Silver, Burdett & Company
—This business was founded by Mr. Edgar O. Silver, April 21, 1885. On September 21, 1886, the firm of Silver, Rogers & Company was organized, M. Thacher Rogers being admitted to partnership. This partnership was succeeded by the partnership of Silver, Burdett & Company, April 16, 1888, consisting of Edgar O. Silver, Elmer E. Silver, Henry C. Deane, and Frank W. Burdett, and on May 2, 1892, the business of the partnership was assumed by the corporation of the same name. Mr. Edgar O. Silver died in November, 1909. In 1910, Arthur Lord was elected Acting President, and in 1914 Haviland Stevenson was made President of the Company.
The date of the first publications of this house was 1885. Among its earliest books were the Normal Music Course and other music books for schools, Farley and Gunnison’s Writing Books, Todd and Powell’s Readers, Stowell’s Physiologies, and Larkin Dunton’s Geographical Readers. For two or three years after its organization in 1885, the house devoted itself almost entirely to the publication of music books for the common and high schools. In 1890, the policy of the house was changed and the list broadened to cover the other subjects in the school curriculum.
Silver, Burdett & Company purchased the business of Potter & Putnam about 1903, and in 1904 that of the Morse Company, adding the lists of these houses to their own.