Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co. Issued to and signed by Henry Oppenheimer and Transferred to E.H. Harriman - 1899 dated Autographed Stock Certificate

Stock issued to and signed on back by Henry Oppenheimer of London and transferred to E.H. Harriman.

Harry Frederick Oppenheimer OMSG (28 October 1908 – 19 August 2000) was a prominent South African businessman, industrialist and philanthropist. Oppenheimer was often ranked as one of the wealthiest people in the world, and was considered South Africa's foremost industrialist for four decades. In 2004 he was voted 60th in the SABC3's Great South Africans. Harry Oppenheimer was the chairman of Anglo American Corporation for 25 years and chairman of De Beers Consolidated Mines for 27 years until he retired from those positions in 1982 and 1984 respectively.

In his 1983 The New York Times interview with Oppenheimer, Joseph Lelyveld wrote that Oppenheimer "more than anyone else has managed to preserve and strengthen the economic ties binding Johannesburg to Western financial centers."

He was also politically engaged, opposing racial discrimination and police-state methods during the apartheid era. He was a reformist in that he supported full trade union rights for black workers: "I do not believe that blacks will ever be brought to accept that the organisation of labor which is regarded as right and necessary for white workers, not only in South Africa but throughout the Western world, is not suitable for them." He served as Member of Parliament for Kimberley (1948 to 1957) with the United Party. He also became the opposition spokesman on economics, finance and constitutional affairs. In the 1970s and 1980s he subsequently financed the anti-apartheid Progressive Federal Party that later merged into the Democratic Alliance. In September 1985, he was one of 91 business leaders that signed a newspaper advertisement calling for an end to apartheid and negotiations with "acknowledged black leaders" on power sharing.

Oppenheimer also maintained cordial relations with African statesmen, such as Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda, dining at their official residences. He had more distant relations with the leadership of the ruling National Party in South Africa. In 1982 his house guest was Henry Kissinger and when the pair were invited by P.W. Botha to the Official residence, Libertas, it was the first time that he had dined there since 1948.

Through De Beers, he maintained extensive business interests on the continent, with diamond mines operating in Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania and Angola. Anglo American was also the premier company in neighbouring Zimbabwe.In a special agreement with the Soviet Union, De Beers sold Soviet diamonds through a London-based organisation. In the 1970s and 1980s, Oppenheimer capital was also used to found or purchase many businesses in Europe, the United States and Australia. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Oppenheimer

Edward Henry Harriman (February 20, 1848 – September 9, 1909) was an American financier and railroad executive. Harriman was born on February 20, 1848, in Hempstead, New York, the son of Orlando Harriman, Sr., an Episcopal clergyman, and Cornelia Neilson. He had a brother, Orlando Harriman, Jr. His great-grandfather, William Harriman, had emigrated from England in 1795 and became a successful businessman and trader.

As a young boy, Harriman spent a summer working at the Greenwood Iron Furnace in the area owned by the Robert Parker Parrott family that would become Harriman State Park. He quit school at age 14 to take a job as an errand boy on Wall Street in New York City. His uncle Oliver Harriman had earlier established a career there. By age 22, he was a member of the New York Stock Exchange. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._H._Harriman

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