the 1840s to deliver anti-slavery newspapers from northern publishers to southern states; in 1849, a Richmond, Virginia slave named Henry "Box" Brown shipped himself north to Philadelphia and freedom via Adams Express. In 1855, the company was reorganized as the Adams Express Company. A subsidiary, Adams & Company of California, had been organized in 1850 and offer express service throughout the Pacific Coast. The enterprise was led by Isaiah C. Woods. Not being under Adams' personal management, Woods badly handled it, and it failed on February 23, 1855. By the time the Civil War started in 1861, Adams had operations throughout the American South, operating as Southern Express, led by Henry B. Plant. The company served as paymaster for both the Union and Confederate sides. The parent company held a strong position from New England and the mid-Atlantic coast to the far Western plains. In 1910, it was the second largest stockholder in the Pennsylvania Railroad and the third largest in the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, besides owning large blocks of American Express, Norfolk & Western Railroad and other shares. The company's antebellum employment of Allan Pinkerton to solve its robbery problems was a large factor in building up the noted Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Along with the other express shipping companies, Adams' shipping interests were forcibly merged by President Woodrow Wilson into the American Railway Express Company, which later became the Railway Express Agency. Since 1929, Adams Express has operated as a closed-end fund, (), located in Baltimore, Maryland. , it had paid a dividend every year for 80 years (since 1935). Effective March 31, 2015, the company changed its name to Adams Diversified Equity Fund in recognition of the fact that its express activities had long ended; it continues to operate as a closed-end fund traded on the New York Stock Exchange under its previous symbol. Cultural references Former slave Jordan Anderson mentions Adams Express as his preferred form of payment to compensate for his years of unpaid labor, in his Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master (1865). Adams Express Company is referenced in the punchline to a Biblical joke found in The Big Fun Book: Q: "Why was Eve made?" A: "For Adams Express Company." See also Adams Express during the Civil War Petroleum & Resources Corporation Further reading Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,