Monday, July 19, 2010

New York Mills County Postmark



One of the more interesting areas of research and collecting is post office cancels with the name of the county in the cancel. In a large state such as New York, adding the county name in the cancel would aid the recipient to add the name of the name of the county in any reply. This was helpful to postal workers who depended on their knowledge of counties to decide which mail bag a letter would go ito.

These were mainly used in the 1870s and 1880s just before the Post Office Department began to try to standardized postal cancels.

But there are some examples from the earlier part of the 19th Century.

Here is the discovery copy from the Oneida County village of New York Mills. New York Mills is just south of Utica and was established on December 8, 1832 and is still in operation today.

The stampless letter is dated January 1, 1833 very early in the operation of the post office. The rate is 12 1/2c for postage to Auburn, NY. This is the rate for 80 to 150 miles under the postal act effective May 1, 1816 which remained in effect until June 30, 1845.


Sunday, July 11, 2010

1792 Postage Rates

Before June 1, 1792, postage was charged in a non-decimal terms of pennyweights and grains of silver. The federal postal act of February 20, 1792 established a decimal system of payment with 9 levels of charge dependent on miles carried. The rates remained in effect until March 2, 1799 when the 9 levels were reduced to 6 levels.

The letter from New York City to Albany was charged 30c. This reflects a double weight of the 15c charged for letters traveling between 150 and 200 miles.

The New York postmark is the "clamshell" used from 1798 to 1802.


Saturday, July 3, 2010

Adirondac (Essex County) New York

Adirondac, New York
(1848 - 1853)
orginally printed in Excelsior! (March 2009)

It all began with an email from fellow ESPHS member, Doug Penwell, telling me to look at a listing on eBay, the online auction site. At first I couldn't figure out why Doug had steered me towards the site: the title was "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 1852. Unstamped envelope to S".

Then when I saw the accompanying scan of the "unstamped envelope", my heart raced and I understood why Doug had sent me his email. The unstamped envelope was manuscript postmarked Adirondac, N.Y. June 28/52 and sent to Annan in Dumfrieshire, Scotland.

Adirondac was a post office that authorized August 3, 1848 and discontinued November 7, 1855. The only postmaster was Andrew Porteous. According to Arthur H. Masten, in his "The Story of Adirondac" (1968), "A post office under (the name of Adirondac) was established through the efforts of Orlando Kellogg, Congressman from the Essex County District, and in October, 1848, Andrew Porteous received his commission as the first Postmaster.

"By the Government contract with the mail carrier, John Wright, the office at Adirondac was to be supplied with the mail twice a week from Schroon River, a distance of nineteen miles. His compensation was to be the net proceeds of postage collected at the office, not exceeding $18.75 per quarter. The mail was then sent from Albany by way of Sandy Hill and Glens Falls." (Masten, 112)

Today, Adirondac is a ghost town. It was originally established as a iron mining town in the 1820s. In an 1854 brochure the town was described as having: "1 Cupola Furnace; 1 Blast Furnace; 1 Forge and Puddling Furnace; 1 Stamping Mill; 1 Mill for driving small machinery; 1 Saw Mill, 1 Grist Mill, or Mill for grinding feed; 1 Hay Scales, 2 Kilns for roasting ore; 1 Brick House; 1 Granary, 1 Tool House, 1 Blacksmith shop; 1 Carpenter shop, 3 Coal Kilns; 6 Coal Houses; 1 Long Wood house, 1 Store for merchandise; 1 Ice house; 1 Powder house; 1 Large Boarding house; 16 dwelling houses for workmen; 1 School House; 3 Large Barns; several Cow Stables and Cattle Sheds; 1 Piggery; 1 Building with Steaming apparatus." (Masten, 131)

By 1859, the village was a deserted village (Masten, 144). A huge flood in 1856 plus the financial panic of 1856 doomed the mining company and town. Today the deserted town is part of the Town of Newcomb. An excellent online resource for more information about Adirondac is found at http://www.aarch.org/archives/leeman.html

In my collecting of Essex County covers for over 40 years, I have never seen another example from this post office. When I showed a photocopy of this cover to postal history dealer Elwyn Doubleday he also said that he had never seen an example from Adirondac.

I would have been very satisfied with an ordinary domestic rate cover but this cover was prepaid for the 24c Treaty rate to GB and was carried by American packet across the Atlantic on Havre Line "Franklin", which left New York City on July 3 and arrived in Southampton on July 14. Because an American ship carried the letter, GB was only entitled to its inland postage, and the red 3 is a US credit to GB for that purpose. If a British ship had carried the letter, the prepayment would still have been 24c, but the credit would have been 19 cents (3c GB inland plus 16c packet postage).

All in all, a very interesting cover. Even more interesting is where it was located. The seller of the cover was the Barcelona Spain stamp auction house Soler y Llach. Actually the listing was not an auction, but a BUY IT NOW. As you can imagine I quickly clicked on the BUY IT NOW button and purchased this gem

Thanks, Doug, for alerting me to this gem!

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Bibliography:

Adirondack Architectural Heritage. 31 Mar. 2009. .

Hochschild, Harold K. The MacIntyre Mine-From Failure to Fortune. Blue Mountain Lake, 1962

Masten, Arthur M. The Story of Adirondac. NY: Syracuse, 1968.