Morehouse Barlow Reaches 100th Year of Publishing
Episcopal News Service. [84183]
WILTON, Conn. (DPS, Sept. 13) -- The name has changed -- three times -- and the location has changed -- twice. But after a century, Morehouse Barlow Co., Inc. continues to do what it always has done: publish books, materials and supplies for Episcopal churches in the United States and the wider Anglican Communion.
Linden H. Morehouse started the company in Milwaukee in 1884 because the 14-year old parish Sunday School paper, The Young Churchman, had outgrown his family's dining room table. Leaving behind a secular business career, Morehouse began publishing books and pamphlets and soon opened a religious bookstore.
In 1885, the company took over from The Living Church magazine the publication of a quarterly clergy list known as The Living Church Annual. Through acquisition of similar enterprises, this soon became The Episcopal Church Annual, now the standard reference book for Episcopalians. Fifteen years later, the company was publishing The Living Church itself, and would continue to do so for 52 years. Frederick C. Morehouse, elder son of the founder, and his son, Clifford P. Morehouse, both served as editors of the magazine. In 1952, ownership of the weekly was turned over to a nonprofit corporation.
A name-change to "Morehouse Publishing Company" was made in 1918, three years after the founder's death, both as a tribute and to more accurately represent the company's varied publishing activities. Twenty years later, the name was changed again, this time to "Morehouse-Gorham, Co., Inc." following a merger with Edwin S. Gorham, Inc. a publisher of similar books. Previously, Morehouse had acquired from Gorham the publishing rights to the Churchman's Almanac. Founded in 1830, the Almanac was the oldest yearbook of the Episcopal Church, and its incorporation into the Episcopal Church Annual gives the present edition of that reference a pedigree of 154 years.
Harold C. Barlow, an Englishman who was a close friend of the Morehouse family and an employee of the company since 1924, eventually rose to be vice president and general manager of the company, steering it through severe financial crises. In recognition of his service, in 1959 the name of the company was changed to its present "Morehouse-Barlow Co., Inc."
One of Barlow's prime initiatives was the opening of a store in New York City in 1925, presaging the entire company's move to New York in 1938. By the time of Morehouse-Barlow's 75th anniversary, the company operated bookstores and mail-order centers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago in addition to New York. The stores provided not only books and supplies, but clergy vestments as well, and while Morehouse-Barlow produced many of its own supplies, it offered the wares of other suppliers and books from other U.S. and British publishers.
Direct involvement of the Morehouse family in the daily affairs of the company had ended by 1969, the year in which Harold Barlow's son, Ronald, became its president. At the same time, the nature of the company's business was undergoing significant changes. Curriculum sales, previously a mainstay, dropped off, and prices of materials used in the manufacture of church supplies began to escalate. These factors, in addition to national economic turmoil, resulted in a retrenching of the business. The stores outside of New York were closed in 1970, and book publishing, always a significant part of the business, took on added importance.
Problems inherent in a location in the urban congestion of New York led to the decision to relocate, and on May 3, 1976, Morehouse-Barlow moved to Wilton, Conn. This location provided more space for the company's operations, more reliable pick-up and delivery schedules, and lower costs. The retail activities are headquartered in the ground floor bookstore, with business and editorial offices on the floor above.
George Parkinson Atwater's book, The Episcopal Church, Its Message for Today represents several aspects of the Morehouse publishing program: first published in 1917, it is still available today, after several revisions, with a total of some 310,000 copies in print. A recent major project, the "Anglican Studies Series", is nearing completion, with a projected seven volumes. Other major titles of the past few years include Dennis Michno's A Priest's Handbook, Norman Pittenger's Preaching the Gospel, An Anthology of the Love of God by Evelyn Underhill, and The Hospital Handbook, A Practical Guide to Hospital Visitation by Lawrence Reimer and James Wagner.