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Sought-after partly printed DS, signed three times “J. D. Rockefeller” and “John D. Rockefeller,” one page, 15.5 x 6.5, February 23, 1882. Stock certificate for 1,000 shares in Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, issued to John D. Rockefeller, signed at the conclusion by Rockefeller as president, and countersigned by Henry M. Flagler as secretary; the original receipt, signed again by Rockefeller, remains affixed at the left edge. Rockefeller signs a third time on the reverse, on an April 6, 1882, transfer authorization directing Flagler to surrender the certificate and transfer 20,000 shares of Standard Oil Trust stock to Rockefeller. In very good to fine condition, with a full-length vertical tear that has been archivally repaired, and cancellation marks affecting the main Rockefeller and Flagler signatures.
Standard Oil Company was incorporated in Ohio in 1870 by Rockefeller, Henry M. Flagler, Samuel Andrews, and others, and by the early 1880s controlled roughly 90 percent of American oil refining across a network of separately chartered corporations. To centralize these interests, general counsel Samuel C. T. Dodd devised the trust structure adopted on January 2, 1882, under which Standard Oil interests were placed in the hands of nine trustees, including Rockefeller and Flagler. Each share of the original Standard Oil Company of Ohio was exchanged for twenty $100 shares in the newly created Standard Oil Trust.
Issued to Rockefeller on February 23, 1882, just seven weeks after the Trust Agreement, this certificate represents 1,000 shares of the original Ohio company, with its attached receipt signed by Rockefeller acknowledging delivery. Even more significantly, the April 6, 1882, transfer authorization on the reverse directs Flagler to surrender the certificate and transfer to Rockefeller 20,000 shares of Standard Oil Trust stock, precisely matching the agreement's twenty-to-one conversion ratio. Signed three times by Rockefeller across its issuance, receipt, and subsequent transfer, the certificate documents the actual mechanism by which his holdings in Standard Oil's original Ohio corporation were converted into his interest in the newly organized Standard Oil Trust, the corporate structure that would become synonymous with the era of industrial consolidation and a central target of American antitrust law.
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