📜 An S. H. Heironimus Co. Share Certificate from the Year the Company Was Chartered
A genuine issued share certificate of S. H. Heironimus Co., Incorporated, of Roanoke,Virginia — the department store that anchored downtown Roanoke for more than a century. These arenot blank remainders and not specimens. Each was filled in by hand, signed, sealed and held.
What makes these worth pausing over is the date. The engraving across the top reads“INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, JANUARY16,1906” —and these were executed in 1906, the company’s charter year. They are founding-yearcertificates.
🔍 The Specifics at a Glance
- What it is: an issued capital stock certificate of S. H. Heironimus Co., Incorporated,Roanoke, Virginia.
- Printed at the top, verbatim: “INCORPORATED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE STATE OF VIRGINIA,JANUARY 16, 1906.”
- Issue year: 1906, written on the execution line over the printed PRESIDENT andSECRETARY lines, both signed in ink.
- Authorized capital: “AUTHORIZED CAPITAL, 150,000.00” on the engraved ribbonbeneath the company name.
- Denomination: shares of “One Hundred Dollars each of the Capital Stock of S. H.Heironimus Co., Incorporated, fully paid and non-assessable,” with $100 panels engraved at thefoot.
- Seal: the gold embossed corporate seal at the lower left.
- Vignette: a spread eagle over a sunburst with flags, arms and a plough, flanked byinkwells and quills.
- Reverse: the full green transfer and assignment form, headed “CERTIFICATE FOR SHARESOF THE Capital Stock — S. H. Heironimus Co., Inc., ROANOKE, VIRGINIA,” with ISSUED TO andDATED fields.
- Hand-completed fields vary: the certificate number, the number of shares, the registeredholder’s name and the exact day were filled in by hand at issuance, so these details differ across the stack. Theengraved design, the incorporation line, the authorized capital and the issue year are the same onevery one.
📄 About the Marks on Antique Certificates
Stock and bond certificates carry financial writings, markings, stamps, hole punches and staples aspart of the life of the instrument. Transfer-agent and registrar stamps, endorsements, revenue stamps,punch or cut cancellations at redemption, staple holes from a transfer book and pencil ledger notationsare the paper trail of a working financial document, not damage. This certificate shows the toning andhandling you would expect of paper of this age, and the left edge carries the remnant of the bindingstub where it was separated from the transfer book.
🏦 Why Heironimus Matters
S. H. Heironimus Co. was the department store of downtown Roanoke, and for generations it was wherethe city shopped, met and marked its holidays. The store closed in 2005. A share certificate issued inits charter year, to a named holder, in a numbered sequence still in the teens, is about as close tothe beginning of that story as a piece of paper can get.
The photographs are of the actual certificates. Each is hand-completed, so the holder name andthe certificate number vary from piece to piece; the printing, the date of incorporation and theengraved design are the same on every one.
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