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Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad Co. issued to Sidney Dillon - Stock Certificate

Inv# AG2210   Stock
Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad Co. issued to Sidney Dillon - Stock Certificate
State(s): Ohio
Years: 1889

Power of attorney at annual meeting of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad Company signed by Sidney Dillon.

 

Sidney Dillon (May 7, 1812 – June 9, 1892) was an American railroad executive and one the nation's premier railroad builders.

Dillon was born in Northampton, Fulton County, New York. His father, Timothy, was a farmer.

Sidney Dillon began his career in the industry working as a water boy on the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, one of America's earliest railroads, for its construction from Albany to Schenectady, New York.

In 1840, he went into business for himself, forming his own construction company, and obtaining the construction contract for the Boston and Albany Railroad.

He was actively involved in the construction of numerous roads, his largest being the Union Pacific Railroad, with which he became actively involved in 1865 through an equity exchange with the Crédit Mobilier of America corporation.

Crédit Mobilier of America was a company set up by the Union Pacific to defraud United States taxpayers in the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The result was the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal, which exposed an over-invoicing and a stock and bond share-pricing scheme, whereby Union Pacific officers and directors, including Dillon, profited by manipulating the share price of Crédit Mobilier of America's stock shares and bonds, padding invoices to the U.S. Government, and bribing congressmen with shares in Crédit Mobilier of America, cash and other perks.

As one of the principal contractors for the Union Pacific, Dillon's vast experience in the construction of railroads proved invaluable. He took part in the "golden spike" ceremony of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, receiving one of the ceremonial silver spikes used to complete the project. Following 1870, Dillon was primarily known as a financier, becoming involved with Jay Gould in numerous ventures as well as serving on the board of directors of the Western Union Telegraph Company. He finally served as President of the Union Pacific Railroad from 1874 to 1884, and again from 1890 until his death in 1892.

In 1841, Dillon married Hannah Smith (1822–1884) of Amherst, Massachusetts. The couple had two daughters:.

  • Cora A. Dillon, who married Dr. Peter B. Wyckoff in 1875.
  • Julia E. ("Julie") Dillon, who married Josiah Dwight Ripley on May 28, 1862. After his death, she married Gilman Smith Moulton on March 1, 1894.

Dillon died at his home at 23 West Fifty-Seventh Street in New York City, after a twelve-week illness, at the age of 80. Funeral services were held at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church (55th Street and 5th Avenue) on June 13. He is interred under a distinctive Celtic cross at Woodlawn Cemetery in Bronx, New York.

Through his daughter Julia, he was the grandfather of Sidney Dillon Ripley I (1863–1905) and Louis Arthur Dillon Ripley (1878–1958), himself the father of Dillon's great-grandson Sidney Dillon Ripley II (1913–2001), a noted ornithologist, conservationist and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution for twenty years.

The Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad (CH&D) was a railroad based in the U.S. state of Ohio that existed between its incorporation on March 2, 1846, and its acquisition by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in December 1917. (This railroad should not be confused with the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railway, an Ohio interurban of exactly the same name which existed between 1926 and 1930.) It was originally chartered to build from Cincinnati to Hamilton, Ohio, and then to Dayton, a distance of 59 mi (95 km); further construction and acquisition extended the railroad, and by 1902 it owned or controlled 640 mi (1,030 km) of railroad. Its stock and bond value plunged in late 1905 after "financial mismanagement of the properties" was revealed.

The original CH&D was founded by John Alexander Collins, who was born on June 8, 1815 in Staffordshire, England. He came to the US as a child in 1825, and worked as a locomotive engineer until moving to Ohio in 1851 to open the CH&D. Collins remained with the line until 1872, six years before his death in Covington, Kentucky. Collins is buried in Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, where his tombstone details his life and its work.

The railway received a charter from the State of Ohio on March 2, 1846 as the "Cincinnati and Hamilton Railroad". The name was changed by the legislature to the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railway on February 8, 1847. Work on the road began in 1850, and by September of that year the right of way had been obtained between Cincinnati and Hamilton, with the right of way between Hamilton and Dayton being sought. The road was graded by this time as well, since iron for the rails had arrived. By May 1851, the entire right of way was purchased and grading along the entire route finished. The first trains ran on September 18, 1851: Two special inaugural trains from Dayton met two special inaugural trains from Cincinnati at Hamilton.

On May 1, 1863, the CH&D leased the Dayton and Michigan Railroad in perpetuity. In 1891, it acquired the Cincinnati, Dayton and Chicago Railroad, while in March of that year it added the Cincinnati, Dayton and Ironton Railroad.

In 1886 the CH&D was among the railroads controlled by the financial speculator Henry S. Ives before his spectacular collapse the following year.

The Dayton and Michigan was the second railroad to reach Lima, Ohio, reaching there in 1858. By 1880, they had established a significant shop facility on the north side of town with over two hundred employees. The Detroit and Michigan had a freight depot west of the tracks and south of East North Street, between North Central Avenue (once Tanner Street) and North Jackson Street. Successor CH&D built a larger structure on the site, which continued to be used by the Baltimore and Ohio at least into the 1950s. The passenger depot followed a similar pattern, but was located farther north, between East Wayne Street and the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks.

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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: $360.00