Always More To Learn - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to the entry of Postal History Sunday for April 10, 2022.  PHS is hosted every week on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  Everyone is welcome here, regardless of the level of knowledge and expertise you might have in postal history.  Take a moment and enjoy where this one goes.  And, remember, if something doesn't make sense, if you have questions, or if you believe I've gone and made a mistake, I welcome your responses!

 Why did this letter take so long to get where it was going?

If you read last week's Postal History Sunday, you might recognize this particular item.  In that post, I provided some information and omitted other parts of the story for a very good reason.  

Oh, you want to know the reason?  Well, I didn't know about these things when I wrote about them last - or I wasn't certain about them.  But, the funny thing about doing some research on an item, it always seems like you find more information AFTER you think you've come to a stopping point. Then, you have to decide what to do about it.  This time around, I decided to share what I've learned with all of you!

The piece of mail shown above is actually a smaller envelope pasted onto a larger envelope.  The smaller envelope has a total of 15 sen in postage applied to it, which pays for the triple rate (5 sen per 15 grams from Jan 1881 - Sep 30, 1897).  That means the larger envelope must have carried enough so the whole package weighed more than 30 grams and no more than 45 grams.  To put that into perspective, a single A4 sized sheet of modern printer paper weighs about 5 grams.  Sadly, the contents are no longer with this item, so we'll never know what was sent from Yokohama to Iowa.

But, that does beg the question - how did this piece of mail get from Yokohama to Iowa?  That's something we kind of glossed over in the prior Postal History Sunday.

Let's start by telling you about the markings that are on this piece of postal history.

On the front:

• Yokohama, Meiji Japan Jan 10, 1894
• via: San Francisco

On the back:

• San Francisco Feb 27
• Elkdader, Iowa Mar 3 
• and one more marking that is unreadable

You are now seeing one of the reasons I found this item interesting - that sure was a long time for this letter to get from point A to point B.  Especially when the OTHER item that was in last week's PHS only took fifteen days to get from Yokohama to San Francisco.  This one took 48 days.

I smell a story of some kind - but what?  Could it be a ship wreck?  Or maybe it got caught in a storm?

Well, I was able to find this advertisement from late in 1894, which shows us the TYPICAL schedule expected for the steamships of the Occidental & Oriental Steamship Company during that year.  A departure from Yokohama on November 9 would make a stop at Honolulu (Nov 19) and then get to San Francisco on November 26.

This lines up nicely for the February 27 arrival in San Francisco if we were looking at a departure around February 9.  But, the item in question has a January 10 postmark.  Still, we at least understand part of the reason this might have been delayed, it may have gone on a trip that included Honolulu on its route.  That added a couple of days to the length of travel.

Working from the other side, I started looking for ship departures that carried mail FROM Yokohama on or a bit after January 10.  I found this clipping in the Japan Weekly Mail (a newspaper) for Jan 20, 1894.  

The very first line is for the Belgic, a ship with the Occidental and Oriental Line that was scheduled to carry the mail back to San Francisco.  It's January 13th date should have had it arriving on the West Coast in late January.  All things being equal, I would have expected the letter to be on board this ship.  But, the February 27th San Francisco date tells us otherwise, because there is no record of the Belgic having a delay on its trip in January.

But, look at the last entry shown above.  The Oceanic departed Yokohama for Hong Kong.  It was also an Occidental and Oriental Line ship and it also carried mail.  Is it possible, for whatever reason, that this letter was put on board this ship, instead of the Belgic?

the Oceanic by William Lionel Wyllie, 1895

Well folks, it turns out that this is EXACTLY what happened.  The mailbag containing this letter was placed on the Oceanic as it went to Hong Kong and the dates are nearly a perfect match for what we see on the table for the Occidental & Oriental advertisement.

depart Yokohama Jan 14 and arrive at Hong Kong Jan 22

depart Hong Kong and arrive at Yokohama about Feb 3, leaving for San Francisco the next day - again according to the Japan Weekly Mail.

Then we have a mid February stop at Honolulu.  This matches up pretty well with the February 27th postmark for San Francisco.

If you are interested in the details of the story for the Oceanic, you can take a look at this site.  The ship was originally built for use in the trans-Atlantic trade for the White Star Line, but she was chartered by the Occidental & Oriental Line for the Pacific crossing in 1875.  It was returned to the White Star Line in 1895 for refitting, but it was discovered that it would take too much work and was not economical to complete all of the repairs, so it was scrapped the next year (1896).

Ü is UE

What you see is the feature cover from this Postal History Sunday in January of this year.  In that post, my focus was on the transit of this item (and others) through the border town of Bingen.  As is often the case when I use different pieces of postal history to illustrate a particular point, I often will avoid cluttering things up with too much detail.  Or, perhaps, I just don't dig any deeper than what I need at the time for the purpose of the article.  But that certainly does not mean I will cease to explore more when I have the motivation to do so.

This 1866 folded letter has 24 kreuzer in postage stamps affixed, which paid for a double rate letter from the Thurn and Taxis system to the Netherlands (12 kr per loth from Jan 1, 1864 to Dec 31, 1867).  The postage breakdown between the two postal systems is clearly shown with the "16/8" in ink at the bottom left.  Sixteen kreuzer stayed with Thurn & Taxis and 8 kreuzer was passed to Holland.

The back of this folded letter included a transit mark for Bingen and a receiver marking for Amsterdam.  The problem was, I could not figure out the origin for this letter.

If you are not entirely familiar with a language or the geography of a region, it can be very difficult to try to decipher when much of it is hard to read in a postmark.  This was certainly true for this particular marking.  I used online maps and I tried searching for town names in and around Hesse that ended in "edesheim."  I looked at maps from the 1850s, 60s and 70s.  I used graphics tools to try and get a better view of the letters at the beginning of the name.

Then I finally asked some German postal historians who are friends of mine and got an answer almost immediately.  Why didn't I do that sooner?

The town name is "Ruedesheim," which would typically be shown as "Rüdesheim" in maps.  It is located just across the Rhine River in the Duchy of Nassau.  And I couldn't figure it out because I did not realize that "ü" could also be represented as "ue."

Well, ok.  I might not have figured it out EVEN if I knew that.  

It's a nice reminder to me that there is a good reason my German friends sometimes ask me to help them figure out a postmark from the United States.  I am familiar with the naming patterns, geography and postal markings of my own country.  It's just faster for me to decipher.  Just like this German postmark was easier for those who specialize in that area or who live in that country. 

Once I understood WHERE this letter started, other things started making sense.  Like the docket on the inside of the letter.

The docket actually reads Dilthey, Sahl & Company,  a wine business established in 1859.  As a matter of fact, the area around Rüdesheim is well known for its wines even today.  

The site linked above even provides us with images of some financial documents like this 1867 stock certificate.  Dilthey, Sahl & Co had a tough time paying their creditors in the 1860s.  Happily for them, a good year in 1867 helped convince their creditors to exchange debt for stock ownership in the business.  Apparently, this worked out well enough, with the business continuing until 1967.

image of poster from Europeana

Of course, it was not critical for me to know much information about Dilthey, Sahl & Company.  It was more a matter of curiosity to explore it further.  The value of knowing their name and their business, as far as the postal history of this item is concerned, is that we can connect the sender of the letter to the place name where we believe it originated.  Their existence in Rüdesheim during the 1860s provides further evidence about the postal history item I am exploring.  It helps to confirm that the item is genuine, along with a proper postal rate and route illustrated by the markings.

Thanks for joining me this week.  I hope you have a good remainder of the day and an excellent week to come!