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Frontpage of Martin G. Brumbaugh's The Standard First Reader, Christopher Sower Co., Philadelphia, 1898.
Credit: Public Domain
Heralded as the "Hercules of the Educational World," Martin Brumbaugh was Superintendent of the Philadelphia Public Schools when he published The Standard First Reader, in 1898. Highly successful, his reader embodied the traditional values of its author, who was a man of faith and a pacifist. Brumbaugh would serve as the Governor of Pennsylvania from 1915-1919.