Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Rail-Road Co. Issued to and Signed by A.G. Jerome - 1857 dated Railway Stock Certificate

Stock Issued to and signed front and back by A.G. Jerome.

Addison G. Jerome, Securities Broker. By 1863, he had amassed a fortune in the stock market and had established his own banking house which enjoyed great success due to his enviable and very well-deserved reputation on Wall Street. Later his luck changed and he died virtually penniless.

Henry Keep formed a partnership with LeGrand Lockwood, co-founder of Lockwood & Company. The firm was one of Wall Street's leading brokerage houses, Lockwood was a longtime ally of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Together, the two men manipulated the stock of the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad in the 1850s, buying large quantities whenever they forced the price down. They won control of the company in 1859. On April 25, 1860, Keep was elected to its board of directors. He served as its treasurer from 1861 to 1863. Keep solidified his hold on the company in 1863 by breaking Addison G. Jerome, who controlled a majority of the company's stock. Keep noticed that the board of directors was authorized to issue up to 14,000 shares in new stock. Keep called a secret meeting of the board, which excluded Jerome, and the board authorized the issue. Keep began selling small numbers of these shares, and Jerome began buying them up in an attempt to force Keep off the board of directors. To finance his purchases, Jerome engaged in short sales of stock. Keep then dumped the majority of the 14,000 shares on the market, causing the price to drop significantly. Jerome lost $3 million covering his short sales, and was financially broken. (He died a year later.)

On July 8, 1853, the Ohio and Indiana companies merged, and on February 7, 1855, the Northern Indiana and Chicago Railroad and the Buffalo and Mississippi Railroad were merged into the Northern Indiana Railroad. On April 25, 1855, that company in turn merged with the Michigan Southern Rail Road to form the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad. In October 1867, the Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad leased the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad. The CP&A changed its name to the Lake Shore Railway on March 31, 1868, and on February 11, 1869, the Lake Shore absorbed the Cleveland and Toledo. On April 6 the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad and Lake Shore merged to form the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway, which absorbed the Buffalo and Erie Railroad on June 22, giving one company the whole route from Buffalo to Chicago. The main route passed through Dunkirk; Erie; Ashtabula, Ohio; Cleveland; Toledo; Waterloo, Indiana; and South Bend. An alternate route (the Sandusky Division) in Ohio ran north of the main line between Elyria and Millbury (not all track was laid until 1872). From Toledo to Elkhart, the Old Road ran to the north, through southern Michigan, and the through route was called the Air Line Division or Northern Indiana Air Line. Along with various branches that had been acquired (see below), the Monroe Branch ran east from Adrian, Michigan, to Monroe, where it intersected the leased Detroit, Monroe and Toledo Railroad. At some point the original line to Toledo was abandoned west of the branch to Jackson, Michigan (Palmyra and Jacksonburgh Railroad), with the new connection at Lenawee Junction, the crossing between that branch and the line to Monroe. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Shore_and_Michigan_Southern_Railway

Read More

Read Less