1866 Johns Hopkins signed B&O Railroad Stock Certificate for Sale

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1866 Johns Hopkins signed B&O Railroad Stock Certificate For Sale

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1866 Johns Hopkins signed B&O Railroad Stock Certificate:
$79.50

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company

Beautifully printed post Civil War Era Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Stock Certificate No.32775issued toP Mathewsfor10shares onJuly 24, 1866.  Document is hand signed byJohnsHopkins,Chairman of the powerful Finance Committee of B&O who signed the certificate as President Pro Tem. Johns Hopkins foundedThe Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University located in Baltimore.

The certificate has a vignette of a wood burning locomotive pulling a freight train flanked by vignettes of lovely ladies. Certificate has an embossed B&O Railroad Co. corporate seal in the lower left corner as well as Revenue Stamps on both sides of the certificate. Officerssignatures are punch canceled including that of Johns Hopkins and otherwise, the certificate is in very fine condition.

Johns Hopkins

Johns Hopkins, philanthropist, born in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, May 19,1795; died in Baltimore, December 24, 1873. His parents were Quakers, and their son was trained to a farming life, but received a fair education. At seventeen years of age he went to Baltimore, became a clerk in his uncle's wholesale grocery store, and in a few years accumulated sufficient capital to establish himself in the grocery trade with a partner. Three years later, in 1822, he founded, with his two brothers, the house ofHopkins and Brothers. He rapidly added to his fortune until he had amassed large wealth.

Retiring from business as a grocer in 1847, he engaged in banking and railroad enterprises, became a Director inThe Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and, in 1855, chairman of its finance committee. Two years afterward, when the company was seriously embarrassed, he volunteered to endorse its notes, and risked his private fortune in its extrication.

In March, 1873, he gave property valued at $3,500,000 to foundThe Johns Hopkins Hospitalwhich, by its charter, is free to all, regardless of race or color, presented the City of Baltimore with a public park, and gave $3,500,000 to foundThe Johns Hopkins University, which was first proposed by him in 1867, and was opened in 1876, embracing schools of law, medicine, science, and agriculture, and publishing the results of research by professors and students. At his death he left a fortune of $10,000,000, including the sums set apart for the endowment of the university and hospital, which were devised to the trustees in his will.      