Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. - 1960 dated $1,000 Specimen Bond

$1,000 4 5/8% Specimen Bond printed by Security-Columbian Banknote Company. Southwestern Bell Telephone Company is a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T. It does business as other d.b.a. names in its operating region, which includes Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, & portions of Illinois. The company is currently headquartered in Dallas, Texas at One AT&T Plaza. Southwestern Bell Telephone traces its roots to The Missouri & Kansas Telephone Company, which was founded in 1882. It was consolidated under a single management unit of the Bell System w/ Southwestern Telegraph & Telephone Company of Texas-Arkansas, Pioneer Telephone & Telegraph Company of Oklahoma, & The Bell Telephone Company of Missouri—also called The Missouri Bell Telephone Company—on March 1, 1912. These companies comprised the "Southwestern System" of the Bell System. The latter three companies were legally merged into Missouri & Kansas Telephone Company in 1917, which was renamed Southwestern Bell Telephone Company. The company was often considered the first step of the AT&T corporate "ladder" before the 1984 breakup of that company. While part of the Bell System, it was at times the biggest Bell Operating Company of AT&T's 22 local telephone companies. Southwestern Bell continued to grow in size when it absorbed several smaller telephone companies. In 1950, the company absorbed the operations of Southeast Missouri Telephone Company, which had been formerly named Cape Girardeau Bell Telephone Company. In 1952, the company absorbed the operations of the Southwest Telephone Company, which served Kansas, Missouri, & Oklahoma. In 1953, it absorbed the Ozark Central Telephone Company. Southwestern Bell also provides service to Kaskaskia & McClure, Illinois. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_Bell