Introduction
Born: October 18, 1820, Woodbridge, New Jersey.
Died: July 1896, West Hampton, Long Island, New York, where he was spending the summer.
Buried: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
Born: October 18, 1820, Woodbridge, New Jersey.
Died: July 1896, West Hampton, Long Island, New York, where he was spending the summer.
Buried: Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
Randolph moved to New York City at age 10, and began working as an errand boy in the New York Depository of the American Sunday School Union. He stayed with that organization 21 years, leaving in 1851 to set up his own bookselling business.
The first store Randolph occupied was at 609 Broadway, opposite Bond Street. The location was considered very far up town, as the Appletons, Carters, Charles Scribner, and M. W. Dodd were then clustered around City Hall.
From the first, Randolph made a specialty of religious books, and in his first year republished Hints to Christians, originally published in 1832 by Edward Beecher and Dr. Skinner.
In 1852, Randolph moved to the corner of Third Street and Broadway, where he weathered the panic of 1857.
During the American civil war, he had a profitable business publishing pamphlets, sermons, and addresses dealing with the national struggle. Among other works, he published de Joinville’s report on the Army of the Potomac.
In 1864, Randolph moved further up town to a store on the southeast corner of Broadway and Ninth Street, where he stayed until 1876, when he took a store on the corner of Twentieth Street and Broadway.
After ten years there, he moved to the block on Twenty-Third Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, where he was among publishers such as Putnam, Dutton, Henry Holt, and F. W. Christern.
In 1892 he moved yet again, to 192 Fifth Avenue. He stayed there until he sold his retail business to the Baptist Publication Society and moved his remaining wholesale business to 91 and 93 Fifth Avenue.