STOCK CERTIFICATE No. 893 REPRESENTING 5 SHARES 13,653-13,657 OF THE NORTH AMERICAN LAND COMPANY SOLD TO BOURDIEU, CHOLLET & BOURDIEU OF LONDON, TWENTIETH OF FEBRUARY 1795

Philadelphia: North American Land Company, 1795. Very Good binding. 12.25" x 9.75". Printed broadside form on paper completed in ink and signed by the secretary of the North American Land Company James Marshall (brother of Chief Justice John Marshall) and president of the company, Robert Morris. Scalloped left edge as issued; vertical crease through the center from an early fold; light edgewear, only. A presentable copy.

While Morris is most recognized as a financier of the American Revolution as well as a signer of the three founding documents of the United States--Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution of the United States--the North American Land Company was a less than successful endeavor. Late in the 18th century Morris had some early successes with land speculation that drove him. The culmination of that drive, The North American Land Company, was a venture started by Morris and John Nicholson and eventually including John Greenleaf. It was a land trust holding some six million acres from New York to Georgia. Perhaps too large for its own good, the company found itself in legal entanglements and without enough cash to meet its obligations, Morris and Nicholson both declared bankruptcy and both were eventually imprisoned for debt. Despite Morris's ignominious finale it is hard to overstates the importance of Morris in the founding of the United States. Clarence L. Ver Steeg writes in his biographical sketch in the Oxford American National Biography, "In the line of succession that includes Alexander Hamilton and Albert Gallatin, Morris should be considered the first of three great treasury secretaries who laid the financial foundation of the United States." An interesting document bearing the signature of one of the founding fathers of the United States and one of only two men that signed all three of the founding documents.