ABSTRACT
In 1867 the firm of S. M. Pettengill & Co. was the best known of all the advertising agents then doing business. There were two partners, Mr. Pettengill and Mr. James H. Bates. Bates had a one-third interest in the profits and, by their co-partnership papers, it was stipulated that in case of a dissolution the good will of the business, the firm name, and the books, would belong wholly to Mr. Pettengill. Mr. Bates, if he were living, would be 79 years old in 1905 and Mr. Pettengill three years older. The former died in 1902 and Pettengill about 1893. Their agency being the best known of any then, or at any previous time, in existence, advertisers found that the papers would accept the Pettengill contracts without question or delay, if the price was right, and that there was an advantage on that account in dealing through them. The firm had numerous customers who came to them year after year. Among these were Robert Bonner, Jeremiah Curtis & Son, owners of Mrs. Window’s Soothing Syrup, Dr. J. H. Schenck, who had his name and the words Mandrake Pills painted almost as freely as Hood’s Sarsaparilla was in later years. Still the Pettengill business did not in 1867 exceed in volume the sum of $400,000 per annum.
