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Augustus Schell (1812-1884), Lawyer and Financier. He became expert in the expanding field of corporation law. He was an intimate friend of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, a Director of the Harlem RR in 1872 and of the Hudson River RR in 1874, and later of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern, the New York, New Haven & Hartford, the Chicago and Northwestern, the Union Pacific, and the Canada Southern Railroads, as well as the Union Trust Co., the Western Union Telegraph Co., and the Manhattan Life Insurance Co. Together with Jay Gould, he engineered the corner in Chicago and Northwestern stock, one of Wall Street's notable post-Civil War episodes. At his death, he was worth several million. This 1863 Civil War dated Transfer in the New York and Harlem Railroad is issued to Augustus Schell and signed by Schell as an attorney. Particularly Choice Condition. Very Rare!!! The New York and Harlem Railroad (now the Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line) was one of the first railroads in the United States, and was the world's first street railway. Designed by John Stephenson, it was opened in stages between 1832 and 1852 between Lower Manhattan to and beyond Harlem. Horses initially pulled railway carriages, followed by a conversion to steam engines, then one to battery-powered Julien electric traction cars. In 1907, the then leaseholders of the line, New York City Railway, a streetcar operator, went into receivership. Following a further receivership in 1932, the New York Railways Corporation converted the line to bus operation. The Murray Hill Tunnel now carries a lane of road traffic, but not the buses. The line became part of the New York Central Railroad system with trackage rights granted to the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad into Manhattan. It is now part of the Metro-North Railroad system, and the only Manhattan trackage of that system. As of 2017, Metro-North operates commuter passenger service from Grand Central Terminal, via Southeast...