Descripción
Illustrated stock certificate, 6¾ x 10½ inches. Uncompleted lithographed form. Vignette in lower margin. Fine. An uncompleted stock certificate for the Texas Association, otherwise known as the Mercer Colony, located roughly between the Brazos and Sabine rivers. The Texas Association was formed in early 1844 by Charles Fenton Mercer, a former agent for the Peters' Colony, which had obtained a large impresario grant to settle North Texas. Following a controversy between British and American stockholders in which the latter seized control of the project and reorganized it as the Texas Emigration and Land Company, Mercer sold his interest in the enterprise to Louisville-based investors and obtained a new and separate contract from the Republic of Texas. This agreement, made by President Sam Houston on Jan. 29, 1844, granted Mercer and the stockholders of the Texas Association eight thousand square miles on the Trinity River. In a colonization prospectus which he issued in September 1844 under the title of TEXAS COLONIZATION (see Streeter 1520), Mercer offered, on payment of a surveying fee of eight dollars, up to half a section of land for every family settling on the grant before March 20, 1845. In order to finance his contract with Texas, Mercer "divided his whole interest in the said tract of land.into one-hundred shares" (TEXAS COLONIZATION). Despite the fact that Mercer spent over $15,000 on his project, by September 1847 his plans had not progressed smoothly: "The work of colonization was impeded by the fact that various Texas politicians, land speculators, and squatters, all eager to supplant the impresario system, questioned the legality of the renewal of the impresario system. Squatters moved into the Mercer survey and denied the claims of settlers who held Mercer colony certificates" (HANDBOOK OF TEXAS). Faced with mounting losses, in 1852, Mercer assigned his interests in the colony to a group of Louisville investors in exchange for an annuity of $2,000. Under the leadership of George Hancock, who had become chief agent, the Association was reorganized. In September 1858 the new secretary, Claudius Duval, called in Mercer's original 100 certificates and issued new shares to sell for $100 each. The present certificate is from this issue of 1858. A rare Texas item. Not in the Streeter sale. Three copies are listed in OCLC, at Yale, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of North Texas, but each is described, we think erroneously, as being printed in 1844. HANDBOOK OF TEXAS (online). OCLC 6553655, 54135222 (ref). N° de ref. del artículo WRCAM53423
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