Welcome to Postal History Sunday! This week, I am bringing back an older article from November of 2023. Between work travels, work, some dentistry excitement and the farm, there hasn’t been enough time to finish the new project I started earlier in the week. But, never fear, this is a good one. And if you’re worried that I am getting off “cheap” with this one, there is still plenty of effort put into reformatting, editing and cleaning up.
So, without further ado, let’s get on with the fun stuff!
Today’s question: Why do I like this cover?
A few people sent a comment that they really enjoyed learning why I found a cover with the word "Humbug" written on it to be fascinating. Many of these commenters were less familiar with postal history, which makes perfect sense to me. It's the process of exploration and discovery that is often compelling in a Postal History Sunday article. It becomes easier for me to write with some enthusiasm and bring you all along for the ride when I can share the process with you - even if you aren't sure why a person wants to collect and study old pieces of paper!
So, I asked myself the question (on your behalf) - why I am I so interested in this envelope that was mailed from New York, December 1866, to the Netherlands in January, 1867?
The short answer is this - this envelope is similar to a scavenger hunt item that is unlikely to be found. The 27-cent per 1/2 ounce prepaid postage rate using British Mail was only in effect from July of 1866 to December of 1867 - a fairly short period of time. So, it makes sense that there might not be many surviving examples 158 years later.
But if that was all there was to it, you might find it to be a boring and unsatisfying answer. And, this would be a very short Postal History Sunday.
Choices Choices
One of the things that makes international mail prior to the General Postal Union so interesting to me is the different postal rates available to send mail between two locations. Just because you could mail a letter from the United States to Holland for 27 cents per 1/2 ounce doesn't mean that this was the only option. A person mailing a letter actually had some choices to make, and those choices could change how much it cost and who paid for those costs.
To simplify things, let's focus on how a person would send a simple letter from the US to Holland in the 1860s. I created the table shown above and shaded the background for the rate that applies to our first cover to make it easy to see where it belongs.
When the decade opens, there were only two choices for the exchange of mail between the US Post Office and the Dutch postal system. One used the British mail as an intermediary and the other went through the French mail. There was no direct agreement between the US and the Netherlands at that time.
The British mail option is often referred to as the "open mails." If a person selected this choice, they could not prepay all of the postage. The recipient would be responsible for everything except the US costs. The French mail, on the other hand, would allow the sender to prepay all of the costs OR they could send the letter unpaid if they wished.
A likely choice: French Mails
If a person were to go searching for old letters written in the 1860s that were sent from the US to the Netherlands, it stands to reason that the French Mail rate of 21 cents per quarter ounce would be one of the most likely to be found in this scavenger hunt. The rate was actually in effect starting in April of 1857 and it was in force until December of 1867. So, it was available through 80% of the 1860s.
But, being available is only part of the battle. A service can be available, but people might not select it if it is inconvenient or if it is perceived to be too expensive.
Well, for six and a half years (1860 to mid 1866) the only other option was to send letters via the British Open Mail, which did not provide the option to prepay all of the postage. The costs were fairly competitive as well. There were circumstances where each was a better deal, if a person wanted to do a little shopping. Typically, French mail was a better deal for very light correspondence (7.5 grams or less).
In both cases, letters had multiple opportunities to get on a ship and cross the Atlantic each week, so there wasn't much of a time incentive to use one option over the other.
This folded business letter, written in Dutch, is an excellent example of a simple letter sent through the French Mails. The dateline on the letter itself tells us it was written January 24, 1863 in New York. The earliest dated postmark on the cover is the red New York exchange marking dated January 28. This does not mean the letter-writer waited until the 28th to get to the post office, instead this was the date of the intended departure of the ship that would carry it across the ocean.
It was a standard practice for the New York Foreign Mail Office to place an exchange marking that featured the scheduled departure date of the trans-Atlantic ship intended to carry the letter. The 28th was a Wednesday in 1863, which was the day of the week Cunard Line ships let New York City for Queenstown, Ireland. And, sure enough, the ship named China was to depart on that date - and if you look at the front of the cover you will see the words "per China."
Like many letter writers of that day, this person was aware of the scheduled mail sailings that went "across the pond" (Atlantic Ocean). So, while they wrote this letter on Saturday, the 24th, they knew they would not get it to the post office in time for the Saturday ship departures. We can't know which day of the week they actually took this letter to the post office for certain, but it was some time after Saturday mails closed and before mails closed for the Wednesday ship departure.
This letter is a good example because it is clean, all the postmarks and dates can be read, and it illustrates for us beautifully what a letter from the US to Holland via France looked like when everything went as it should. It even has some content I can work to interpret some day!
Another worthy choice: British Open Mail
British open mail is a topic that is worthy of its own Postal History Sunday, so I will gloss over some details with our second item because it will probably be featured when I complete an entry on that topic (planned for Feb or March 2025).
This folded letter was posted in Baltimore on May 31, 1867. A five cent stamp was placed on the envelope to pay only the United States portion of the postage required to get it to Rotterdam, Holland. As soon as this cover left the control of the United States' mail, it was unpaid from that point forward. That means the Netherlands treated it as if it was an unpaid letter from... the United Kingdom. So, they collected 55 Dutch cents from the recipient (the big dark ink scrawl is a "55" for those who want to know!).
The five cent postage stamp essentially paid to get this letter from Baltimore, to New York City and then Boston. Once it boarded the ship named Africa, all postage costs from that point were the responsibility of the recipient. This letter left the control of the United States Post Office as soon as it boarded the Cunard Line ship on June 5 in Boston.
What we need to remember at this point is that some trans-Atlantic shipping lines had contracts with the US and some had contracts with the British. If this were carried on a ship that had a contract with the United States, the sender would have been required to pay 21 cents, because the sea voyage cost 16 cents for a letter weighing no more than a half ounce.
Once again, letter writers could use knowledge of ship sailing dates to save themselves (or their recipient) some money. In this case, the sender's choices resulted in the recipient paying for the sea voyage.
At this point, I am wondering if some of you have noticed a discrepancy within this article? Did you notice the dates I provided in the opening table for British Open Mail? According to what I wrote there, this option was not available for mail to the Netherlands in 1867.
I guess you can't believe everything you read - nor could people in 1867, apparently! Even though this option was not listed in the effective rate tables of the time, this cover clearly was treated just as mail via the British open mail was treated PRIOR to the July 1866 rate announcement. The Post Office's intention was that the 27 cent rate was to replace the previous British open mail arrangement. But, not everyone followed that logic and it seems when someone used the "old approach" everyone else just followed along with the old procedures and treated it as if nothing was wrong.
The treasure in the scavenger hunt
This brings us back to our original question - why am I so interested in this particular cover?
Well, of course, there is a 24 cent stamp from the 1861 series on this envelope, so that plays into it. That postage stamp and the 3 cent denomination fully pay the 27 cents required for a prepaid simple letter from the US to the Netherlands using the British mail rate effective from July 1866, to December of 1867, a total of eighteen months.
A short effective period for a postal rate is certainly going to make an item harder to find. I don't think anyone reading Postal History Sunday is going to argue with me that it would be harder to find something mailed during the effective 18 months for this postal rate versus eight years (if we only include the 1860s) for the French 21-cent mail rate.
But, we need to remember the other important factor here. Were the competing mail options more attractive than this one?
The short answer is this - it depends on how you look at it. And, I also need to remind you that my British Open Mail example was from May 1867. So apparently, a person could ALSO send a letter via that option instead of paying this postage rate during its active period. There was more competition than it might initially have seemed.
So, how uncommon was it for a person to select this choice over the other options they had at their disposal? To my knowledge, there are no surviving or accessible post office records that will tell us how much a particular mail rate option might have been taken.
But we can piece some things together. For example, we can work backward and search for and study covers from that time period from the US to the Netherlands. At this point, I can tell you that I have only located two examples of this postal rate being prepaid. The other is shown above and was once in the collection of Chip Gliedman.
I tell you folks, this is the scavenger hunt item that encourages even a typically stoic individual to raise their voice above a murmur!
Stiff competition
First, we should probably consider that mail volume between the US and the Netherlands was fairly light in contrast to other European nations. There are records in the Reports of the Postmaster General that can help confirm this. Also, there was a reason there were mail conventions with the British, French, and Germans, and not the Dutch (until 1868). The demand to act quickly on an agreement just wasn't there.
Already, I think you will agree with me that finding mail to the Netherlands will be more difficult simply for that reason.
Now we need to consider that there were years where there were only two available options (French and British Open mail) to the relatively small number of people who wanted to send an overseas letter to Holland. Postal patrons and postmasters were all used to using those two options and it was going to take some time to get them to remember and use this new 27 cent rate.
Then, we need to consider whether the 27 cent per half ounce rate provided a marked improvement over these existing rates. If you compare cost to the mailer, it was only better than French mail for a heavier item. And, if you preferred to make the recipient pay more of the postage, British Open Mail could be used to do that. So, there wasn't exactly a financial reason to select this option in most cases.
Then, only three months after this rate was introduced, a new, cheaper rate, of 17 cents per half ounce was added for mail that was carried on US contract steamships that sailed directly to Antwerp, Belgium. While this WAS cheaper, it relied on steamship lines that could not maintain the service. In fact, it is probably true that finding a cover using this rate is even harder than a prepaid 27 cent rate. However, this rate's mere existence might have been enough to raise the question regarding the cost of the British 27 cent rate.
Not long after that, Bremen and Hamburg mails added an 18 cent rate per half ounce. With a longer history of reliable mail service and established trans-Atlantic sailings to both German ports, the argument of reliability was removed for a service that was less expensive. Certainly, those who studied mail ship sailing dates could find reasons to pay a little more to shave some time off of the transit for an urgent piece of mail. But, I am guessing that was a fraction of the customers looking to use the postal services to Holland.
And, one more consideration...
Other than the initial British Open Mail rate, all of the other rates allowed the sender to either prepay the postage or send the letter unpaid and allow the recipient to pay full postage. This actually means it might be even more difficult to find a cover that shows the 27 cent rate prepaid than I've already argued. Why? Because it seems to me that sending mail unpaid to the Netherlands was used more frequently than it was for other western European destinations.
As it stands, there probably aren't many examples of this postal rate being used for unpaid mail either. Dick Winter, a recognized expert in trans-Atlantic mail, states in his Understanding Trans-Atlantic Mail, Vol II, that he has seen less than a handful of covers sent under the 27 cent rate unpaid and he was apparently unaware of any prepaid examples since he illustrated none in his excellent book.
More reason to like it
The rest of the story is tied to my long-standing search for interesting postal history items that bear the 24-cent stamp from the 1861 US postage series. This postage stamp can be found on hundreds of covers to the United Kingdom. It's not terribly difficult to find things sent to the German States, France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium. I've been aware of letters to Sweden, Norway, Greece, Turkey and other European nations for quite some time.
But, it has taken a long time to find something to the Netherlands.
This makes sense if you consider the postage rates to pay for a simple letter to Holland were all less than 24 cents until this 27 cent rate came along.
In the end, I like it because I can claim success after a very long search. Maybe that's the best reason of all.
Thank you again for joining me for Postal History Sunday! I hope you enjoyed today’s entry. I’ll be back next week with an all new article.
Have a great remainder of your day and a fine week to come.
Postal History Sunday is featured weekly on this Substack publication. If you take this link, you can view every edition of Postal History Sunday, starting with the most recent publication. If you think you might enjoy my writing on other topics, I can also be found at the Genuine Faux Farm substack. And, some publications may also be found under my profile at Medium, if you have interest.
GREAT article thanks!