Mohawk and Malone Railway Co. Issued to and signed by E.V.W. Rossiter and W. S. Webb - 1892 dated Autograph Stock Certificate

Stock issued to and signed by E.V.W. Rossiter on back and on front by Wm. S. Webb as president. Also transferred to William Rockefeller on back. Only 68 issued of this stock! 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.

Edward Van Wyck Rossiter (1844-1910) President’s clerk for Hudson River Railroad; Treasurer’s office clerk for Hudson River Railroad 1860-67; cashier New York & Harlem Railroad 1867-77. Later treasurer of same company, June 1883 became treasurer and from November 1900 had been Vice President of New York Central and Hudson River Railroad, New York & Harlem Railroad as well as of almost all the lines affiliated with the New York Central Company, also Lincoln National Bank and Lincoln Safe Deposit Company.

William Avery Rockefeller Jr. (1841-1922). William was a cofounder with his older brother John D. Rockefeller of the prominent United States Rockefeller family. William Avery Rockefeller, Jr. was the son of William Avery Rockefeller, Sr. and Eliza (Davison) Rockefeller. He was born in Richford, New York and in 1853 his family moved to Strongsville, Ohio. He was to later build an ostentatious mansion called "Rockwood Hall", now demolished, which was subsequently located within the Rockefeller family estate of "Pocantico", in Westchester County New York. In 1865, he entered the oil business by starting a refinery. In 1867, his brother's company, Rockefeller & Andrews, absorbed this refinery, and in 1870, the company became Standard Oil. William Rockefeller built Standard Oil's vast export business in New York and was responsible for that entire operation. In 1872, he played an instrumental role in settling the battles between the refiner's combinations and the crude oil producers. During this time, he formed close alliances with many of the East's most important oil men such as Henry H. Rogers and Charles Pratt, eventually bringing them into Standard Oil. William was a trustee of the Standard Oil Trust until its dissolution in 1890. Rockefeller, along with Henry Rogers, devised a deceptive scheme which made them a profit of $36 million. First, they purchased Anaconda Properties from Marcus Daly for $39 million, with the understanding that the check was to be deposited in the bank and remain there for a definite time (National City Bank was run by Rockefeller’s friends). Rogers and Rockefeller then set up a paper organization known as the Amalgamated Copper Company, with their own clerks as dummy directors, saying the company was worth $75 million. They then had the Amalgamated Copper Company buy Anaconda from them for $75 million in capital stock, which was conveniently printed for the purpose. Then, they borrowed $39 million from the bank using Amalgamated Copper as collateral. They paid back Daly for Anaconda and sold $75 million worth of stock in Amalgamated stock to the public. They paid back the bank's $39 million and had a profit of $36 million in cash. So, by deceiving Daly, the bank, and the public, Rockefeller and Rogers had made Amalgamated Copper a $36 million profit before the company was even operating. Amalgamated controlled the mines of Butte, Montana, and later became the Anaconda Copper Company. Married to Almira Geraldine Goodsell, he built up the National City Bank of New York, now part of Citigroup. He had 6 children. Upon his death in 1922, he left a fortune estimated at between $150 million and $200 million.

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