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TheThe AdamsAdams ExpressExpress CompanyCompany 150Years ® The Adams Express Company Seven St. Paul Street Suite 1140 Baltimore, MD 21202 410-752-5900 (800) 638-2479 www.adamsexpress.com One of our early wagons will be restored coincident with the Company’s 150th anniversary. The Company- funded initiative will allow the wagon to be repaired and showcased in the B&O Railroad Museum, whose historic Roundhouse roof collapsed, damaging its train car collection in the blizzard of 2002 in Baltimore. Celebrating Our Past Embracing The Future ® PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER THE ADAMS EXPRESS COMPANY HAS THRIVED FOR 150 YEARS, ITS FIRST 75 YEARS AS ONE OF THE NATION’S LEADING INDEPENDENT EXPRESS COMPANIES, AND ITS SECOND 75 YEARS AS ONE OF THE LARGEST CLOSED-END INVESTMENT FUNDS. THE COMPANY’S STORY PARALLELS MUCH OF AMERICA’S BUSINESS HISTORY, FROM THE EARLY DAYS OF TRANSPORTATION AND MANUFACTURING Alvin Adams at age 50. THROUGH EXPANSION ACROSS OUR CONTINENT AND THE OCEANS – CONTRIBUTING TO THE EASE AND SPEED OF TRANSPORTING DOCUMENTS, CURRENCY AND SECURITIES TO TODAY’S INFORMATION-BASED FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY. TWO MEN, A BOY AND ONE ners and employees who had helped him that people would pay good money for the WHEELBARROW build the largest express shipping company service of moving articles from one place on the East Coast, which also reached across to another. The opening of the Boston & Alvin Adams was already 50 years old when the country and nearly around the world. Norwich railroad triggered his ambition, and he presided over the meeting in New York Earlier in his life Adams had not seemed a he applied for the privilege of running an City where the Adams Express Company was likely candidate for wealth and success. He express service between Boston and New formally incorporated on July 1, 1854. By was an orphan at age eight, a ward of his York City. He was denied that contract, any reasonable measure of the day, he had elder brother, then a workingman at 16 who which went to a man named William F. enjoyed a full, successful career. However, wrangled teams of horses at a Vermont stage Harnden, who had run an express service with the granite features of his native New stop. Drawn to Boston with the youth of his from Boston to an intermediate town for England and the shrewd expression of a life- generation, Adams did not readily become about a year and had cultivated influential long entrepreneur, he was not at an ending successful, and in fact was forced deeply into friends at the railroad. but a beginning. debt when his produce business failed during Not at all intimidated, Adams scraped Adams Express was created as a limited the Panic of 1837. At that time he was 33 and together money for a season “steamboat stock company with 12,000 shares and capi- the breadwinner for a family that would train” pass and proceeded to ride back and tal of $1.2 million. With that structure, include nine children. forth daily between the cities as a paying pas- Adams enriched not himself so much as the Perhaps remembering back to the time of senger, his valise packed with paid parcels shareholders, most of them long-time part- his first job at the stage stop, Adams knew and envelopes. That was in 1840, when Adams’ vestigial company was comprised of “two men, a boy and one wheelbarrow,” according to a sign proudly displayed on a Company wagon during a parade in 1887. Thus marked the beginning of one of the country’s great service companies and a true American success story. By Adams’ own account, in words that still crackle with Yankee intensity: “In four years I was ahead of Harnden and about that time he died insolvent and Adams & Co. purchased his interest in the business and for twenty-five years, Adams & Co. have owned all the express lines between New York and Boston, although Harnden and Kingsley (another acquired company) were run in their Traditional modes of express delivery were depicted in this 1863 lithograph by Hatch & Co. original names for a certain purpose.” of New York that now hangs in the Company’s Festive parade entry in 1887 compared the Company’s beginnings of two men, a boy and one wheelbarrow with its then- headquarters in Baltimore. current capabilities numbered in employees, wagons, horses and railroad operations. If that “certain purpose” had been to domi- Interestingly, the Company served as Alvin Adams died at age 73 on September quarters of the Company. An Adams adver- looking west from the site of the office is promi- nate a market through brand proliferation, paymaster for soldiers on both sides during 1, 1877. His funeral was reported to be one tisement in December 1849 may have been nently displayed in one of the rooms at the Adams invented the strategy long before the bloodiest war on American soil, serving of the largest ever seen in Boston. Always among the first of its kind: Center Club in downtown Baltimore, the site General Motors or General Mills. Adams’ the Union soldiers through Adams Express prepared to advance the interests of Adams of Adams Express’ Annual Meeting this year. Adams & Co. have made special meteoric rise in a field of myriad competitors and the Confederates through Southern Express, one of the founder’s chief lieu- arrangements to transport Holiday was perhaps due to two personal qualities: his Express. And Company lore has it that at tenants, John Hoey, reported in his eulogy THE END OF INDEPENDENCE Presents, and deliver them on the 25th ability to attract talented and loyal employ- least one slave, known as Box Brown, was before the assembly of leading Bostonians or earlier if desired. Parcels, packages Two actions by the federal government ees, and his business sense that enabled him packed in a box and shipped to freedom via that the company was then worth $27 mil- and cases will be received for New York, caused Adams Express to change first its to rapidly acquire competing companies at Adams Express. lion and employed 15,000 people. Hoey, Trenton, Princeton, Washington, Lan- business methods and later its fundamental favorable prices. Adams & Co. claimed to be the first who had been “the boy” who hauled Adams’ caster, Harrisburg, Carlisle, Chambersburg business strategy. Nine years before incorpo- When Adams Express was incorporated express company to follow the miners to first express cart in 1840, went on to and Lewistown until the 24th. ration as The Adams Express Company, in 1854, it digested Adams & Co. plus eight California’s gold camps. On September 7, become the company’s fourth chairman Adams & Co. was put out of the independent other express companies then serving the 1849, Adams announced in the Pacific Powered by a heavy steam engine, this 1900 Adams Express (1888-1891) and his brief tenure was Messrs. Adams & Co. run the Only mail business when the government initiated East Coast corridor and extending to Ledger a new express service to San Fran- wagon negotiated the cobblestone streets of Philadelphia on marked by his flamboyant lifestyle and Express to Washington, Norfolk, extra wide wagon tires. protection for the U.S. post offices from inde- Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio in one cisco via Panama, where goods would be financial improprieties that led to his uncer- Richmond, Petersburg, Fredericksburg, pendent competitors. By 1844 the network of direction and to coastal southern states in taken across the Isthmus by wagon and canoe emonious removal from the position. Harrisburg, Carlisle, Chambersburg Hawaii, service extended to other Pacific independent mail operations had become so another. Through agents, the company also for shipment on to California: and Lewistown. Their general arrange- islands and to Canton and other ports in extensive and the rates so low that the gov- extended service to Europe. In 14 years, EARLY DAYS IN BALTIMORE ments are greatly superior to any other Our first Express will leave New York China. However, like many armies of the ernment operation was adversely affected. Alvin Adams had reversed the experience of Express, and their charges lower. on Saturday, 15th September, in the past, Adams appeared to expand beyond its In the early 1840’s, the Adams & Co. agent The government began a campaign against his first 36, becoming wealthy and more than steamer Empire City, under the direction support system and was victimized by unex- in Philadelphia, Edward S. Sanford, became N.B. Particular care will be taken to the express companies in 1841 and by 1845 that: serving as an economic engine driving of Mr. D.H. Haskell, who has for several pected events in California, including rob- associated with Samuel M. Shoemaker of have the packages carefully handled. only the post office was authorized to carry his company to greater future heights. years been favorably known to the public beries and a run on its assets organized Baltimore, who had by that time established letters for a fee. Adams circumvented this Shoemaker became wealthy with addition- as a clerk in our Boston office, and has by gold camp competitors. an express business serving cities to the west DELIVERING THE GOODS al interests in railroads, banking and manu- been admitted a partner, to reside at San The California operation was not included and south. Sanford and Shoemaker, plus facturing and socially prominent as the son- The express companies founded by Alvin Francisco and to have the entire control under Adams Express’ corporate umbrella William B. Dinsmore in New York, became in-law of a leading state judge. He was a Adams contributed to several of the great of our business there.

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