1871 TALLASSEE MANUFACTURING COMPANY FIRST MORTGAGE BOND SIGNED BY CONFEDERATE GEN. BIRKETT D. FRY (1871)

1871 TALLASSEE MANUFACTURING COMPANY FIRST MORTGAGE BOND SIGNED BY CONFEDERATE GEN. BIRKETT D. FRY (1871)

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$250.00

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Item Code: 1324-01

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A large and handsome engraved $1,000 first mortgage gold bond of The Tallassee Manufacturing Company of Tallassee, Alabama — and not just any example, but Number One of the entire issue. One of two hundred bonds aggregating $200,000, secured under a Deed of Trust executed February 8, 1871, the bond carries 8 percent interest in gold, with principal payable January 1, 1881 and interest payable January and July in New York. It is produced in the full New York bank-note style: a steel-engraved vignette of the sprawling Tallassee mill complex on the Tallapoosa, an ornate geometric border repeating "One Thousand Dollars," and a bold red protective overprint across the face.

The face is signed by Birkett Davenport Fry (1822–1891) as Secretary of the company. Fry is among the more remarkable figures of the Confederate officer corps — a Virginia-born adventurer and VMI/West Point man who fought in Mexico, rode with William Walker's filibusters in Nicaragua, and married into the Micou family that owned the Tallassee mills. As colonel of the 13th Alabama Infantry he was wounded four separate times over the course of the war (Seven Pines, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg), and on July 3, 1863 he commanded Archer's Brigade as one of the directing units of Pickett's Charge, falling wounded and captured near the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge. Promoted brigadier general in 1864, he returned after the war to Tallassee, living at No. 1 King Street in quarters originally built for the officers of the Confederate Tallassee Armory.

That armory connection gives the issuing company genuine Confederate significance. Tallassee housed the Confederate Carbine Factory, relocated from Richmond in 1864 on the recommendation of ordnance chief Josiah Gorgas, and the complex was one of the very few Confederate ordnance facilities to survive the war intact.

The reverse bears the engraved Trustees' Certificate, boldly signed by two further notable Alabamians: Charles T. Pollard, the Montgomery railroad magnate, and George Goldthwaite (1809–1879), former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice and the sitting United States Senator from Alabama (1871–1877). A single document thus unites a Gettysburg brigade commander, a railroad builder, and a U.S. Senator.

Measures approximately 16 x 13". Untrimmed, retaining the original mailing/storage folds with light, even toning; minor splitting beginning at one or two fold intersections, otherwise sound, fully legible, and with strong, clear signatures. An uncommon survival that pairs a desirable Confederate general's autograph with marquee Reconstruction-era Alabama signatures — and the plum #1 example of the issue.  [ss][ph:L]

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