He moved to Boston and had his business office at 21 Broad Street, where he sold dry-goods imported from England.

[3] Finally, in 1825, he moved to New York City where he gradually combined the importing of books with the dry-goods trade.

Later, he moved to Clinton Hall, Beekman Street, and devoted himself to the importation and sales of books, abandoning his dry-goods business.

In 1845, he began sending books to Latin America which—despite his lack of contacts—turned out to be a good market for him due to its recent independence from Spain.

The firm's New American Cyclopedia was for 50 years the largest and most widely circulated work of its kind ever produced in the United States.