Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Company
—Mr. Henry Ivison, a bookseller at Auburn, N. Y., came to New York City in 1846 and was admitted to the firm of Mark H. Newman & Company. In 1852, a new partnership for three years was founded under the firm name of Newman & Ivison, but the senior partner died before the end of the first year, leaving the business entirely in Mr. Ivison’s hands. Mr. Ivison later bought out the entire interest of the concern and took in as a partner H. F. Phinney of Cooperstown, N. Y., an experienced bookseller and son-in-law of J. Fenimore Cooper. In 1866, Mr. Phinney’s health failed and Messrs. Birdseye Blakeman, Augustus C. Taylor, and Mr. Ivison’s eldest son, David B., were admitted to the firm, which was continued under the name of Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman & Co. Subsequently, on the withdrawal of Mr. Phinney, the firm name was changed to Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co. Mr. Ivison retired from the firm in 1881. In 1890, the business of this concern was purchased by the American Book Company.
In Ivison & Company’s Almanac for the year 1847 are found advertisements of Porter’s Rhetorical Reader, Newman’s Rhetoric and Elements of Political Economy, Day and Thomson’s Series of Practical Arithmetic, Sanders’ School Readers, Wilson’s Histories of the United States, Bradbury & Sanders’ Young Choir or School Singing Book, Gray’s Elements of Chemistry, and Hitchcock’s Elementary Geology.