PENNSYLVANIA-1837-Philadelphia-Museum-Company-Stock-Certificate-01-dm

PENNSYLVANIA 1837 Philadelphia Museum Company Stock Certificate

PENNSYLVANIA 1837 Philadelphia Museum Company Stock Certificate
PENNSYLVANIA 1837 Philadelphia Museum Company Stock Certificate

PENNSYLVANIA 1837 Philadelphia Museum Company Stock Certificate
The company was incorporated in Pennsylvania in 1821. Dated February 9, 1837. According to The Smithsonian website. In 1792, seeking to turn his enterprise into a national museum, Peale formed a Society of Inspectors, including Thomas Jefferson and Edmund Randolph, in an unsuccessful effort to attract private and government support. In 1794, he obtained a ten-year lease to lodge his collections in the American Philosophical Society building on State House Square, and in 1802 the Pennsylvania legislature authorized the Museum to occupy quarters in the State House itself. Peale’s son, Rembrandt, attempted a museum in Baltimore that failed, and attempts by Rubens Peale and Linnaeus Peale to set up museums in New York also failed. The Philadelphia Museum was incorporated in 1821 as the Philadelphia Museum Company. Charles Willson Peale died in 1827, and his sons, chiefly Rubens and Franklin, continued the enterprise in the Philadelphia Arcade, where it remained until the construction of a new building in 1836. Caught in hard economic times and a growing schism between scientific natural history on the one hand and showmanship represented by P. Barnum on the other, the Museum went out of existence through sale of its collections in the 1850s. I have expanded the size of the scan so you can see the edges. Please visit my store for additional stock certificates and bonds. I leave favorable feedback for those who do the same for me.
PENNSYLVANIA 1837 Philadelphia Museum Company Stock Certificate