Back in 1902 my Great, Great Grand-father purchased stock in a telephone company.

Alfred Van Duzor owned one share of stock in the Coin and Northboro Telephone Company. He purchased the share for $35 which would have been a large sum of money in 1902.

I found an entry about the companies incorporation in a 1901 issue of Telephone Magazine.

Coin and Northboro are both small towns in Iowa.

I will zoom out a bit and you can see that Coin and Northboro are in Southwest Iowa not far from the Missouri border.

Alfred Van Duzor lived in the the area served by the phone company as did many other local investors.

As phone companies consolidated over time stock certificates would most likely have been cashed out or replaced by certificates from the company that bought the other. Because of this, and the stock market crash of 1929, many old stock certificates that no longer have monetary value are tucked away in memory boxes.

Have you ever seen an old stock certificate?

Steven