UNITED STATES OF AMERICA / STATE OF TEXAS / GALVESTON HOUSTON AND HENDERSON RAIL ROAD COMPANY [caption title] by [Railroads] - 1853

NY: Endicott & Co., 59 Beekman St, 1853. Broadside, 44 x 38 cm. Bond No. 891. Old fold lines, blue paper seal of the Galveston Houston and Henderson Rail Road Company at right margin. Vignette of a train chugging across a landscape, trees in the foreground, mountains in the background. A crisp copy. A printed agreement, an "acknowledgement to owe and promise to pay to William Kent or to the holder hereof at the Bankinghouse of Masterman, Peters, Mildred & Co. in the City of London... the sum of One Hundred Pounds Sterling on the first day of December One thousand eight hundred and seventy three together with the interest for the same at the rate of six pounds for every one hundred pounds...." Text of the agreement, enclosed in decorative borders, occupies the upper half of the broadside. Signed in ink by Richard Kimball, President of the Company, M. Gibbin [sp?], Secretary, J.H. Hand, Treasurer, and Wm. J. Valentine, Agent of the Company in Great Britain. Across the text in ink is a note stating the agreement was registered and approved Nov. 30, 1871, and signed [in red ink, name illegible], Master in Chancery. The lower half of the broadside is printed with five columns of Dividend Warrant coupons, each for Three Pounds Sterling "being half yearly interest on Bond No. 891" for 100 pounds sterling. Each dividend warrant, 3 x 6 cm., signed in ink by J.H. Hand, Treasurer. The coupons, designed to be clipped off and redeemed on June 1 and December 1 of each year for the interest accrued. The last two rows of coupons have been detached, folded, but present here, with a hand-written date in the margin of 22 Dec. 1858. Another single coupon from the next row clipped, but present, attached to the broadside with a pin. The Galveston, Houston, and Henderson Rail Road Company was originally chartered on Feb. 7, 1853, and the route from Galveston to Houston was completed in January 1860. According to an article by George Werner in the Handbook of Texas Online, this line, nicknamed "Old Reliable Short Line," was the port of Galveston's only rail connection with the rest of the Texas railroad system. Some of its construction funding came from Galveston and Houston, but the major early financing came from investors in Holland, France and the United Kingdom. During the Civil War, it moved material to and from the blockade runners reaching Galveston. By 1867, bondholders of the original company forced the railroad into receivership and on Dec. 15, 1871 it was sold under foreclosure. [see also: "Vantage on the Bay: Galveston and the Railroads," by Wm. Angel, Jr. (East Texas Historical Journal, Vol. 22, Issue 1, Article 5, 1984)].