The Price-McGill Company, St. Paul
The Merriam Company, St. Paul and New York

In about 1885 Elias Breed and Westcott Price established the St. Paul printing firm of Breed and Price. Charles H. McGill, son of the Minnesota Governor (1887-1889), Andrew R. McGill, had been a classmate of Price. In 1886 or 1887, McGill and Price founded the Price and McGill Company, succeeding Breed and Price.

Sometime later Price-McGill Company was formed and in addition to doing print work, it also published books on its own imprint.

Price-McGill addresses
1892 350-352 Sibley Street
1893-1894 455-473 Cedar Street

In January, 1894 the stockholders of The Price-McGill Company dissolved the firm and established two companies. One was the McGill Printing Company which remained in St. Paul. (By 1897 it was the McGill-Warner Company.) The other was The Merriam Company which was run by Robert H. Merriam as president, Charles H. McGill as vice-president and William Stitt as general manager.

In February of 1894, The Merriam Company bought the New York book jobbing firm of Saalfield & Fitch, thus providing it with a New York base of operations. A. J. Saalfield was vice president. (Note that A. J. Saalfield is different from Richard Saalfield who headed up The Saalfield Publishing Company.)

After several years of activity, in 1897 The Merriam Company went into receivership.

The Merriam Company books have been noted with two imprints:
1894 St. Paul noted on the imprint
1894 and later 67 Fifth Street, New York

Most of the 1894 copyrighted Merriam Company books have not been seen with the "St. Paul" as the imprint on the title page. If these books are discovered in the future, they would be considered the first editions.

These two companies published several juvenile series. The Price McGill (PM) series were reprinted by The Merriam Company (M).