Letter from William Gwynn to F. Lucas Junior concerning a Loan on Railroad Stock Shares, 1830

The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, chartered in 1827, was the first common-carrier railroad in the United States. Baltimore merchants, competing against New York City and Philadelphia for trade, connected their port to the Ohio River with a railway. B&O stockholders included William Gwynn, Fielding Lucas, Jr., and Charles Carroll of Carrollton -- the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.