Please note that Greenfield Village will close at 3 p.m. on July 2-5 to help facilitate Salute to America programming. Thank you for understanding.

Please note that Greenfield Village will close at 3 p.m. on July 2-5 to help facilitate Salute to America programming. Thank you for understanding.

Henry Ford by the Fireplace at William Holmes McGuffey Birthplace, Greenfield Village, 1940

Contact Us About This
THF126106 / Henry Ford by the Fireplace at William Holmes McGuffey Birthplace, Greenfield Village, 1940
01

Artifact Overview

Part of Henry Ford's love of the past stemmed from his fondness for the McGuffey Readers he had read as a boy. But collecting hundreds of readers was not enough to satisfy his yearning to re-claim this part of his past. In 1932, he purchased the log birthplace of William Holmes McGuffey and moved it to Greenfield Village.

Artifact Details

Artifact

Photographic print

Subject Date

23 September 1940

Creators

Place of Creation

Collection Title

Photographic Vertical File Series

Location

By Request in the Benson Ford Research Center

Object ID

84.1.1660.P.188.28143

Credit

From the Collections of The Henry Ford. Gift of Ford Motor Company.

Material

Paper (Fiber product)

Technique

Gelatin silver process

Color

Black-and-white (Colors)

Dimensions

Height: 8.25 in
Width: 10 in

Keywords
02

Related Artifacts

  • {x.objectKey}-image
    Artifact

    William Holmes McGuffey Birthplace

    This log home is typical of Scots-Irish log structures built in the densely forested area of southwestern Pennsylvania during the late 1700s. Anna and Alexander McGuffey lived here for five years and had three children before moving west to Ohio. Their second child, William Holmes (1800-1873), went on to create the popular Eclectic Readers for frontier schoolchildren.