Historically Imperfect - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to the first Postal History Sunday of June 2023.  Believe it or not, this is the 146th Postal History Sunday published since August of 2020.  My current goal is to reach the three-year anniversary (the August 20 entry).  This is how I reach bigger goals, I focus on subgoals that are close enough to glimpse - and then we go from there!

Before we get started, I would like to invite everyone who reads Postal History Sunday to give feedback as you see fit.  There is a contact form in the right column in the web version that will send an email to me.  If you are viewing this on your phone, you will need to select "view web version" to see it.

I am always happy to receive suggestions for future topics, corrections and other thoughts.  I am particularly interested, as I reach another milestone, what you would like to see here in the future - and remember, if there are specific things you have enjoyed with the prior 140 or so posts, then tell me what has worked for you so I keep doing those things!

The Golden Age

I had someone make a common lament to me recently.  "I just want to go back to the way things were."

We can all understand that sentiment at some level or the other.  There was a time when you knew less and were aware of less, so things were simpler - yes?  Perhaps you had less responsibility?  Or maybe you are having trouble navigating the uncertainties of your world today.  After all, since you've already lived yesterday, if you could go back and live it again, you might have a shot at doing better because you had some insight as to what would happen.

I have also heard people make claims that the current generation "doesn't know how to work" or that they "don't care about anything."  And, "things worked better then."

Yep, I'm sure they did and I am also sure that they didn't!

As a postal historian, I have the privilege of looking into the past and visiting, through the words of those who lived years before.  I can tell you that regardless of the "when" you choose, the new generation never knew how to work and things were always better during an earlier time!

Shown above is a cover mailed in Phildelphia in 1863 to Andelfingen, Switzerland.  Many who collect such things will tell you that this is a very nice looking item.  But, it has a fault - can you see what it is?

A Piece Missing

Here is a different item that was sent to France in 1862.  Three different stamps were used to add up to the 30 cents required to pay for a piece of letter mail that weighed over 1/4 ounce up to 1/2 ounce.  From a collector's standpoint, this is a very nice looking item.  The colors are bright and the envelope is pretty clean - especially considering it is almost 160 year old.  I like it - that is for certain.

But, look carefully at the bottom center of the brown 5 cent stamp.  There is a nice little chunk out of the stamp.  Many people living today barely understand the function of a postage stamp, with the advent of the internet, email and social media.  Even fewer will recall fully that stamps came in sheets with perforated holes that were intended to give you a guide so you could 'easily' separate them.  You also had to wet the back of the stamps (usually by licking them) to activate the gum so it would stick to the envelope.

The US Postal Service has been issuing primarily self-adhesive stamps since the 1990s and the first US self-adhesive was actually issued in the 1970s.  The US Postal Service recently announced that all postage stamps would be self-adhesives going forward.  But so few recent issues have been perforated and gummed stamps that most people under the age of 30 will not have the experience of separating these stamps unless they are (or are related to) a stamp collector!

Some collectors are nostalgic for the 'good old days' when these water activated gum stamps with perforations to separate them were the norm.  But, I am certain they are forgetting how often the stamp itself would tear in the wrong place (like the 5 cent stamp above) if you rushed the job.  They are conveniently omitting experiences where the gum on a sheet of unused stamps would get wet (for whatever reason) and they would stick to each other - or other things that you didn't want them stuck to.  I am also guessing they don't remember the time their cat found a sheet of stamps and licked them until they folded over and stuck to themselves.

Okay, that one happened to me.  Maybe I am unique in that instance?

This marking (and the one that follows) are two of the reasons I find this particular cover attractive.  They are clear enough to read, which means I can learn more about the travel story for this letter. 

The marking above reads "Etats Unis Serv Am Calais 14 Nov 62"  This is the French exchange marking that tells us when and where the letter was removed from the mailbag after it crossed the Atlantic Ocean.  It also gives us a clue that the ship crossing the Atlantic was under contract with the United States Post Office.

The Boston marking is the US exchange office marking that tells us when (Oct 31) the steamship was to depart on its crossing of the Atlantic.  Once this exchange marking was applied to the envelope, the letter was placed in the mailbag until it got to the French exchange office.  

The portion of the marking that reads "PAID 12" can be confusing to people who are not used to reading covers during the 1860s between France and the US.  It would be tempting to think that the total postage paid was 12 cents.  But, there are stamps on this cover that add up to 30 cents in postage.

What's up with that?

The postal rate for mail from the US to France from 1857 through 1869 was 15 cents per 1/4 ounce in weight.  So, twelve cents seems to make... no sense.

This is where you have to understand that the US exchange markings included the portion of the postage intended to be passed to France to cover THEIR portion of the costs in handling this mail.  This marking tells us that the US KEPT 18 cents and passed 12 cents to the French.  Because of that amount, we can determine that the ship carrying this letter across the Atlantic was under contract with the United States.

I thought I would include this table from a prior Postal History Sunday for those of you who might like the reminder.  If it only serves to confuse you at this point, never mind.  Either way, read on and enjoy with the knowledge that there is no quiz at the end and no one will judge you if you don't want to waste the brain space on figuring out whatever tangent Rob is currently taking!

Imperfect Solutions

We live in a world where things aren't perfect.  And, the solutions we create for problems rarely work out on the first, second, and maybe every try.  And, before you try to tell me that we were better at that sort of thing in the past, I'll remind you that we have always used the trial and error process with varying degrees of success.  This is true now.  It was true then.

The letter above was mailed in 1863 from Chicago to Liverpool England.  It was then forwarded to another address in England.  The 24 cent stamp paid for the mail from the US to England.  The red stamp paid one British penny to pay the postage to forward the letter.  But, that's not what I want to focus on for this envelope.

The blue postmark reads "Chicago ILL  RA Oct 30."   The letters "RA" were part of a short-lived experiment that likely was an attempt to help with mail routing problems.  Apparently, Chicago had a significant volume of mail lose its way en route to its destination.  Enough to encourage some experimentation in hopes of finding a solution.

You see, they didn't use return address labels AND it was common for mail to be refused, to have a bad address, or for a recipient to have moved on with no forwarding instructions.  Such items would go to the "Dead Letter Office" where clerks would attempt to ascertain who sent the letter in hopes that they could return the contents.  This was especially important if the sender was mailing anything of value.  And, yes, it was pretty common to mail money.

Even in 1863, there were lots of people in Chicago (an estimated 160,000 people).  How do you find the sender of a letter in "Chicago" if they leave no further clues in the content? 

If you add misdirected mail into the pile of items in the Dead Letter Office (DLO), it makes sense that options would be explored to prevent mail items from going to the DLO in the first place.

Well, what if you use some codes in the postmarks to indicate how things were routed OUT of Chicago?   Other letter combinations, such as "GA," "SB," and "X" can also be found in these Chicago blue ink postmarks.  An excellent analysis by Leonard Piszkiewicz provides us with the explanation that each of these letter combinations corresponds with a train station or routing. The "RA" has been deduced to likely mean "Randolph" train station.  It's actually a fairly clever idea, but it apparently wasn't deemed a success after a short trial. 

Since 1863, we have made return addresses at the top left common practice and we have implemented ZIP codes to help focus where things go in our postal system.  And, if you want to pay for tracking, you can see where your mail is going as it finds its way - assuming no one makes a mistake.  So, it wasn't perfect then - and it could likely be improved now.

Close Enough
 

I'll close with an item that has 30 cents of postage on it.  But, the required cost for a letter via the Prussian Closed Mails was 28 cents if the letter was prepaid. I'd like to remind everyone that 2 cents in 1865 was a bigger deal to people than it is now, though it was a small enough amount that some might not consider much more than a nuisance to overpay that much.

There are two things going on here.  First, the postage rate had declined from 30 cents to 28 cents early in the decade.  So, it is entirely possible that the person mailing this item was just working with a memory of an older postage rate.  However, there was still an option to send mail without postage.  So, if someone in Germany sent a letter to someone in the US unpaid, the recipient would need to pay 30 cents to receive the letter.  It is possible this over-payment was the result of someone reading the postage tables incorrectly and selected the rate for unpaid mail.

Or, maybe it had to do with convenience?  There were 2 cent stamps issued at the time and there were one cent stamps as well.  In other words, there were plenty of ways a person could select stamps to add up to 28 cents.  Is it worth it to overpay by 2 cents if you only had 24 cent and 3 cent stamps?

Of course, we do not have enough evidence to tell us the reason why this letter had two more cents in postage than it needed.  Mr. DeForest, the recipient, was likely traveling in Europe.  Maybe the postage was placed on the letter with the intent that it would go to France, just like the second item we shared today.  But, by the time the person was ready to address the envelope, DeForest's itinerary indicated he would be in Brunswick, Germany.  It's all speculation, but sometimes it can be fun to explore the possibilities as long as we acknowledge that we'll never know for certain.

So, we go back to our first item.  If you will recall, I mentioned something was not quite perfect for this very nice looking cover from 1863.  Once again, this item has too much postage.  The rate to Switzerland via the Prussian mail system was 33 cents per 1/2 ounce, but there are 35 cents in postage on the envelope.  I suspect we'll be featuring this particular cover in the future as well, so stay tuned.

Human error won't leave us.  I misread things, you misread things.  We also make daily decisions about what is going to be 'good enough' and often accept less than perfection as an acceptable result.  It is not new and it is not likely to change.  Historically, we are imperfect - which is exactly why we have so much we can strive for.  So, as we strive together I hope that you will have a fine remainder of the day and an excellent week to come.

-----------------------

Postal History Sunday is published each week at both the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  If you are interested in prior entries, you can view them, starting with the most recent, at this location.