In the spring of 1880 he relocated to Boston and began work in the publishing office of Houghton, Mifflin and Company, at the lowest level.
His patrilineal great-great-great-great-grandfather, Gysbert Opdyck, came from Wesel to New Amsterdam and Connecticut, and married a daughter of Richard Smith who was one of the earliest and most prominent settlers of Rhode Island.
[3] Updike's work as an errand boy for Houghton, Mifflin and Company introduced him to the publishing trade, and he rapidly took an interest in the process of book-making.
Updike was responsible daily for carrying proofs from the printer's offices on Park Street on Boston's Beacon Hill to the Riverside Press overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge.
[4] In 1893 Updike opened his own studio, designing type fonts; in 1896 he founded a printing company, the Merrymount Press (named in honor of Mount Wollaston—the original Merry Mount—an early settlement south of Boston).
In 1904, Updike purchased the Caslon face; other types included Scotch Romans, Janson, Mountjoye, and Oxford.
However, the Press also printed Christmas cards, bookplates, and advertising ephemera, as well as work for publishers, libraries, churches, and other institutions.
Merrymount catered to an upper class clientele that appreciated the high quality products Updike produced (and that were not available through ordinary bookmaking houses).
Updike was motivated to excel, and the press established a reputation for delivering only the very best obtainable typography, impression, illustrations, and binding.
This firm had been preceded at Merrymount by Crowell which catered to a wider range reciprocal buyers, not solely from a cultural standing perspective, as did some of its competitors.
He was involved in the Anglo-American 'Typographical Renaissance' of the time, together with Frederic Goudy, Stanley Morison, Bruce Rogers, and Theodore Low De Vinne.