BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD PRESIDENT SAMUEL SPENCER SIGNED 1887 STOCK CERTIFICATE. CERTIFICATE IS ALSO SIGNED ON VERSO BY SIR CHRISTOPHER ROBERT LIGHTON, 7TH BARONET OF MERVILLE.
**CERTIFICATE IS PUNCH-HOLE CANCELLED, AFFECTING SIGNATURE**
**CERTIFICATE WILL SHIP FOLDED ALONG EXISTING FOLD LINES**
Samuel Spencer (March
2, 1847 – November 29, 1906) was an American civil
engineer, businessman, and railroad
executive. With an education interrupted by service in the Confederate cavalry late in the American Civil War, he completed his education
at the University of Georgia and the University of Virginia.
Spencer spent his career with
railroads, rising through the ranks during the busy growth years of American
railroading in the late 19th Century. He eventually became president
of six railroads, and was a director of at least ten railroads and several
banks and other companies.
Although his career was cut short
when he was killed in a fiery train wreck in
Virginia in 1906, Samuel Spencer is best remembered as the Father of the
Southern Railway System. Spencer, North Carolina, site of the North Carolina Transportation Museum,
was named in his honor.
Samuel Spencer was born on March 2, 1847, in Columbus,
Georgia, to Lambert Spencer and Vernona Mitchell. While still a teenager,
Spencer left the Georgia Military Institute in Marietta to join the Confederate
battle to secede from the Union in the American Civil War.
He served in Captain Thomas Nelson's Rangers, an independent cavalry unit, and
then with General Nathan
Bedford Forrest's cavalry, which had some success in
disrupting the communications lines of the Union Army.
When
the war ended in 1865, Spencer left military service and enrolled in the University of
Georgia at Athens. He earned his first degree in
1867, and went on to the engineering program at the University of
Virginia, where he graduated at the top of his class
in 1869.
In 1869, Spencer began working with
railroads as a surveyor, and rose through the ranks,
learning many aspects of railroad management. He became superintendent of
the Long Island Rail Road in
1878 and was president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O)
from December 10, 1887 to December 19, 1888.
In 1889, Spencer left the presidency
of the B&O to become a railroad expert working for financier J.P. Morgan of Drexel, Morgan and Company. When the
bankrupt Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D)
was acquired by Drexel, Morgan and Company in 1894, the new Southern Railway was formed by the
financiers from a consolidation of the R&D and the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia
Railroad.
Tapped to lead the new railroad for
Morgan, Spencer became its first president. Under his leadership, the mileage
of the Southern Railway doubled, greatly increased the number of passengers
served annually, and annual earnings increased more than threefold. After his
death, the Southern became one of the most profitable railroads in the United States,
merging with the Norfolk and Western Railway in the
1980s to form Norfolk Southern.
Samuel Spencer's career was cut
short when he was killed at the age of 59 in a train collision in Virginia before
dawn on Thanksgiving morning, November 29, 1906. The Spencer party were in his
private car, at the rear of the train, en route to his hunting lodge near
Friendship, North Carolina. When the coupling failed on the lead car, the
train was left stalled on the track. A following train ran into the stranded
cars in the pre-dawn darkness, crushing the Spencer car, killing Spencer and
all but one of its occupants. Spencer was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery.
Spencer
is credited with leading the Southern Railway and the South during a period of
unprecedented growth. After his untimely death, 30,000 Southern Railway
employees contributed to pay for a statue of him by sculptor Daniel Chester French, who later sculpted
the seated Abraham Lincoln statue in the Lincoln Memorial. The statue of
Spencer was dedicated in 1910 and stood for many years at Atlanta's Terminal Station.
Sir Christopher Robert Lighton, 7th Baronet of Merville (July 4, 1848 – August 15,
1929) was the son of Sir Christopher Robert Lighton,
6th Baronet. The Lighton Baronetcy, of Merville in Dublin, is a title in the Baronetage of Ireland. It was created on
March 1, 1791 for Dublin-based banker and politician Thomas Lighton, the
great-grandfather of Sir
Christopher Robert Lighton, 7th Baronet. After working as a trader in Strabane, Thomas Lighton
travelled to India and became a soldier in the East India Company. He was rewarded with a gift
of £20,000 by the wife of General Richard Matthews after
successfully transporting the General's fortune from India to London. He
returned to Ireland and used his money to establish the Lighton, Needham &
Shaw Bank in Dublin alongside Robert Shaw. He held the office of High Sheriff of County Dublin in
1790. Between 1790 and 1797 Lighton sat in the Irish House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for Tuam. He also represented Carlingford in
the Irish Commons from 1798 to 1800.
Sir
Christopher Robert Lighton, 7th Baronet, was born at Epsom, Surrey, England.
He was educated at Repton School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he
graduated with a B.A. in 1870. He became a member of the bar at Lincoln’s Inn
in 1874, and practiced as a conveyancer. Lighton succeeded his father to the
baronetcy in 1875. He served as Deputy Lieutenant and a Justice of the Peace
for Herefordshire, and was High Sheriff in 1885. Lighton died in 1929, and was
interred at North Berwick Cemetery
in East Lothian, Scotland.
Lighton married Helen Frances Houldsworth in
1880. She was the daughter of James Houldsworth of Coltness, Lanarkshire.