Miller & Rhoads Stock Certificate Collection
25 April 2011
C1: 120
1906
16 stock certificates
On February 19, 1906, twenty-one years after it began in Richmond as a dry goods shop, Miller & Rhoads department store was legally incorporated with the issue of sixteen stock certificates, representing a total of 350 one-thousand dollar shares, combined holdings of $350,000 against an authorized Capital Stock of $500,000. Miller & Rhoads, Inc., would go on to become an anchor of Richmond’s economy, making a name for itself as “the largest department store in the South,” combining genteel service with sophisticated taste.
The founding certificates were issued as follows: nos. 1–7 to president Linton Miller, 8–14 to treasurer Webster Rhoads, and 15 and 16 to secretary A. B. Laughon. The ornate certificate templates were printed locally at Southern Stamp and Stationery Co., and feature large embossed seals. All are “cancelled” in various handwritings.
Arrangement and access:
Numerical by certificate
Provenance:
Purchased, date unknown
Bookplate File
25 April 2011
C1: 110
mid-18th century through mid-20th century
280 plates
Bookplates, small paper panels denoting book-ownership, have their origins in Renaissance Germany. Their use was standard in the eighteenth century, when books were vastly expensive and hard to produce, and they became popular as status symbols and collectibles during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ renewed interest in “the culture of the book.” Our collection demonstrates the extraordinary aesthetic range of bookplates, including abstract designs, landscapes, human subjects, crests, and mythological figures, ranging in style from the staid and classically armorial to the privately iconographic and bizarre.
The majority of this collection consists of bookplates belonging to notable Virginians, including Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie, Declaration-signatory George Wythe, Constitutional co-author Gouverneur Morris, Revolutionary general Hugh Mercer, Col. George Lee Turberville, DAR Magazine contributor (and great-granddaughter of Patrick Henry) Elizabeth Henry Lyons (“Lift the Latch and Find Me,” her bookplate says), Civil War major and correspondent John Hooper, Richmond city councilman and industrialist James Branch Ransom (whose mock-armorial crest features a cartoon chicken), prominent Richmond physicians Samuel Dove and John Brodnax, authors John R. Witcraft and the Rev. Philip Slaughter, Powhatan-born U.S. comptroller John Skelton Williams, and aviator, polar explorer, and Medal-of-Honor-winner Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, of Winchester, a descendant not only of Pocahontas and John Rolfe but of William Byrd II, founder of Richmond. Also included are bookplates from Rainbow & Hannah’s Circulating Library in … more
U.S. Army Signal Corps Photograph Collection (Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation)
24 April 2011
C1:002
1942–1946
64 albums, approx. 3,500 photographs
On June 15, 1942, the army officially activated the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation, under the command of the army’s Transportation Corps, with its headquarters in Newport News. By the end of World War II, more than 772,000 men and women had gone to war via the port. Hampton Roads saw even more arrivals than departures: 915,116 people, including U.S. wounded and European POWs. The Transportation Corps maintained a port historian’s office and regularly assigned Signal Corps photographers to document as much port-related activity as possible. In almost all cases, the individuals in the photographs are identified by name and rank.
Our U.S. Army Signal Corps Photograph Collection includes more than 3,500 individual 8 x 10″ black-and-white photographs from the Hampton Roads Embarkation Series, 1942–1946. These photos show, often in intimate and unexpected detail, the preparation and loading of war materials, daily activities of the U.S. Quartermaster Corps, U.S. military personnel arriving and departing through the ports of Hampton Roads, the work of civilian employees, WACs, Japanese-American servicemen, and the Red Cross, group portraits, wounded personnel, entertainers, animals, German and Italian prisoners of war, military funerals and religious observances, training and drills, equipment, vehicles and warships, aerial views of the port, and servicemen going to the barber or dentist, receiving communion, and relaxing in racially segregated dining facilities. The collection is significant for its account of all aspects … more
