An American college professor and president who is best known for writing the McGuffey Readers, the first widely used series of elementary school-level textbooks. More than 120 million copies of McGuffey Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary.
In between jobs as a teacher, he attended and graduated in 1826 from Washington & Jefferson College, where he became an instructor. He was close friends with W&J’s President Andrew Wylie and lived in Wylie’s house for a time; they often would walk the three miles to W&J together.