Interest warrants
This sheet of coupons was used to pay interest to an investor who helped fund the reorganization of the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad Company, as it extended its line through Knox County. Credit: Mark Sebastian Jordan

History Knox

Mark Sebastian Jordan authors a History Knox column each Saturday at Knox Pages.

Well, at least enough interest to excuse that punishing headline, I hope.

As a footnote to last week’s column about a crash on the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad in the 1850s, I have located a bit of related memorabilia.

I like to research my columns in various ways, some direct, some oblique.

One of the oblique methods is to check online auction sites for possible related items. When researching the S. M. & N. Railroad, I came up with some railroad memorabilia which I purchased.

The items in question are interest warrants for the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark Railroad Company.

A closeup on one of the certificates shows that coupon No. 7 would be redeemed for $35 in January of 1860. The papers were presumably punched when the interest was paid. (Photo by Mark Sebastian Jordan.)

I know next to nothing about business finance, so I can’t report in detail what these tiny certificates are (each one about an inch by two inches).

It would appear that bonds were sold to finance the expansion of the railroad from Mansfield, through Knox County, down to Newark.

These certificates were apparently to be redeemed for interest payments on the original investments.

The set of certificates I received are numbers 4 through 16 on Bond No. 103. The earliest number, No. 4, is to “pay to the bearer on the first day of July, A. D. 1858, at the Office of the OHIO LIFE INSURANCE and TRUST COMPANY in the City of New York, the sum of THIRTY-FIVE DOLLARS.”

The successive certificates move the payout date back by six months on each certificate, so that the last one will not pay back its interest until July of 1864.

If the earlier certificates in this series held to the same pattern, it suggests that the investment was made before January 1857, which would have been the first payout date.

The certificates cite the company name and state “as reorganized” directly beneath it, which leads us to 1856, which was the date of the official reorganization of the company. That fits with the time frame on these certificates.

Our investor was apparently one W. A. Howe, who received over the period of seven years, over $600, equivalent to over $22,000 today. (Photo by Mark Sebastian Jordan.)

The papers are punched, suggesting that the interest payments were indeed collected by this investor. They were housed in an envelope with the name “W. A. Howe, Esq.” written on it, including a total for the certificates, plus some other sort of fee, totaling $600.33.

Adjusted for inflation, that equates to a sum of over $22,000 today.

This suggests our W. A. Howe was no casual investor, and the fact that the investment company is headquartered not in Ohio, but in New York City, suggests that Wall Street investors were the ones who invested in this project, which was only the second railroad in the state of Ohio, at that time an enormously important “western” state.

The coupons are each signed by a clerk named Earl Bell.

The name is not a distinctive one, which led to no immediate candidates, but he was likely to be a New York financier, not anyone in Knox County, although it is possible that he could have been local and had his investment made through a broker over the telegraph.

No immediate candidates emerged, though.

All we can tell is that the envelope is dated Dec. 30, without the year, and after his name, it says “13 Coupons” followed by another word or two which I cannot make out.

Refer to the photograph if you’d like to take a crack at it yourself, and let us know on Facebook.