Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co. Issued to and Signed twice by Simon F. Rothschild - 1915 dated Autographed $10,000 Bond

$10,000 4 1/2% Gold Bond printed by American Bank Note Company, Philadelphia. Issued to and signed at back and on transfer sheet by Simon F. Rothschild.

Simon Frank Rothschild (June 14, 1861 – January 5, 1936) was an American merchant and philanthropist who served as president and chairman of the board at Abraham & Straus. Rothschild was born on June 14, 1861, in Eufaula, Alabama, the son of Amanda (née Blun / Blün) and Frank Rothschild. He spent most of his childhood in Columbus, Georgia. His grandfather, Nathan Blun, was a prosperous merchant in New York City and Rothschild's family moved to Manhattan in the 1870s. Rothschild attended P.S. 35, the Packard School of Business, and then graduated with a degree in business from the College of the City of New York. In 1878, he went to work at his grandfather's manufacturing business and in 1887, he founded S.F. & A. Rothschild with his brother.

On April 1, 1893, Rothschild in partnership with Nathan Straus and Isidor Straus (who was married to Rothschild's aunt, Ida Blun Straus), bought out Joseph Wechsler's interest in Wechsler & Abraham, co-founded by Rothschild's father-in-law Abraham Abraham, and changed the store's name to Abraham & Straus. The Straus' family provided most of the financing for the transaction as they were flush with cash after their acquisition of a general partnership with Macy's department stores in 1888. Abraham's son, Lawrence Abraham, and son-in-law, Edward Charles Blum, also joined the partnership. Rothschild become vice president in 1920, president in 1925, and chairman of the board in 1930. In 1928, while president, Rothschild began a $7.8 million expansion of the Fulton Street store which opened on October 10, just days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Also in 1929, Rothschild presided over the merger of Abraham & Straus with Filene's, Lazarus, and Bloomingdale's to form Federated Department Stores. In order to preserve jobs during the Depression, all Abraham & Straus employees took a 10% pay cut; as a result, no employees were laid off. Abraham served as chairman until his death in 1936.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (reporting marks B&O, BO) was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal (which served New York City) and another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania, which would have connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland, with an original line built from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into Virginia (now West Virginia) over the Potomac River, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. From there it passed through Virginia from Harpers Ferry to a point just west of the junction of Patterson Creek and the North Branch Potomac River, where it crossed back into Maryland to reach Cumberland. From there it was extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling and a few years later also to Parkersburg, West Virginia. It continued to construct lines into Ohio, including a junction at Portsmouth. In later years, B&O advertising carried the motto: "Linking 13 Great States with the Nation." As part of a series of mergers, the B&O is now part of the CSX Transportation (CSX) network. The B&O also included the Leiper Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U.S. At the end of 1970, the B&O operated 5,552 miles of road and 10,449 miles of track, not including the Staten Island Rapid Transit (SIRT) or the Reading and its subsidiaries. It includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the United States. When CSX established the B&O Railroad Museum as a separate entity from the corporation, it donated some of the former B&O Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore, including the Mt. Clare roundhouse, to the museum, while selling the rest of the property. The B&O Warehouse at the Camden Yards rail junction in Baltimore now dominates the view over the right-field wall at the Baltimore Orioles' current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Part of the B&O Railroad's immortality has come from being one of the four featured railroads on the U.S. version of the board game Monopoly. It is the only railroad on the board that did not directly serve Atlantic City, New Jersey. (Wikipedia)

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