Alumni donate historic book to SU

Adlai J. Amor (left), 1994 Outstanding Sillimanian Awardee, turns over copies of the McGuffey Readers donated by the Chesapeake Bay Silliman Alumni to Dr. Betty Cernol McCann (right), SU president.

The Chesapeake Bay Silliman Alumni (CBSA) donated to Silliman University (SU) two copies of the McGuffey Readers, which are considered a piece of SU history being the first books used during its founding in 1901. 

Adlai J. Amor, 1994 Outstanding Sillimanian Awardee, turned over the copies on behalf of CBSA to SU President Betty Cernol McCann last August 15, 2023 at her office. 

Amor said the CBSA found the copies, both printed in 1901, from a seller in the U.S.

The copies will be kept in the Sillimaniana section of the SU Main Library.

The McGuffey Readers, formally titled McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers, are a series of elementary school reading books compiled by educator William Holmes McGuffey. Widely used in American schools beginning in the 1830s, the McGuffey Readers were designed to teach reading and moral lessons to schoolchildren. 

The book was mentioned in the letter of Dr. David Sutherland Hibbard, founding president of SU, which described the situation when SU first opened in 1901: “There were 15 boys that first morning. The equipment consisted of four desks about ten feet long, two tables, and two chairs, a few McGuffey’s Readers, a few geographies, arithmetics and ninth-grade grammars. I was President; Mrs. Hibbard was the faculty.”

The cover of a McGuffey Reader.

(L-R) Moses Joshua Atega, adviser to the international students in SU; Elmark Gerasol, librarian; Rosalina Dinoy, librarian; Adlai J. Amor, 1994 Outstanding Sillimanian Awardee; Dr. Betty Cernol McCann, SU president; Leo Mamicpic; and Ruben Bokingo, Alumni Affairs director during the turnover of the McGuffy Readers.

A page inside the McGuffey Reader indicating the year it was printed.