Chap. 371.—An ACT to incorporate the Damascus enterprise company
in Washington county, Virginia.

Approved May 21, 1887.

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That
J. D. Imboden and H. E. Graves, of the town of Goodson; T.
P. Trigg, G. W. Litchfield, James C. Greenway, R. M. Page,
William Aston, and Walter Preston, of Abingdon; E. i
Moore, John Chamblin, and A. J. Forbes, of the city of Rich-
mond, and all of Virginia; A. D. Roynolds and James M.
Barker, of Bristol, Tennessee, and R. J. Reynolds, of Win-
ston, North Carolina, their associates and successors are
hereby declared and made a body politic and corporate under
the name and style of the Damascus enterprise company, and
by that name and style shall possess all the powers, rights,
and privileges conferred by the general laws of this State
upon corporations created for such purposes as are hereinatier
stated. The individuals hereinbefore named having united
in the purchase of four hundred acres of land, more or less,
at the confluence of Beaver Dam creek, and the Laurel fork
of Holstein river, in Washington county, as the site of a pro-
jected manufacturing town, the legal title whereof has been
temporarily vested by deeds duly executed to R. M. Page, of
Abingdon, as trustee for the individuals hereinbefore named,
until such time as a charter may be granted to them and a
company organized thercunder, it shall be lawful for said
Page, trustee as aforesaid, at any time after the formation
and organization of the company hereby created, to convey
to it by good and sufficient deed, the legal title to the land
aforesaid in exchange for so much of the full paid and unas-
sessable stock, preferred or common, as a majority of the cor-
porators aforesaid may agree upon, which stock shall then be
transferred by said trustee to the several individual corpora-
tors in the ratio of their respective interests in the lands so
held by the said Page as trustee for them.

2. The objects of the said company are to lay off and
divide said lands into streets, lots, and parcels suitable and
convenient for the erection of all the needful buildings for
the establishment and operations of all kinds of manufactur-
ing and other business thereon; to erect dams and utilize the
water power of the locality according to law; to substitute
strects for roads on and through the property; to erect all
manner of necessary buildings; to establish water and gas-
works or electric lights, and build bridges; to purchase, own,
and hold other lands not to exceed five thousand acres in any
one county for the supply of all kinds of raw material re-
quired in manufacturing; to sell, lease, or otherwise dispose
of its lands in lots or parcels to suit purchasers, and convey
title thereto under the scal of the company as fully as an in-
dividual could do.

3. When the population, resident and doing business upon
its lands, or such part thereof as the company may have sold
or leased, shall within an area of one mile square, number
two hundred and fifty souls, it shall be lawful for said com-
pany to establish a town, by resolution of a majority of its
shareholders in general meeting assembled, by the name of
Damascus, or such other name as it may adopt at the time,
which town when so established shall be organized under the
general laws of the State governing towns, in respect of
officers and local government, for the orderly and lawful man-
agement of its affairs as a municipal corporation: provided
that the town so established and organized as a corporate
body, shall acquire no rights in the real estate, stocks, bonds,
or other property of the Damascus enterprise company, ex-
cept by contract between the said company and the authori.
ties of the town after it shall have been duly and legally con.
stituted and organized: and provided further, that the estab-
lishment of such town shall not be construed to impair or in.
terfere with the corporate rights, powers, franchises, and
functions of said Damascus enterprise company as a separate
and distinct corporation in the further prosecution of its busi.
ness, except in so far as said company may by deed or deeds
duly executed and recorded, transfer and convey lands to
said town for public purposes; but this act shall not be con-
strued to exempt the property of this company from municipal
taxation by said town when established.

4. The capital stock of the said company shall not exceed
five hundred thousand dollars in shares of one hundred dol-
lars each, and which may be issued from time to time in such
amounts and for such purposes as the company may decide
upon, and enter of record in the journal of their proceedings;
and the company may declare any part of its capital a pre-
ferred six per centum stock and the residue common stock;
and it may also make and issue bonds and evidences of debt,
registered or with coupons attached, not to run over thirty
years, and secure the payment thereof by mortgage or deed
of trust on the whole or any part of its property and fran-
chises, and provide for the release of any part of the encum-
bered property that may be sold and its proceeds applied to
the debt or debts before maturity.

5. The said company may take stock in any separate
manufacturing concern established on its own lands and pay
for the same in money, lands, or its own bonds and stock.

6. All taxes or other dues to the commonwealth shall
always be paid in Jawful money and not in coupons of the
State bonds; and the general assembly reserves the right to
alter, amend; or repeal this charter for any infraction of its
provisions or of the general laws of the State.

7. This act shall be in force from its passage.