Wells, Hamilton County, NY

It's been a while since I've added anything to this blog. Reason? Much harder to find interesting contemporary items that fit into my collection areas. However, yesterday at a stamp show in Vermont, I found this cancel at the Doubleday booth.

If you're not familiar with Anne and Elywn Doubleday and their postal history stock, you're missing one of the best dealers who does local as well as national shows. Their stock is truly amazing.

Wells is a small post office in Hamilton County in the Adirondacks. The post office was established on March 5, 1828 and is still in operation.

As you can see both "Wells" and "Hamilton County" are included in the town dial. This type of cancel was most prevalent in the 1870s and 1880s, scarcely used in the 1890s and extremely rare after 1900s.

This is not listed in David Proulx monograph that was published in 1990. This cover made the 200 mile round trip to the stamp show yesterday well worth it. Plus it has that nice star killer as well.

Plattsburgh NY Contract Stations

Contract Station #1

Plattsburgh (Clinton County) is a fairly small city in northeastern New York. However, it now has 3 postal outlets to service the 20,000 residents. There is the main post office, Contract Station #1 which has been in service for about 5 years and now Contract Station #2 which began operation on December 13, 2010. Both Contract Stations are located in banks. Station #1 is in the Champlain National Bank in the western section of Plattsburgh while Station #2 is in the Glens Falls National Bank branch in the southern part of the city.

Contract Station #2

Both Contract Stations are not really full service stations, but they do have a red circular datestamp for documents. The tellers at the GFNB told me that they expected people to use the office to mail packages. It save going the 2 miles to the main post office.

C37 from New York City

Here's a very scarce postal history item. Scott #C37 (5c coil) properly used in time frame from New York City to the Canal Zone.

The coil was issued in rolls of 500 and not sold individually at post offices. Most of the stamps were used at hotels and other places where stamp vending machines were located. Therefore most uses were non-philatelic and probably not saved.

C37 was issued on January 15, 1948. The 5c airmail postage rate was in effect from October 1, 1946 to December 31, 1948. You might think this stamp would be easy to find properly used on cover. However, in the estimation of some collectors this is probably one of the hardest uses to find of all the airmail stamps.

2 Hotel Post Offices

Two recent additions to my Essex County and Clinton County collections: postcards canceled at summer post offices. Summer post offices operated only during certain months of the years, usually May to October. For the most part they were located in tourist areas.

Hotel Champlain (Clinton County) was just south of Plattsburgh on Lake Champlain. The example shown is from the 2nd Hotel Champlain post office which was in existence from 1891 to 1951. The cancel is the common 4-bar cancel used by many post offices during the era.

Whiteface (Essex County) was probably located in the Whiteface Inn on Lake Placid. The post office existed in a number of different periods. This is Whiteface #1 which was established in 1892 and discontinued in 1911.

Battle of Plattsburgh Pictorial

The Battle of Plattsburgh (Sept. 11, 1814) was probably one of the most important battles in the history of the United States. Many people haven't heard of it since it was at the same time as the Battles of Washington and Baltimore took place.

However, the American forces under General Macomb and Commadore Macdonough stopped a British advance that probably kept the northern parts of New York and New England as part of the United States rather than being part of Canada.

Every year, the BoP is commemorated by a large 3 day event. Each year, the Boy Scouts of America hold a camporee at the same time and sponsor a special pictorial cancel honoring the battle. This year's cancel shows the "Plucky Rooster" which was in a cage hit by a cannon ball, released and started crowing giving sailors of the American Fleet further motivation in their cause.

Last US Flag Cancel

Many post offices in the USA used flag cancels from the mid 1890s through the 1930s. The last flag cancel machine in use in the USA was at Sidney Center (Delaware County) in 1941. ]

Here's a last day of use of the flag cancel.

Unusual Contract Stations

I've become interested Contract Postal Units (CPUs), which are postal stations operated by private businesses under contract with the USPS.

My eventual goal is to publish a listing of CPUs in New York State. Currently, I have discovered at least 60 such offices based on information from the USPS website.

Although most mail is no longer postmarked by the CPUs, they do have cancelers available for document use and these are used to postmark covers if requested.

Valley Manor is a retirement community in Rochester. One of the amenities offered is that there is an office with postal services on site. Other CPU in the Rochester area are at RIT and the UofR, Strong Memorial Hospital and Lyell Video.

To emphasize again, these offices are operated by private business, NOT the USPS, but are part of the Postal System.

Ithaca College (Ithaca, NY) has its own postal station. It serves the 6500 students and 1000 faculty members.

Colgate University in Hamilton, NY serves 2700 students with a faculty of 300. The CPU is located in the O'Connor Campus Center commonly known as The Coop. I was surprised and pleased when I received my covers back from Colgate. They are using an unusual bicolor handstamp, probably to time date arrivals.