After an apprenticeship with D. F. Robinson and Company, twenty-one-year-old Alfred Smith Barnes founded his own publishing firm in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1838. His partner was Charles Davies, a mathematics professor at Trinity College. The company, which became a leader in educational publishing, began with a series of mathematics texts written by Davies. In 1840 the partners moved to Minor Street in Philadelphia; five years later they established the company at 51 John Street in New York. Here they began to publish the National Series of Standard School Books, which included Davies's Arithmetic (1838), James Monteith's First Lessons in Geography (1855), and Richard Green Parker and James M. Watson's The National Fifth Reader (1858). In 1848 Davies sold his interest in the company to Edmund Dwight; Dwight resold it the next year to Barnes's brother-in-law, Henry L. Burr. In 1859 the company's name was changed to Barnes and Burr. The firm expanded its line to include physical education books. The Plymouth Collection of Flymns and Tunes (1855), compiled by Henry Ward Beecher, was the first of many hymnbooks published by Barnes. The firm resumed the name of A. S. Barnes and Company when Burr died in 1865; it moved that year to larger offices at the corner of John and William Streets. The following year Alfred Cutler Barnes, son of Alfred Smith, became a partner; he was made president at his father's death in 1888. Two years later the American Book Company, a firm set up by Barnes and four