Let's Send a Letter to Switzerland - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to the 99th entry of Postal History Sunday, featured weekly on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  If you take this link, you can view every edition of Postal History Sunday, starting with this one (the most recent always shows up at the top).  Only one more PHS entry before I can stop the countdown that has appeared for the past several weeks!

This week, I am going fall back on the small niche of postal history for which I have the most comfort - and that is material that bears the 24 cent 1861 stamp from the United States going to foreign destinations.  Today, I thought it might be fun, since we just did a blog that highlighted how taking a different route could result in a different postage rate, to do the same thing with the US and Switzerland in the 1860s.  

Hang on to your hats!  There is a great deal to talk about here.  I strongly recommend you go get your favorite beverage and put on those fuzzy slippers before starting.  The good news is that there is NOT a quiz afterwards.  You can simply slip happily through the words that follow, enjoying your virtual travels with letters that went from here to there in the 1860s.

Double the 21 cent French Mail rate from the United States to Switzerland

Letter mail between countries prior to the General Postal Union (1875) relied on postal conventions that were established by treaty between nations.  Needless to say, not every pair of sovereign states had a direct agreement that dictated how mail would be exchanged.  Mail between nations that did not have a direct agreement relied on a chain of postal conventions that connected them.  In most cases, that chain was created by finding one intermediary that had independent agreements with both of the states in question.  Mail that does not originate within a country and also does not reach its destination within that nation is said to be in transit through its postal system.

Case in point, Switzerland and the United States had no postal convention in place until 1868.  This makes sense for several reasons, but the most obvious is that there was no way mail could be carried between the US and Switzerland without transiting a third nation.  A quick look at a map will show you that Switzerland has no direct access to ocean transport.  The Swiss would have to travel through one of Italy, Austria, France, some of the German States (Wurttemburg, Bavaria, etc) and possibly have stops in Belgium or other nations along the way.  Any postal agreement between Switzerland and the United States would require connections to other agreements just to manage the transit through some or all of these independent states.

In 1860, the United States maintained postal agreements with the French, Prussian, Bremen and Hamburg systems.  It was also possible to send mail to the British mail services to be sent on through whatever routes were available between the United Kingdom and Switzerland.  

That's actually quite a few choices a person could make just to send a letter to one, smallish, country in the middle of Europe!

French Mail to Switzerland

The French mail system provided the United States with services to Switzerland from April of 1857 until December of 1869 at a cost of 21 cents per quarter ounce (7.5 grams) for letter mail.  Much of this postal convention can be viewed can be viewed here if you are curious.

Mail to Switzerland via France would travel by trans-Atlantic steamship from New York, Boston, Portland (Maine) and Quebec bound for locations in England, France and Germany, depending on which steamship line carried the piece of mail in question.  Items bound for France would typically sail directly to France or travel via Britain.  The entry point in France was most often Calais (or the rail line from Calais to Paris), but it could also be locations such as Havre and Brest.  If you would like more detail on how mail got to France during this period, this post will provide you will provide you with that information.

border region of France and Switzerland

The rail systems in France were developing rapidly from the 1840s through the 1860s.  For most of the 1860s, foreign mail was carried by train to Switzerland via three primary border crossings.  There were other crossings that typically handled local mail and were unlikely to carry foreign mail, though it is technically possible.  Mail could enter Switzerland in the north at Basel, west at Pontarlier and south at Geneva.  The route was chosen based on a combination of train schedules and location of the destination relative to the border crossing.  The hope was to send the mail via the route that would see the quickest delivery time.

The envelope shown above (and at the beginning of this post) is presumed to have gone via Pontarlier based on some incomplete train schedule data that I have located.  It is entirely possible that this is incorrect and I hope to be able to decipher the route more fully in the future.  The 1864 year date makes it possible that the entry was in the south at Geneva depending on the completion dates of some of the rail lines in the Jura mountains.

The difficulty for a postal historian who wants to figure out the route a letter took is that letters transiting France to Switzerland from the United States were not provided some of the same markings seen on Swiss/French mail.  As a result, we get fewer clues from the piece of mail to isolate the route once it was in Europe.  Instead, we are left to speculate by looking at train schedules and, perhaps, looking in a crystal ball or some tea leaves.

And now we take a quick diversion!  Someone asked me how I display postal history, wondering what that might look like.  So, below is the exhibit page I created for the letter shown above - feel free to click on it to view a larger image.

The letter shown above appears to have been sent from New York City to La Chatelaine near Geneva, Switzerland.  The portion of the address panel that reads "pres de Geneve" simply indicates that this is La Chatelaine "near" or "next to" Geneva.  The larger, red circular marking was applied in New York, dated March 9 and indicates that 36 cents of the 42 cents collected in postage is to be passed to France to cover postal expenses not rendered by the United States postal system.  The French then passed money to the British and Swiss postal systems to cover their parts in carrying this letter.

The breakdown of the postage rate is often not as simple as saying 6 US cents go here and 12 US cents go there.  What can be said entirely accurately is that 42 US cents were collected via US postage.  Thirty-six of those US cents were passed to the French postal system.  An amount roughly equivalent to 16 US cents was sent in French centimes (probably 80 centimes) to the English to cover the sea passage and the transit on British rail from Liverpool and the English Channel crossing.  This left 20 US cents, which is in the neighborhood of 1 franc in French currency, to cover transit through France and the cost of mail in Switzerland to deliver to the recipient.

For the sake of argument, mail from France to Switzerland cost 40 centimes (French) per 1/4 ounce.  So, this double weight letter would have cost 80 centimes if it originated in France.  This rate was split at 50 centimes for French postage and 30 centimes for Swiss postage.  So, it is not unreasonable to speculate that 30 centimes (about 6 US cents) was passed on to Switzerland to cover their postage costs.

Did you follow all of that?

No?

Let's try this instead:

• The US retains 6 cents of postage.
• France receives 36 cents from the US.
• Britain receives 80 centimes from France.
• Britain pays 6 pence to the Cunard Line for trans-Atlantic crossing.
  
• Britain retains 2 pence for internal rail service and the English channel crossing.
• France passes 30 centimes to Switzerland (equal to 30 rappen) for the Swiss mail service.
• France retains 70 centimes for their internal mail.

Now you're all saying - why didn't just put it this way in the first place?  The answer?  I don't know, I think it's because I like to hear myself write.

All of these amounts are estimations because I am not currently willing to work out all of the details as to actual exchange numbers between all of the players. involved.  For this excercise, I am operating under a simple 5 French centime to 1 US cent conversion, though the actual rate was 5.26 centimes per 1 US cent.  In the end, that conversion number matters less because the actual postage breakdown numbers are filtered through three sets of postal treaties; the treaty between the US and France, the treaty between France and Britain and the treaty between France and Switzerland.  In the end, it appears that the French make out like bandits since their internal rate was 40 centimes for a letter weighing 10 to 20 grams and they walk away with 70 centimes instead!

There is still plenty that can be explored regarding this cover.  If you look, you will notice several manuscript markings.  A pencil "2" notation certainly was applied to indicate that this is a double weight letter.  I have no idea whether the "53" is a postal marking or a filing docket placed on the envelope after it was received.  The "12" has all of the hallmarks of a postal marking, but I am currently at a loss regarding its importance.  It is crossed out which may mean it was placed on the cover in error OR it shows an amount passed and then recognized as passed and crossed out.  In that latter case, crossing out the amount makes it clear that it is not a due amount for the recipient.

Prussian Closed Mail to Switzerland

The Prussian mail system provided mail services for the United States to Switzerland starting in 1852 until December of 1867 when the Prussian system was superseded by the North German Union mails (essentially the Prussian mails with other German mail systems consolidated with it - a topic all its own).  The postage rate was 35 cents per half ounce (15 grams) until May of 1863 when the rate was reduced to 33 cents. *

* This may be, in part because Baden's rate drops from 30 cents to 28 cents in May of 1863 to align it with the rest of the German-Austrian Postal Union.  Also a topic worthy of more discussion.  I told you this stuff could get a bit complicated sometimes!

Mail to the Prussian system typically traveled through Belgium after a stop in England.  Mailbags would enter the Prussian mail officially at Aachen (Aix la Chapelle) or on the mobile post office between Verviers and Coeln.  

Both Belgium and Prussia featured highly advanced rail systems that facilitated rapid mail dispersal.  Travel to Switzerland from Aachen required transit through Prussia and Baden or through Prussia, Hessian states, and Wurttemburg. 

In the case of the item below, the markings include the Prussian "Aachen" marking on the front, a Baden railway marking on the back and two Swiss markings also on the back.

28 cents paid only to the border of Switzerland

The Prussian system is interesting in that it would allow mail from the United States to be paid 'up to the outgoing border.'  In other words, the sender could opt to pay the 28 cent rate to get a mail item to anywhere within the German-Austrian Postal Union (GAPU).  Once it reached the border, it would be sent on - essentially as an unpaid piece of mail from the Prussian system to its destination in Switzerland.  

In this case, the recipient was required to pay 10 rappen (or centimes) in Swiss postage for the privilege of receiving their mail in this case.  Remember last week, when we had some mail that went from Switzerland to Rome and the send paid for some of the postage and the recipient paid for the rest?  Yep, it's just like that.

The 28 cents in postage was divided into 7 cents for Prussia and 21 cents for the United States.  The U.S. was responsible for covering their own internal mail costs and paying for transit via England (which included the trans-Atlantic portion).  The Prussian mail system paid Belgium for the transit via Ostende (the equivalent of 2 US cents) and it retained 5 US cents for travels through the GAPU mail.  

Bremen or Hamburg Mail Treaty to Switzerland

Bremen and Hamburg were two Hanseatic cities that negotiated mail treaties with the United States including mail service to Switzerland beginning in July of 1857 at a rate of 27 cents per 1/2 ounce.  The rate was reduced to 19 cents in October of 1860 and became obsolete when these mail systems were combined with the North German Union postal system in January of 1868.  Initially, mail packets (steamships) traveled between New York and Hamburg every four weeks , but that increased to every other week (alternating with the ships that traveled to Bremen) as we progress through the 1860s.

Mail from Hamburg and Bremen typically traveled through Frankfort (Hessian territory) and would go through Baden to western Switzerland and Wurttemburg to eastern Switzerland.  

US to Switzerland via Hamburg Mails at double the 19 cent rate.

The different numerical markings help us figure out how the postage was shared between mail systems.  First, the blue "8" is in the German silbergroschen currency, which would translate to 19.2 US cents approximately.  It appears that the blue "8" was applied in Frankfort A Main, which would imply entry into the Thurn and Taxis posts.  They would have kept 6 silbergroschen for their transit of mail to Switzerland and 2 silbergroschen would have been passed to Switzerland for their surface mails (about 5 cents). The red marking next to the "8" is "2 fr"* which represented the amount passed to Switzerland.

* this is a weiterfranco marking, weiterfranco is a German postal term that indicates an amount of postage passed forward to the next postal service.

British Open Mail to Switzerland

The postal convention with England had a fully prepaid option to Switzerland from March of 1848 until June of 1857.  After that point, there was no prepaid option from the US via British mail.  I find that to be extremely interesting because that seems like a step backward in postal progress, something the British were not prone to doing.

Instead, a person had the option of paying the U.S. portion of the postage and then allowing the British Open Mails to arrange to have the letter sent to its destination, where all costs of mailing from the British system to its destination would be collected.  While this open mail was not in effect for all possible destinations, it was available for most of Europe.

The open mails were especially valuable for mail that was overweight but not paid as such - just as is seen in the item shown on the exhibit page and seen below.  The sender appears to have intended to pay the 21 cent French rate to Switzerland.  However, the item must have weighed more than 7.5 grams (1/4 ounce), which would require 42 cents in postage.  The postmaster realized that at least some of the postage applied to the envelope could be useful by paying the US portion of the trip to England, so the item was sent via the British Open Mail (21 cents per half ounce since an American contract ship took this mail across the Atlantic).

An alert clerk prevented loss of the entire 24 cents postage paid by using British Open Mail

 

It was up to the Swiss postal service to collect sufficient postage to cover the costs that were now to be split between the British, French and Swiss postal systems.  To simplify the accounting of the time, debits and credits were often (but not always) dealt with in bulk rather than a letter by letter basis.  For example, the British and French agreed on 40 centimes for every 30 grams of bulk mail.  The justification for this is partially based on an assumption that 30 grams would represent three to four pieces of letter mail on average.  

 

Rather than having an exact count of mail pieces and the rates paid, the entire mailbag could be weighed out to figure what was owed for the British (and later French) transit.  This is, of course, an efficient way of doing business as long as the actual averages held true to the estimates.  But, from a postal historian's perspective it makes it difficult to make the postage breakdown nice and neat.  I am sure this postal historian can get over that small issue - eventually.

For an initial take on the breakdown, please view the exhibit page if you are curious.

Why Choose One Option Over Another?

With five different options for sending mail from the US to Switzerland, how was a person to choose?

• French Mail: 21 cents per 1/4 ounce
• British Open Mail: 5 cents per 1/2 ounce OR 21 cents per 1/2 ounce with remainder to be collected from recipient in Switzerland.
• Prussian Closed Mail: 33 cents per 1/2 ounce (35 cts prior to May 1863)
• Prussian Closed Mail to border: 28 cents per 1/2 ounce with remainder to be collected from recipient.
• Bremen or Hamburg Mail: 19 cents per 1/2 ounce.

Clearly, if cost were the only consideration a person might prefer Hamburg Mail, French Mail or British Open Mail.  But, the French Mail rapidly loses its luster if the mail item exceeds 7.5 grams (now it would cost 42 cents).

Hamburg Mail looks good at 19 cents per 1/2 ounce.  But, what happens if you missed the most recent sailing of the ship for Hamburg?  You would have to wait one more week for the next departure to Bremen (or two to Hamburg).  Are you really willing to add another seven days to the typical 12 day transit period?  That means you would have to wait nearly a month for a reply.  The other mail systems benefited from being able to receive mail from multiple sailings each week.

British Open Mail and Prussian Mail to the border both require that the recipient foot part of the postage.  This may not be the best policy if you actually want the recipient to accept what you have sent to them.  After all, they were not required to accept and pay for these items.  On the other hand, there are multiple instances where it is clear that two businesses intended to split postal expenses in this fashion, so perhaps it was a reasonable option for some.

The last option to consider is the fully paid rate via the Prussian Closed Mails.  If the letter item was between 1/4 and 1/2 ounce, this option is clearly better than French Mail (42 cents).  If you were also concerned that the recipient accept the mail and not have to pay to receive that mail AND you found yourself in a position where you didn't want to wait a week for the next Bremen or Hamburg sailing, then Prussian Closed Mail is your choice.

As might be expected, my observations have shown more mail addressed to Switzerland from the United States using French mail or Bremen/Hamburg mails than the other options. Apparently, the choice was most often made by selecting the least expensive option.

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You did it!  You made it to the end of this week's Postal History Sunday!  I hope I managed to keep you awake and interested through most of this entry.  And, if not, I hope I didn't startle you with a couple of exclamation marks at the beginning of this paragraph.

We'll see you next week with Postal History Sunday #100.  Have a good remainder of your day and an excellent week to come.