Beautifully engraved uncancelled certificate from the Anheuser - Busch Companies, Inc. . This historic document was printed by the Security-Columbian United States Banknote Corporation and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company logo and a vignette of Adolphus Busch. This item has the printed signatures of the Companys Chairman of the Board and President ( August A. Busch III ).
Certificate Vignette 
Certificate Vignette (August A. Busch Jr. )and secretary and is over 18 years old. In 1860, Eberhard Anheuser (1805-1880), a successful St. Louis businessman, first financed a loan for a struggling local brewery and later bought up the interests of minority creditors. Four years later, his son-in-lawAdolphus Buschjoined the company as a salesman. Adolphus eventually became a partner and then president of the company. As the driving force that took a struggling local brewery and transformed it into an industry giant, Adolphus is considered the founder of the company. The strategic vision of Adolphus included a dream for a national beer market and a national beer that would appeal to virtually every taste. To accomplish this, he created a network of railside icehouses to cool cars of beer being shipped long distances and launched the industrys first fleet of refrigerated freight cars. Later, he pioneered in the use of pasteurization to ensure beers freshness wherever it was consumed. In 1876, Adolphus collaborated with his close friend, Carl Conrad, to create a new beer brandBudweiserwhich now outsells all other brands in the world. Twenty years later, Adolphus developed another beer brandMichelobthat soon became the pre-eminent superpremium U.S. beer, a position it retains to this day. Several successive generations of Busch family leadership have contributed to the companys present-day success. August A. Busch, Sr. (1865-1934) guided the company through three major crises in successionWorld War, Prohibition and the Great Depression by innovating and diversifying the company into several new areas, including the production of corn products, bakers yeast, ice cream, soft drinks and commercial refrigeration units. (Many of these operations were discontinued after Prohibition ended in 1933.) Adolphus Busch III (1891-1946) turned the companys bakers yeast operations into the nations leader, a position it held until this subsidiary was sold in 1988. Through the leadership of August A. Busch Jr. (1899-1989), the company built eight regional breweries; increased its annual sales from 3 million barrels in 1946 to more than 34 million in 1974; and began diversifying into family entertainment, real estate, can manufacturing and transportation. Under the current leadership of August A. Busch III (1937-), the company has opened three breweries and acquired one; introduced numerous beer products to meet changing consumer preferences; acquired SeaWorld, making A-B one of the largest theme-park operators in the country; launched the largest brewery-expansion projects in company history; and diversified into international brewing and marketing, container recovery, metalized label printing and creative services. Trademarks... The A & Eagle design is the widely recognized symbol of Anheuser-Busch Companies and Anheuser-Busch, Inc. First used on the companys beer products in 1872, the trademark was registered with the U.S. Patent Office in 1877. According to the companys statement at that time, the essential elements of the design were "...the capital A and the figure of an eagle standing on the American shield." The original eagle had its wings folded back into the "A." Around the turn of the century, the eagles wings spread outside the "A" in an uplifted, flying motion. In 1939, the Union shield was replaced with a horizontal striped shield. No record remains of the symbols original designer or its exact meaning. The "A" stood for Eberhard Anheuser, but a question remains about the eagle. Some have said that it represented the unlimited vision of Adolphus Busch; others, that it was included as a mark of respect for America, the adopted country of the brewerys founders. Whatever the original meaning, the A & Eagle has come to symbolize the companys century-old heritage of pride and quality.
