Description: Webster Daniel

Daniel Webster Signed Massabesick Canal Stock Certificate


2pp blank stock certificate signed by Daniel Webster (1782-1852), then acting President of the Massabesick Canal Corporation, as Danl Webster" at center recto. The unnumbered printed template bears a handsome paper seal with crisp sawtooth edges at left, embossed ""Massabesick Canal Company Inc. 1833, NH." The form continues verso. With expected paper folds, some sharp. Some folds and small closed tears have been professionally repaired. 7.5"" x 9.5"".


"Massabesick Canal Corporation.

 



No. ________

 



Be it known that _________________ is the proprietor or owner of ________ shares numbered _________________ in the Massabesick Canal Company, which said shares are transferable by assignment on the back of this certificate, and by causing the certificate with the said assignment to be recorded in the books of said Corporation.

 



In witness whereof, we, the President and the Clerk of said Corporation, have hereunto set our hands and caused the seal of said Corporation to be affixed, this day of _________ A.D.

 



[signed] Danl Webster [printed] President.



 

Clerk."


New Hampshire legislators approved the incorporation of the Massabesick Canal Company on July 4, 1833. (For its exact terms, see Volume 10 of Laws of New Hampshire, Second Constitutional Period, 1829-1835, p. 469-472.) The company was ""authorised to locate construct and fully complete a navigable canal, with locks, tow-paths, basins culverts, wharves, dams, embankments, toll houses and other necessary appendages, commencing at some convenient point on the shore of Massabesick pond, at or near the head of the stream called Cohas brook, then on the most convenient and practicable route to Merrimac River…"" (Excerpt with original spelling and punctuation.)


The Massabesick Canal Company had 6 years to connect three critically important waterways and bodies of water in southeastern New Hampshire: the Merrimack River, the Cohas Brook, and the Massabesic Lake. All three are located between the modern day cities of Manchester and Auburn, New Hampshire along a west-east axis. The 117-mile-long Merrimack River, as well as its tributary, the 16-mile-long Cohas Brook, drained northern New Hampshire via northeastern Massachusetts on its way to the Atlantic Ocean. The Massabesic, referred to as a ""pond"" in the state law records, is actually a sizable lake measuring 4 square miles.


The company's original seventeen co-owners invited shareholders to invest in the joint stock company using a stock certificate like this one.


Daniel Webster was born about 40 miles north of Massabesick Lake. While he was not one of the original company founders, he did serve as its president. In 1833, Webster was 6 years into his first 14-year term as a Senator from Massachusetts.


Daniel Webster was one of the most revered politicians, lawyers, writers, and orators of his day. The Dartmouth College graduate represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress before serving as 14th and 19th U.S. Secretary of State under the Harrison, Tyler, and Fillmore administrations. Webster’s influence was secured during the 1830s, when he represented the Northern voice of the so-called "Great Triumvirate", along with Western mouthpiece and Kentucky senator Henry Clay and Southern spokesman and South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun.


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