Earliest Division of Bell Company Shares
At the time of the organization of the Bell Telephone Company (also known as the Bell Company) as a joint stock company in 1877 by Hubbard, who became its trustee and de facto president, 5,000 shares in total were issued to:
- Gardiner Greene Hubbard (trustee and president): 1,397 shares, along with
- Gertrude McC. Hubbard, (likely Gertrude Mercer McCurdy Hubbard, wife of Gardiner Hubbard): 100 shares
- Charles Eustis Hubbard (the nephew of Gardiner Hubbard): 10 shares
- Alexander Graham Bell (inventor and formally the company's 'Chief Electrician'): 1,497 shares
- Thomas Sanders (financier and treasurer): 1,497 shares
- Thomas Watson (head of operations): 499 shares
Two days after the company's formation, on July 11, 1877, Bell married Hubbard's daughter Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, and made a wedding gift of 1,487 shares of his allotment to his new wife, keeping only 10 shares for himself. Bell and his wife left not long after for a tour of Europe that lasted over a year, during which time Mabel left her shares with her father under a power of attorney.
Alexander Graham Bell's ten shares of Bell Telephone Company stock were later converted into a single share of the American Bell Telephone Company, and still later into two shares of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. AT&T President Frederick Fish would subsequently return Bell's single American Bell Telephone Company share to him as a memento after it had been converted and canceled.
Read more about this topic: Bell Telephone Company
Famous quotes containing the words earliest, division, bell, company and/or shares:
“Oh! snatchd away in beautys bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year;”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (17881824)
“For in the division of the nations of the whole earth he set a ruler over every people; but Israel is the Lords portion: whom, being his firstborn, he nourisheth with discipline, and giving him the light of his love doth not forsake him. Therefore all their works are as the sun before him, and his eyes are continually upon their ways.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus 17:17-9.
“You owe me ten shillings,
Say the bells of St. Helens.
When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.
When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.
Pray when will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney.
I am sure I dont know,
Says the great bell of Bow.”
—Unknown. The Bells of London (l. 1322)
“I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances. I much prefer the company of ploughboys and tin-peddlers, to the silken and perfumed amity which celebrates its days of encounter by a frivolous display, by rides in a curricle, and dinners at the best taverns.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“It is the sun that shares our works.
The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)