Having begun its career in 1841 with an address to the reader, Robert Merry’s Museum ended its reign as 19th-century America’s premier children’s magazine with an announcement of its merger with Youth’s Companion. The Museum’s subscription list may have dwindled over the years; the Civil War certainly didn’t help. (Southern readers didn’t always have enough money after the War to resubscribe.) The new—and more impersonal—direction the magazine took after Horace B. Fuller bought it in 1868 might have alienated some long-time subscribers. November 9, 1872, a major fire in Boston destroyed the Museum’s offices (and, apparently, Fuller’s career as a publisher; he never quite recovered financially). The merger with the Companion probably was arranged much earlier: the announcement was dated November 1, the subscriber lists must have gone to the Companion’s offices before the fire, and November issue included the last two chapters of the serial running that year.

http://www.merrycoz.org/museum/MERGER.xhtml
“Announcement” (from Robert Merry’s Museum, November 1872)

[Transcriber’s note: This announcement, printed on yellow paper, was stitched into the last issue of Robert Merry’s Museum.]

ANNOUNCEMENT.

The Publisher of Merry’s Museum announces its discontinuance with the issue of the present number. He has made an arrangement by which it will be merged into the Youth’s Companion, and the subscribers will be furnished for their unexpired terms with that paper. The price of the Companion is the same as that of the Museums.

The Publisher feels assured that his friends and readers will find in the Youth’s Companion all of the qualities that have pleased them in this Magazine, and in addition, other attractive features which have made the Companion one of the most interesting and popular publications in the country. Its enormous circulation, almost one hundred thousand copies, enables the publishers to secure many of the finest writers of the day, and we hope our readers will not fail to renew their subscriptions to the Youth’s Companion for 1872, as we feel assured it cannot fail to please them.

We have labored hard to improve the character of Merry’s Museum, and shall always hold in kind remembrance the many commendations which we have received from its readers.

By our new arrangement all are to be benefited, and this thought lessens the sorrow of saying to one and all,

FAREWELL!

BOSTON, Nov. 1, 1872.

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