Raquette Lake Railway Co. issued to William C. Whitney and signed by W. Seward Webb - 1902 dated Autograph Railroad Stock Certificate

Stock issued to William C. Whitney and signed by W. Seward Webb as president. Portrait and biography included. 

William Seward Webb (January 31, 1851 – October 29, 1926) was a businessman, and inspector general of the Vermont militia with the rank of colonel. He was a founder and former president of the Sons of the American Revolution. Webb was born on January 31, 1851, to James Watson Webb and Laura Virginia (née Cram) Webb (1826–1890). Among his many siblings was Alexander Stewart Webb, who was a noted Civil War general who married Anna Elizabeth Remsen; Henry Walter Webb, also a railway executive who married Amelia Howard Griswold; and George Creighton Webb, a Yale Law School graduate and attorney in New York with Saunders, Webb & Worcester who did not marry.

He studied medicine in Vienna, Paris and Berlin. Returning to America, he entered the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and graduated from there in 1875. In 1881, he married Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt, the daughter of William Henry Vanderbilt. For several years Webb practiced medicine; then forsook the profession for finance at the behest of his wife's family, establishing the Wall Street firm of W. S. Webb & Co. In 1883, Webster Wagner, the president of the Wagner Palace Car Company, was crushed between two of his own railroad cars. William Vanderbilt owned a controlling interest in the company, and asked his new son-in-law to take over the firm. William Seward invited his brother H. Walter Webb to join him, which started them both on careers in the railroad business. The Wagner Palace Car Company was subsequently merged with the Pullman Company. 

W. C. Whitney (1841-1904) An American political leader and financier and founder of the prominent Whitney family.

William Whitney was born at Conway, MA of Puritan stock. He graduated from Yale University in 1863 then studied law at Harvard, and practised with success in New York City. He was an aggressive opponent of the Tweed Ring, and was actively allied with the anti-Tammany organizations, the Irving Hall Democracy of 1875-1890, and the County Democracy of 1880-1890, but upon the dissolution of the latter he became identified with Tammany.

He married Flora Payne, the sister of his wealthy Yale classmate Oliver Hazard Payne. Through his marriage to Flora Payne, Whitney gained enormously important corporate contacts.

In 1875-1882, he was corporation counsel of New York, and as such brought about a codification of the laws relating to the city, and successfully contested a large part of certain claims, largely fraudulent, against the city, amounting to about $20 million, and a heritage from the Boss Tweed regime.

In 1883, he became involved in a bitter struggle for control of the Broadway Railroad company, eventually gaining control by entering into an alliance with Thomas Fortune Ryan and Peter A. B. Widener. Whitney remained active in street railway affairs until his appointment as Secretary of the Navy (1885-89), in which post he was instrumental in the rebuilding of America’s naval forces.

During President Cleveland's first administration (1885-1889), Whitney was United States Secretary of the Navy and did much to develop the United States Navy, especially by encouraging the domestic manufacture of plate armor.

In 1892, he was instrumental in bringing about the third nomination of Cleveland, and took an influential part in the ensuing presidential campaign. In 1896, however, disapproving of the "free-silver" agitation, he refused to support his party's candidate, William Jennings Bryan. Whitney took an active interest in the development of public transport in New York, and was one of the organizers of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company. He was also interested in thoroughbred horse racing and established a racing operation with a string of race horses, competing against the successful stable of business associate, James R. Keene. A breeder of twenty-six American stakes winners, in 1901, Whitney won England's Epsom Derby with Volodyovski, leased by him from Lady Meux.

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