[3] Bartlett moved to New York City in 1836, where he became a partner in the dry goods commission house of Jesup, Swift and Company.

[2]: 7  While in New York, he became friends with a number of leading intellectuals, including the ethnologist and public servant Albert Gallatin.

[4] Bartlett is known in the field of lexicography for his Dictionary of Americanisms (1848), a pioneering work that, although supplanted by later dialect studies, is still of value to students of language and remains a valuable contribution to the subject.

Bartlett was criticized for accepting many men who had no relevant skills to offer the survey and did not flourish while traveling and camping in the West.

[7] Some group members were more useful; in addition to the professional surveyors, there were four botanists and four zoologists who made significant collections.

The autoethnonym of the Seri people of northwestern Mexico, Comcaac (which he wrote as "komkak"), was first recorded by Bartlett during a short visit to the area in early 1852.

[5] He remained Boundary Commissioner from 1850 to 1853, when the Whig Party lost power upon the accession of President Franklin Pierce.

In the later years of his life he became the librarian for the John Carter Brown Library and collated an exhaustive catalog of the collection that was published in four volumes.