THIS history of the oldest joint-stock insurance company in the United States, now venerable in its age, and national in its standing, was undertaken on the request contained in the following letter of President Platt: INSURANCE COMPANY OF NORTH AMERICA, 232 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, April 19, 1881. DEAR MR. MONTGOMERY: Our Board at their last meeting passed the following resolution: That the officers be requested to cause the history of this Company to be written, and you were mentioned in connection as the only person competent to perform the service satisfactorily. May I ask you if you will undertake the work in your leisure time? Yours truly, CHARLES PLATT. THOS. H. MONTGOMERY, ESQ. The connection happily held by the compiler with the Company during the years 1879 and 1880, when in charge of an important section of its fire branch, afforded him favorable opportunities of conning its early and later records, and Mr. Platt, sharing in the interest the review of these naturally . aroused, encouraged a more systematic search among its papers and files for all those facts and incidents which would best illustrate the origin and growth of the institution. There is very much in its annals inducive to a study of those principles of underwriting, which in a century have testified to such development in this the youngest of nations. Accepting the practices and customs of our parent country, we yet have had to apply and interpret them as the ex- igencies of our growth under new conditions of trade and society have (7) 8 PREFACE. demanded, and both in marine and fire underwriting to adapt these tradi- tions of our forefathers to present practice, as the material and mechanical development of the country required. There is, as well, ample store for illustration of the financial growth of the country, as in more than nine decades it has passed through all the vicissitudes the people have endured in that time in the varying fluctuations of the com- mercial world; but it found its Policy of Insurance indemnifying it against the hazards of financial failure in its own good credit and hearty pluck, and in its faithful management by wise and discreet officers. The scope of this compilation, however, will not permit the discussion and elaboration of those important features which a perusal of the company's records offers temptingly to view. And it may sufiice for its friends and well- wishers to find in these pages those salient points of interest which testily to its inception, its growth, and its present maturity: to find how well its foundations were laid, how the superstructure has grown amid the sunshine and storms of almost a century; and to learn somewhat of the chief actors in its concerns, whose guiding hands have in these busy years, one by one, brought it to its present eminence and usefulness. The records and files of the Company, which have been singularly well pre- served, afford a large amount of material, which in its detail, would both instruct and entertain; but it is trusted that enough is here produced to portray with sufficient distinctness, what has been attempted amidst the claims of many duties, a. History of the Insurance Company of North America. PHILADELPHIA, 1 June, 1885.