Information Sheet

 

 

R         John L. Douglass and Company.

1252                Letter, 1905.

                                    One folder.

 

 

 

This is a printed letter, dated 10 October 1905, from John L. Douglass & Company of New York, N.Y., to “the Stockholders of the Missouri Lead and Coal Company and the Stockholders of the Standard Lead & Smelting Company.”  The letter presented a plan whereby the stockholders could exchange their shares for those of a successor company.

 

The Standard Lead and Smelting Company was incorporated in New Jersey on 3 January 1902 and registered in Missouri as a foreign corporation on 3 March 1902.  Capitalized at $1,000,000, the firm maintained an office and agent (William F. Quigley) at Tipton in Moniteau County, Missouri.  The incorporators were Richard H. Stewart, James Westervelt, and George W. Flaacke, Jr., with Stewart serving as President and Monroe Harmon as Secretary.

 

The Missouri Lead and Coal Company was incorporated in New Jersey on 22 October 1902 and registered in Missouri as a foreign corporation on 19 November 1902.  Capitalized at $1,000,000, the firm maintained an office and agent (S. W. Cox) at Jefferson City in Cole County, Missouri.  The incorporators were John L. Douglass, Frederick M. White, and George W. Flaacke, Jr., with White serving as Secretary.

 

According to this letter, the Standard Lead & Smelting company was organized “to develop a lead and zinc property in Moniteau County.”  It extracted $90,000 worth of mineral, but the vein proved to be just a “pocket,” and was soon exhausted.  The Missouri Lead & Coal Company was formed to work 5000 acres in Cole, Miller, Camden, Laclede, and Reynolds counties, but it could never raise enough capital to develop the claims and leases.

 

In the summer of 1903, most of the Standard stockholders exchanged their shares for an interest in the Missouri Lead and Coal Company, but later that year the firm’s officers resigned and the company effectively went out of business.  Thereupon John L. Douglass & Company or­ganized the Central Southern Coal & Coke Company to manage the properties.  This firm in turn was majority-owned by the Great Southern Coal & Iron Company.  In this letter John L. Douglass & Company offered stockholders in the Standard and Missouri firms shares in Central Southern at $0.10 per share immediately or $0.30 per share after three years. Central owned or leased ten lead and zinc mines in Missouri, plus 5000 acres in Tennessee and an iron property in Virginia.

 

In November 1907 the prosecuting attorneys of Cole and Moniteau counties reported to the Missouri Secretary of State that the Missouri and Standard companies had “ceased to transact business in this State.”

 

 

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