This item comes with a hologram COA from Bullseye Collectibles. The book is in Like New Condition. Includes stamps and first day envelopes. See photos.

MEMBER OF UACC.

PROUD MEMBER OF UACC

A gift from the famed artist, Robert Peak to Fred Kirby

Fred Morgan Kirby II, an heir to the Woolworth fortune who transformed the Alleghany Corporation from largely a railroad holding company controlled by his father into an insurance and investment giant, died on Tuesday in North Carolina. He was 91 and lived in New Vernon., N.J.

As its longtime chairman and chief executive, Mr. Kirby completely reinvented Alleghany, boldly selling its biggest asset, Investors Diversified Services, to the American Express Company for $800 million in 1983.

Three years later, he pumped the proceeds into insurance, buying up the Chicago Title and Trust Company and the Security Union Title Insurance Company to make Alleghany the biggest player in title insurance. Title insurance is sold to protect against losses stemming from problems with the title to a property.

To benefit its shareholders, Mr. Kirby later came up with a plan to liquidate Alleghany and then restructure it so they could receive a hefty cash distribution before valuable tax breaks expired in 1987. In 2007, Barron’s reported that shares of Alleghany had produced a 15 percent annualized return since Mr. Kirby took over, exceeding the returns of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index by five percentage points.

His business acumen mirrored that of his grandfather and namesake, Fred M. Kirby, who used a series of acquisitions and mergers to parlay a five-and-dime store in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., into what became the F. W. Woolworth Company. According to Philanthropy magazine, a publication of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a membership organization for philanthropists and foundation executives, the elder Mr. Kirby used $1 million of his wealth to seed a family foundation, the F. M. Kirby Foundation, in 1931. He also unknowingly seeded a bitter family feud. It took root when Fred Morgan Kirby II gained control of Alleghany after his father had a debilitating stroke in 1967. His family chose him and his brother, Allan P. Kirby Jr., as co-guardians, but Fred M. Kirby II ended up with the biggest jobs, including leadership of the foundation.

Fred M. Kirby II in 1983.

LARRY C. MORRIS / THE NEW YORK TIMES

The foundation had an unusual two-tiered governance structure, under which only members could appoint other members and directors, and for many years Fred Kirby was the sole member while his brother and his sisters, Grace Jessie Kirby Culbertson and Ann Sutherland Kirby Kirby (she married an unrelated Kirby), served as directors. They participated in the awarding of grants to places like Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., which several Kirby men had attended.

In 1986, Mr. Kirby’s brother and two sisters pushed for membership in an effort to exert more control over the foundation. Mr. Kirby, an intensely private man, countered in a letter, revealing that two years earlier he had made his wife and four children members. A legal battle ensued, but Mr. Kirby prevailed.

According to the foundation’s 2009 tax forms, Fred Kirby’s son, S. Dillard Kirby, was paid $181,613 as the foundation’s executive vice president. Fred Kirby’s wife, Walker, and two of his three other children were on the board, the forms show.

Under Fred Kirby’s leadership, the foundation’s assets grew to a market value of $408 million at the end of 2009. Philanthropy magazine reported in 2008 that the foundation had given away more than $400 million since its founding.

Fred Morgan Kirby II was born in Wilkes-Barre on Nov. 23, 1919. He attended private schools in New York and New Jersey before attending Lafayette, where he played on its football team. He was a member of the Naval Reserve during World War II, serving at bases in England and France.

Mr. Kirby retired from Alleghany at 88. Reserved and formal — “He is not the one who has his jacket off at meetings,” an associate said in 1983 — Mr. Kirby flew planes, sailed and was a member of the Spring Valley Hounds, a fox-hunting club in New Jersey that no longer involves actual foxes in its events.

He got a motorcycle license at 63, and his wife gave him a Jet Ski for his 85th birthday. His wife survives him, as do his four children, S. Dillard Kirby of Mendham, N.J.; Alice Kirby Horton of Durham, N.C.; Fred M. Kirby III of Greensboro, N.C.; and Jefferson W. Kirby of New Vernon, N.J.; 10 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.