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Extremely Rare and Early Stock Issue # 1 for the Philadelphia Silver & Copper Mining Company

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Mining Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:1,000.00 - 2,000.00 USD
Extremely Rare and Early Stock Issue # 1 for the Philadelphia Silver & Copper Mining Company
SOLD
800.00USD+ (160.00) buyer's premium + applicable fees & taxes.
This item SOLD at 2016 Dec 09 @ 16:57UTC-8 : PST/AKDT
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Stock certificate # 1 issued to Pierce Butler in 1864. Butler was the grandson of one of the wealthiest slave owning families in the South. After marrying a well-known English actress Fanny Kemble, his wife became disgusted with slavery later writing a book. Pierce, by 1859 had made such a wreck of his finances that he decided to sell off some of his "property." On March 2 and 3, 1859, the largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States took place on a rainy racetrack in Savannah. Capturing the event for the New York Tribune, Mortimer Thomson, writing under the pen name Q. K. Philander Doesticks, noted, "On the faces of all [the slaves] was an expression of heavy grief; some appeared to be resigned . . . some sat brooding moodily over their sorrows, . . . their bodies rocking to and fro with a restless motion that was never stilled." When the sale was complete, 429 men, women, and children had been auctioned to the highest bidder, netting more than $300,000 and restoring Pierce Butler to his accustomed affluence. It appears that Pierce put one sixth of his proceeds $50,000 from the sale of his slaves as the first investor (Certificate #1) in the Philadelphia Silver & Copper Mining Company.



The company mining properties were centered around the Colorado River including silver mines in El Dorado Canyon in the Colorado Mining District of what was then Arizona Territory and after 1869 Lincoln County, Nevada; and a copper mine in the Freeman Mining District in San Bernardino County, California across the river from Aubrey Landing. A Rare vignette of a map of the company’s mining claims show location and names the various mines. Signed by secretary August and president Thomas Tilden. Incorporated April 8, 1864 and capitalized at $1,000,000; 20,000 shares at $50 per. Others vignettes include Vertical mine shaft, left. Indian warrior, right. Allegorical California, bottom. The company was formed by eastern financiers including Thomas Tilden, Adolph Hugel, John Potter, William Reich, Alphonso F. Tilden, and Robert Smith. [Reference: Malcolm Bell Jr., Major Butler's Legacy: Five Generations of a Slaveholding Family (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987). See also “Laws of the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Passed at the Session of 1864”, Act 237]. (Smy 10-31-07-2122 P1380) State: California / Nevada City: Date: 1864 FHWAC#: 41374