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CA - Butte County,March 3, 1854 - Rocky Bar Mining Company Stock Certificate

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Western Americana Start Price:1,000.00 USD Estimated At:2,000.00 - 4,000.00 USD
CA - Butte County,March 3, 1854 - Rocky Bar Mining Company Stock Certificate
Session D is a Mail-Bid Only Auction. Absentee bids will be accepted only. No live bidding will be allowed. All winners will be contacted after the auction. BIDDING ENDS MONDAY JUNE 27 AT 5PM PACIFIC TIME!!!
Incorporated in 1849. No 1744 issued to William J. Harrison of Mount Pleasant, OH for 20 shares. Signed by C. Satterthwaite, president, and J. B. (illegible) as secretary. Vignette at top center of Indian with spirited horse and a spear overlooking a train passing in the valley below. Two side vignettes—one of the California state seal and one of miners underground. Black border and print on crème paper. U/C. Printer: Danforth, Bald. & Co., New York and Phila. Datelined City of New York. 6 ½" x 9 ½.” From Carl I. Wheat’s article titled “The Rocky-Bar Mining Company: An episode in Early Western Promotion and Finance,” comes the following: The Rocky-Bar Mining Company was organized in July 1849 as a Labor Association and was primarily composed of only forty miners, who had been engaged in 1848 and 1849, in digging gold on the Big-Bar, contiguous to the Rocky-Bar, near the geographical center of the gold-region in California, and on the middle fork of the American River, about seventy-miles from Sacramento City. Wheat notes that that was “the first organized project for mining quartz in California.” Only the report of the American Quicksilver Company of California preceded this as a published California mining promotion [Ref: "California Historical Society Quarterly", Vol. 12, No. 1, March, 1933, pgs. 65-76]. Additional references accompany the certificate.