Jasper Republican, Volume 1, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1875 — A Carious Association. [ARTICLE]

A Carious Association.

The recent death in New York of one of the seven survivors of the Tontine Association of that city draws attention to that organization, which was in many particulars a most curious one. It was founded in 1792, the incorporators being all Knickerbocker merchants who met daily in a coffee-house on Broad street for reflection and intercourse. In time, as it ceased to furnish the necessary accommodations, it was abandoned for a new site at Wall and Water streets, where was erected the building famous in the history of old New York as the Tontine coffee-house, at which gathered all the distinguished lawyers, writers, actors and merchants of that day. The association took its name from Lorenzo Tonti, a Neapolitine,who flourished about 1653, and introduced among capitalists a system of betting on human life. The property was divided into 203 shares, which were sold at S2OO each. The shareholder chose a nominee during whose life he .was to receive his equal proportion of the net proceeds of the income from the property, but on the death of any nominee the member’s interest in the capital stock was forfeited to the other shareholders whose nominees survived. The lives of the nominees thus became precious and were solicitously guarded. For many years the interest on each share has averaged 8f per cent. The number of the nominees was originally 203, the same as the number of shares, but in 1839 it had been reduced by death to ninety-three. The recent death leaves only six nominees, all of whom are over eighty years of age, one of them being in his hundredth. The property is now worth a million of dollars, to which, eventually, one of the six shareholders must succeed, on an investment by his ancestor of S2OO.