New York Southern Society 1899

Beautifully engraved RARE SPECIMEN certificate from the New York Southern Society. This historic document was printed by the American Banknote Company in 1899 and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of New York City Arms in circle flanked by field hands harversting sugar, loading a sugar wagon and driving a cotton wagon. This item is over 103 years old. This is the only example of this certificate we have seen.










Certificate Vignette



The New York Southern Society was founded by Algernon Sydney Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan, was a southerner who became a prominent lawyer, businessman, and philanthropist in New York in the late nineteenth century.

Algernon Sydney Sullivan, born in Indiana in 1826, rose to success in New York City as a respected lawyer and a man who "reached out both hands in constant helpfulness" to others. After his death in 1887, the Society sought to honor him and the award bearing his name was established in 1925 by a Sullivan Memorial Committee and the New York Southern Society, which Mr. Sullivan had served as its first president. The award seeks to perpetuate the excellence of character and humanitarian service of Algernon Sydney Sullivan by recognizing and honoring such qualities in others.

The award stems from the Society’s wish to establish a permanent reminder of the “noblest human qualities as expressed and followed in the life of its first president; and to do so in a manner which will perpetuate the influence of such a man, not so much as an individual but as a type.” The prestigious awards are given only by selected “representative institutions.” After the New York Southern Society closed its doors, the awards were continued by the Sullivan Foundation and grew to include more and more institutions throughout the South.

Mary Mildred Sullivan, Algernon Sullivan's wife, a Virginian, was likewise a person imbued with humanitarian spirit. In 1940, the New York Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which Mrs. Sullivan had helped establish and which she had been the first president, created the Mary Mildred Sullivan Award. It honors persons who demonstrate the "spirit of helpfulness and an awareness of the beauty and value of the intangible elements of life." In 1949, the Southern Society agreed to administer the award and did so until the Society went out of existence in 1973.

Since 1973 the Sullivan Foundation, formalized in the late 1920s by Mary Mildred Sullivan and son George, has administered both the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Awards and the Mary Mildred Sullivan Awards.

The University of Kentucky is one of several southern universities that present the Algernon Sydney Sullivan award -- sponsored by the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Foundation -- to recognize those faculty, staff or students who exhibit Sullivan's ideals of heart, mind, and conduct as evince a spirit of love for and helpfulness to other men and women.” In addition, the non-student must have a connection with the University as an employee, alumnus or friend.