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Belding Heminway Co., Inc. - Stock Certificate

Inv# GS1287   Stock
State(s): Delaware
New Jersey
New York
Years: 1970's
Color: Orange, Brown, or Blue
Stock printed by Security-Columbian Banknote Company. Vignette of 2 female figures seated on each side of a kitten playing with a spool of thread. Please specify color.

Nonotuck Silk Company was a business producing silk thread at a mill in Haydenville, Massachusetts. It was established as the North Hampton Silk Company and operated by members of a utopian society active in abolitionism. The company acquired the Corticelli Silk Mills in Leeds, Massachusetts and became the Corticelli Silk Company. Advertisements included trading cards and a billboard ad campaign on Broadway in New York City.

In 1832, Samuel Whitmarsh planted 25 acres (10 ha) of mulberry trees in Florence, Massachusetts in order to raise silkworms. Whitmarsh opened a silk mill in nearby Leeds, Massachusetts and it was briefly run as a communal project by the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community of abolitionists who believed that the rights of all should be "equal without distinction of sex, color or condition, sect or religion".

Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became a nationally known advocate for equality and justice, was a member of this community (she had moved to Florence in 1843). After the community dissolved in 1846, she bought a house on Park Street, where she lived until 1857. A memorial statue was erected in her honor in Florence in 2002.

The business was Northampton's largest employer for decades.

In 1855, Samuel L. Hill, the spiritual leader of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, invented a machine that could spin silk smooth enough to be used in sewing machines. After the commune dissolved, Hill took over the factory and ran it as the Nonotuck Silk Company. Hill's home at 31-35 Maple Street in Florence served as a stop for the Underground Railway. The company changed its name again and as the Corticelli Silk Company grew to be one of the world's largest producers of silk thread. The thread was made with raw silk imported from Japan. In New York City, the Corticelli logo—a kitten playing with a spool of thread—loomed over Broadway from a huge electrical sign at 42nd Street between 1910 and 1913. In 1922, the Nonotuck Silk Company and the Brainerd and Armstrong Company merged and ten years later the Corticelli Silk Company merged with the Belding-Hemingway Company. The company went out of business in 1930.

Grove Hill Mansion was built in 1880 for one of the company's directors.

The Smithsonian Museum of American History has a collection of their trade catalogs.

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Condition: Excellent

A stock certificate is issued by businesses, usually companies. A stock is part of the permanent finance of a business. Normally, they are never repaid, and the investor can recover his/her money only by selling to another investor. Most stocks, or also called shares, earn dividends, at the business's discretion, depending on how well it has traded. A stockholder or shareholder is a part-owner of the business that issued the stock certificates.

Item ordered may not be exact piece shown. All original and authentic.
Price: $10.00