acre tract.
 

McGuffey's Eclectic Readers

The next owner was William Holmes McGuffey, who had joined the Miami University faculty in 1826 at a salary of $600 a year. In 1827 he married Harriet Spining of Dayton.  In 1828 he paid Merikin Bond $350 for Outlot 9 and the house upon it. By 1833 McGuffey had completed a two-story brick house of six rooms, joining it to the frame house immediately behind it. The old house continued to be used until some time in the 1930's, when it was moved away. The tax records show that in 1827 McGuffey owned a carriage and a horse. In 1834 he paid taxes on his new house, assessed at $1,800. His carriage was assessed at $80. By this time he was also being taxed on three cows and one horse.  McGuffey left Miami University in 1836 to become president of Cincinnati College.

Professor T. J. Mathews was the next occupant of the house. There is no record of sale to him, but he paid taxes regularly on the house while he lived there. Reuben E. Hills, an Oxford merchant, bought the house in February, 1855. In the same month and year he sold it to J. H. Shuey who built the west wing. From 1839 to 1855 the property had been in the care of McGuffey's brother Alexander, a Cincinnati attorney, who held the property in trust for McGuffey's children.

In 1866 the house and two outlots (eight acres) were purchased by Joseph McCord, a contractor who had been engaged in doing fine cabin work and trim on steamboats in Cincinnati shipyards. Joseph and his brother David built the handsome stairway in the northeast room, thus converting that room into a hall.

They lengthened the front windows of the northwest room and added interior shutters. They replaced McGuffey's portico on the north by a porch extending across the house. What is now the McGuffey Library was Joseph McCord's office. Years later, the McCords closed one window in the west wall of their parlor to accommodate a new mahogany sofa upholstered in horsehair.
 
After Joseph's death two of his children, Frank and Lizzie McCord, purchased the property. They continued to live there until 1883, when they moved to a new house on East Church Street. They did not record their deed to the Spring Street property until 1885.

In 1903, the McCords sold the house and part of Outlot 9 to William A. Beard. The remaining part of the outlot was sold to Miami University in 1916. In 1923 Martha C. Beard became the owner of the house. Two years later she sold the house and the northeast part of Outlot 9 to Wallace P. Roudebush (Miami, class of 1911). Roudebush was on the administrative staff of Miami University from 1911 to 1945, when he became Vice President of Finance. He was Vice President and Treasurer at the time of his death in 1956. Because of his devotion to Miami
University, be was known to friends as "Mr. Miami." In 1958, Mrs. W. P. Roudebush sold the house and lot to Miami University.

Restoration of the house was made possible by the bequest of Mrs. Blocker which set up a foundation in support of a new McGuffey Museum and center of research for Ohio history. Mrs. Blocker died in 1958.
 
In McGuffey's time there were two rows of stately trees east of the house, a delightful place for children to play. It is believed that McGuffey planted the pine tree at the northeast corner of the house, and the bald cypress in the northeast corner of the lawn, also. Until recent years a giant sassafras tree, believed to have been there in McGuffey's time, stood east of the house. Joseph McCord planted a formal garden on the east side of the house. South of the formal garden was a beautiful rose garden and croquet ground. There was a fence of white palings.

 © 2000 by the Butler County Historical Society