Investments and Personal Insurance, 1886-1967

This series documents R. Lee Davis's personal insurance and investments, detailing his attempts to assure his family's financial security. During the 1920s and 1930s, Davis invested in numerous oil and mining companies in southern and western states, especially Texas.

Promotional literature abounds, including a Texas oil map. There are stock certificates and leases for fractions of interest on potential oil or gas found upon particular plots of land. Notes, charts, and correspondence from 1967 document Cora Lee Davis Winchester's investigation on behalf of the heirs into the value and legitimacy of these stocks. By then most of the companies were defunct, and one Texas county clerk informed her that the trusts had been "purely promotional schemes."

The materials in this series also include correspondence and contracts with several insurance companies, as well as information pamphlets, bills, receipts, and extensions of payment. Of particular interest is the correspondence during the Depression of the 1930s, when R. Lee's letters indicate his anxiety over the financial security of the Postal Mutual Benefit Corporation. Correspondence also outlines Lee's illness, hospitalization, and death at the Maryland University Hospital in May 1939.

Arrangement is alphabetical by topic and then chronological.