Daniel Berkeley Updike

Daniel Berkeley Updike (February 24, 1860 – December 28, 1941) was an American printer and historian of typography. In 1880 he joined the publishers Houghton, Mifflin & Company, of Boston as an errand boy. He worked for the firm's Riverside Press and trained as a printer but soon moved to typographic design. In 1896 he founded the Merrymount Press.

Beginnings

Daniel Berkeley Updike was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on February 24, 1860, the only child of Caesar Augustus Updike (1824–1877) and Elizabeth Bigelow Adams (1830–1895); he left school when his father died on October 9, 1877. Updike first assisted at a local library after the librarian had taken ill. 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.

Updike's parents were both of English and Dutch-German descent. His mother, who held more traditional views of life, strongly influenced the young Updike. His father's family, the Updikes, were originally from Wesel in present-day Germany and settled New Amsterdam before 1640. 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. For over 150 years, the seat of the Smith-Updike family was "Smith's Castle" on Narragansett Bay at Wickford, Rhode Island, but his grandfather, the Honorable Wilkins Updike (1784–1867), was forced to sell the homestead in 1812, thereafter practicing in Kingstown, Rhode Island.