Van Antwerp, Bragg & Company
—The original firm of which this company was the successor was Truman & Smith, organized about 1834 by William B. Truman and Winthrop B. Smith. On June 2, 1834, this house published an Introduction to Ray’s Eclectic Arithmetic. It was the firm’s first schoolbook. Mr. Truman retiring, Mr. Smith carried on the business of educational publishing in the second story over a small shop on Main Street, Cincinnati. He was the sole proprietor of the McGuffey Readers and his other publications from 1841 until about 1852. He then admitted, as partners, Edward Sargent and Daniel Bartow Sargent, his wife’s brothers, and the firm name became W. B. Smith & Co.
Mr. Smith made an arrangement with Clark, Austin & Smith, of New York, to become the Eastern publishers of the McGuffey Readers, and a duplicate set of plates was sent to New York. From these plates, editions of the Readers were manufactured, largely at Claremont, N. H., bearing on the title page the imprint of Clark, Austin & Smith. The Smith of this firm was Cornelius Smith, a brother of Winthrop B. Smith.
Mr. W. B. Smith retiring, a new firm under the name of Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle was organized April 20, 1863, with Edward Sargent, Obed J. Wilson, and Anthony H. Hinkle as partners, and with W. B. Smith and D. B. Sargent as special partners. In 1866, Mr. Lewis Van Antwerp was admitted as a partner, and on April 20, 1868, the firm of Sargent, Wilson & Hinkle was dissolved. Mr. Sargent retired, and the new firm, Wilson, Hinkle & Co., bought all the assets. Mr. Caleb Bragg in 1871 became a partner in Wilson, Hinkle & Co. On April 20, 1877, the firm of Wilson, Hinkle & Co. was dissolved, and the business was purchased by the new firm, Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., of which Lewis Van Antwerp, Caleb S. Bragg, Henry H. Vail, Robert F. Leaman, A. Howard Hinkle, and Henry T. Ambrose were the partners.
Mr. Van Antwerp retired January 22, 1890, just previous to the sale of the copyrights and plates owned by the firm to the American Book Company. The four active partners in that firm, each of whom had been in the schoolbook business some twenty-five years, entered the employ of the American Book Company. Mr. Bragg and Mr. Hinkle remained in charge of the Cincinnati business, Dr. Vail and Mr. Ambrose went to New York, the former as Editor-in-chief, the latter at first as Treasurer, but later he became the President of the Company.
The most notable books published by these several firms, preceding and including Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co., were McGuffey’s Readers and Speller, Ray’s Arithmetics, and Harvey’s Grammars.