Phinney Editions

Family Bibles

A major Bible publisher in western New York, H. & E. Phinney was founded in Cooperstown, New York, by two brothers, Henry and Elihu Phinney. Their father, also named Elihu, had started a Cooperstown print shop in the late 1790s, as well as a regional newspaper and a book store. His sons also sold books throughout the region from wagons and even canal boats.

The Phinneys’ Bible publishing business, as noted at the top of this 1840 title page, relied on the firm’s stereotypes of Bible pages, proofed twice for accuracy in their entirety. The younger Elihu once stated that the company produced 154,000 copies of the Bible in Cooperstown in many different editions. About two thirds of these Bibles included the Apocrypha.

Phinney Bibles printed in or before 1848 came from Cooperstown, like this one. At about that time, however, the company acquired more modern presses, several workers lost their jobs, and the plant was destroyed in a fire. The company rebuilt some 200 miles to the west in Buffalo, New York, where additional Phinney Bibles were printed until the late 1850s.

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