378 - Andrew Carnegie and Thomas A. Scott Signed 1873 Pennsylvania Company Stock Certificate

Andrew Carnegie and Thomas A. Scott Signed 1873 Pennsylvania Company Stock Certificate Partly-printed DS, one page, 11.25 x 7.75, July 1, 1873. Stock certificate marked as "No. 41," issued to Andrew Carnegie for 60 shares of common capital stock in the Pennsylvania Company, signed at the conclusion by Thomas A. Scott as president and William H. Barnes as secretary. The reverse is signed in bold ink by Carnegie on October 16, 1874, transferring his 60 shares to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The lower left is signed by Gardner F. McCandless as a witness. Includes the detached original receipt, recording the issuance of Certificate No. 41 to Carnegie for 60 shares. In fine condition, with trimmed edges, and cancellation holes to the lower section. Thomas A. Scott hired the 18-year-old Andrew Carnegie in 1853 as his personal telegraph operator in the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pittsburgh office, becoming an important early mentor in his business career. In 1856, Scott alerted Carnegie to ten shares of Adams Express Company stock then coming available; Carnegie's mother mortgaged the family home to finance the $500 purchase, an early investment that began producing dividends for the young railroad employee. Scott and Carnegie later invested together in the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company, before Carnegie left the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1865 to pursue his rapidly expanding business interests. The Pennsylvania Company, incorporated in 1870 to manage the Pennsylvania Railroad's interests west of Pittsburgh, elected Scott as its president in 1871. This certificate, issued to Carnegie for 60 shares on July 1, 1873, is therefore signed by his former mentor as president of the Pennsylvania Company. Less than a year later, Scott succeeded J. Edgar Thomson as president of the Pennsylvania Railroad itself. Carnegie's transfer of all 60 shares to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, signed on the reverse on October 16, 1874, came just months into Scott's presidency of the railroad, where Carnegie had begun his career more than 20 years earlier.