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POSTAL HISTORY SOCIETY

Founded 1972

 

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THE NEW JERSEY POSTAL HISTORY SOCIETY was established in 1972, to study and explore the many aspects of New Jersey postal history.

The society produces a quarterly award winning journal in electronic and hardcopy format, which publishes articles on a variety of subjects relating to this theme. Join the Society and receive NJPHS as a benefit!

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NJFSC Chapter #44S..........PHS Affiliate #1A..........APS Affiliate #95

Society & Member's Galleries....
As we continue to add more galleries, some will be for public display while many will be reserved for members access only.

Featured Covers Gallery
August 2014 Issue of the NJPH Journal AN EARLY BURLINGTON POSTMARKED COVER
By Ed & Jean Siskin

1

Burlington, New Jersey was founded by two Quaker groups in 1677, five years earlier
than Philadelphia. It was a planned community and the original draft map of the town prepared in 1678, contains many of the same street names that exist today. In 1681, when New Jersey was divided into two providences, East Jersey and West Jersey, Burlington was named the Capital of West Jersey. As Capital, it became a significant port city. Sometime shortly thereafter, a post office must have been established to receive and distribute incoming mail. The exact date is uncertain. In 1693, Andrew Hamilton functioning as Postmaster General under the Neale patent, identified two post offices in New Jersey, Burlington and Amboy. This identification in 1693, is often considered the establishment date of these two post offices, although almost certainly they had existed earlier.

From 1693 until 1776, there are only a few instances of official recognition of a post office in Burlington. The only recognitions we have been able to find are mentions in the Queen Anne Act of 1710, which established British responsibility for a postal system in the American
colonies, and in the rate charts of 1764, 1766, and 1775. There are also newspaper references to a Burlington post office in 1743 and 1754, but no other official recognition of this post office's existence has been found.

Until 1754, the Burlington post office apparently was fairly active since it was directly part of the path for letters traveling between Philadelphia and New York. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin, who had become co-Deputy Postmaster General in October 1753, rerouted the Philadelphia-New York mail to travel via Trenton rather than Burlington, which substantially reduced Burlington’s postal importance. The reason for this change was that the Burlington route required five ferry crossings, while the Trenton route could make do with two. Reducing the number of ferry crossings was crucial since each ferry crossing represented a potential for a significant delay to the mail. Ferries were required by law to carry mail for free, therefore they
tended to wait until a crossing was to be made for a paying customer before taking the mail
across.

Burlington’s post office continued to function until about November 1776. At that time, the depredations of the British army chasing General Washington’s rebels across New Jersey
resulted in the collapse of the postal system in New Jersey. Apparently, the Burlington post
office was not reopened until October 18, 1797 with the appointment of Thomas Douglass as its first postmaster under the new United States Post Office.

There are few covers recorded which traveled through the Burlington post office during the Colonial period. The earliest dated September 25, 1699, traveled from Burlington to The
Falls (Trenton). This cover, shown in Figure 1, was sold in our collection in 2006. That cover
and other early covers have no town post mark. Our records had indicated that the earliest
Burlington postmark was dated August 1774. That cover was sold in Richard Frajola’s Auction
Number 26.


1

Chris Records has brought to the Society’s attention a new find. This cover is shown in
Figure 2. The cover has a “Burlton” townmark, a 2 pennyweight rate (the correct rate from
Burlington to New York) and a July 15 Franklin Mark. The cover is endorsed by Lawrence
Sweeny, a New York attorney to whom the letter had been shown. The cover contains a dateline of July 7, 1767, shown in Figure 3.


1

1

The content is a letter from James Kinsey (1731-1803) to a client in New York. At this
time Kinsey was a prominent attorney in Burlington who had succeeded his father John Kinsey
Jr. and a brother John Kinsey III as chief counsel to the West Jersey Proprietors. Later, James
Kinsey would be a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774-1775) and would become Chief
Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court (1789-1803). The addressee, William Bayard (1727-
1804), was a New York City merchant. He was a member of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765.
During the Revolutionary War, he sided with the Loyalists and raised a provincial regiment for
the British Army. His lands were confiscated and he died in England in 1804.

The contents, provided below, concern the efforts to discourage people from stealing timber from lands possibly owned by the West and East Jersey Proprietors.

1

1

This cover was found amongst a number of old papers and material contemporary to this
period which is now in Chris’s hands. Anyone wishing to contact him may do so at
therecords5@gmail.com. A nice find!



Past Featured Covers

1

May 2014 Issue of the NJPH Journal NEW JERSEY’S NEGATIVE LETTERED STAMPLESS POSTMARKS by Robert G. Rose
During the period that domestic stampless mail was permitted ending in 1855, two New Jersey post offices employed negative lettered handstamped postmarks. As a branch of postal history known as “marcophily,” these markings are avidly collected for their eye-catching
appearance.. Read more.....

1

February 2014 Issue of the NJPH Journal BRIDGETON FORERUNNER, 1694 By Ed & Jean Siskin
The excellent articles on the Bridgeton Post Office and its postmasters by Doug D’Avino
started with its first United States post office in 1792. As a prequel to those articles, it is worth discussing a letter from the Bridgeton area a century earlier. Read more.....

1

November 2013 Issue of the NJPH Journal JERSEY CITY AND THE BEGINNING OF BIG TOBACCO By John A. Trosky
P. Lorillard & Company, one of the most iconic names in the tobacco industry in America, had its beginnings in the New York City area in the mid 17th century. The company was founded by Pierre Abraham Lorillard, a French Huguenot, in the year 1760. Its small beginnings Read more.....

august13

August 2013 Issue of the NJPH Journal UNOFFICIAL REGISTRATION OF NEW JERSEY STAMPLESS COVERS By James W. Milgram, M.D.
From November 1, 1845 to June 30, 1855 there was an unofficial type of Registration of valuable letters at most post offices within the United States. The first marking is the large blue “R” applied on receipt at Philadelphia beginning in 1845 Read more.....

hf1

May 2013 Issue of the NJPH JournalSTAGE OPERATIONS AND THE MAILS IN NEW JERSEY© By Steven M. Roth (© 2013. Steven M. Roth)

 

Prior to the Revolutionary War, major travel in the American colonies was restricted
for the most part to the
Read more.....


hf1

February 2013 Issue of the NJPH Journal INTENDED FOR THE GRAF ZEPPELIN BUT CARRIED BY STEAMER? A 1929 Jersey City Transatlantic Airmail to Basel Switzerland by John Trosky

 

The first decades of the 20th century saw the dawn of a new age in mail transport, airmail. By the late 1920s Read more.....


hf1

November 2012 Issue of the NJPH Journal LEGISLATIVE FRANKS OF NEW JERSEY by Ed & Jean Siskin

The franking privilege is the right to send and or receive mail free from postage.
Read more.....


hf1

August 2012 Issue of the NJPH Journal HADLEY AIR FIELD, NEW BRUNSWICK. NEW JERSEY by Jim Walker

Early air mail service in the New York area used an assortment of air fields on Long Island. Hazlehurst Field was the one in use at the commencement of Transcontinental Air Mail
Service in 1924 and was deemed inadequate due to smoke from city industries and ocean fog.
Read more.....


february11cover

May 2012 Issue of the NJPH Journal FIVE CENT 1856 STAMP ON COVERS FROM NEW JERSEY by Robert G. Rose

Have you ever fantasized, as have I, of forming a collection of United States classic stamps used on covers from New Jersey? If so, the task to put such a collection together would be a real challenge....
Read more.....


february11cover

February 2012 Issue of the NJPH Journal A Wonderful Revolutionary Letter by Ed and Jean Sisken

In the Oct-Nov 1988 issue of La Posta, Tom Clarke wrote an article about a wonderful
Revolutionary War cover he had. Dated February 16, 1777, from New Brunswick, New Jersey...
Read more.....


february11cover

November 2011 Issue of the NJPH Journal New Jersey Civil War Covers -Wyman the Wizard!

If you were to conduct a detailed review of the 190 Civil War patriotic covers illustrated in NJPH whole nos. issues 100 and 117, or the online exhibit of covers shown at NOJEX, you can begin to see the emergence of some interesting patterns among the covers. An obvious pattern is that there are several different correspondences represented in the illustrated covers. Read more.....


february11cover

August 2011 Issue of the NJPH Journal New Elizabeth, NJ Marking

ELIZABETHTOWN STAMPLESS POSTMARK ALTERED TO READ “ELIZABETH”!

This newly-discovered Elizabeth postmark falls at the time the name was changed from Elizabethtown to Elizabeth, and a new handstamp was created from an existing Elizabeth-town postmark. Read more.....

february11cover

May 2011 Issue of the NJPH Journal Civil War Patriotic Covers from New Jersey.

The cover below is dated Mar. 10 from Bloomsbury, NJ to West Liberty, Ohio, with the imprint of S.C. Rickards, Stationers, 102 Nassau Street, N.Y., and shows one of the rare New Jersey Civil War patriotic images.

Read more.....


february11cover

February 2011 Issue of the NJPH Journal A Folded Letter in art - was it from New Jersey?

This painting by Jacques-Louis David, painted in 1821, shows two Bonaparte princesses reading a stampless folded letter from their father, Joseph Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon.  Was it written to them from New Jersey?

Read more.....


nov10cover

November 2010 Issue of the NJPH Journal REVOLUTIONARY WAR COVER

The cover of our most recent journal features this Revolutionary item, from Don Chafetz’s prize-winning exhibit of Morris County Mail Service, 1760 to 1850.

Read more.....


nov cover

August 2010 Issue of the NJPH Journal NEW JERSEY ILLUSTRATED LETTER SHEETS

These items were made popular by the nice ones that exist from the California Gold Rush days, and those used during the Civil War, where they depicted contemporary scenes at the top of the letter sheet, the rest of which was then used to write a letter. 

Earliest examples usually included an attached sheet and were used as stampless folded letters. 

Later ones were more like letterheads, and were sent enclosed in envelopes.

Read more.....


nov cover

May 2010 Issue of the NJPH Journal Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America!

Treasure Island Scout Camp occupies a fifty-seven acre island in the Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  The camp is operated by the Cradle of Liberty Council (formerly the Philadelphia Council), Boy Scouts of America. Read more.....


nov cover

February 2010 Issue of the NJPH Journal featuring a 1995 cover of the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, the last of the conventionally-powered US aircraft carriers, decommissioned in 2009.

This great ship served almost 50 years in service of her country.

Read more.....


RFDCover

November 2009 Issue of the NJPH Journal featuring a Holiday Greetings from Viet Nam

Just before Christmas of 1971, a GI-produced Christmas card was distributed to the troops of the 101st Airborne for them to send home.  A hand-made envelope served to carry it home to New Jersey.

As it was late in December, member Jim Walker used a U.S. air mail stamp instead of the usual free frank available to soldiers in combat,
Read more.....


RFDCover

August 2009 Issue of the NJPH Journal featuring a a Graf Zeppelin cover.

L127 First Trip to the USA in 1928. Special credit to John Trosky for this nice article!

WEB-SITE SPECIAL: an addendum to this article with additional information on an originating 1928 LZ-127 cover from Len Peck!
Read more.....


RFDCover

May 2009 Issue of the NJPH Journal featuring a DPO cover from Maurer, New Jersey.

A pretty little letter sheet invitation from a local hotel in Maurer (now part of Perth Amboy, Middlesex County), NJ turned up at the Garfield-Perry Show in Cleveland, in JWF (Jim Faber’s) stock.  Used in 1905, it is from a community that literally does not exist anymore.  The location is now the site of a large “tank farm” belonging to Chevron.Read more.....


RFDCover

February 2009 Issue of the NJPH Journal featuring a cameo campaign cover.

A December 15, Hoboken, NJ postmarked Embossed Cameo Campaign Envelope produced by William Eaves was offered this March by Robert A. Siegel Auctions featuring a beardless Abe Lincoln. Only a few examples are known. This Hoboken, New Jersey cover hammered on March 25, 2009 for $2600.00 before the 15% buyers premium! Read more.....


RFDCover

November 2008 Issue of the NJPH Journal featuring a cover of seasonal greeting.

 

A RFD ”Season’s Greetings” post card, cancelled December 24, 1915 with a Pittstown, NJ  postmark, sent by the carrier on Route 2 out of Pittstown to the people along his route. Special thanks to Member Jim Walker for sharing this cover. Read more.....

Members: One of the benefits of membership is sharing your interests and collections! If you would like to share an interesting single item from your collection, or have multiple items to share - the NJPHS Galleries offer you the opportunity to put your collectibles on center stage. Please e-mail your webmaster about contributing to our on-line Galleries. We can even help you if you do not have a scanner or digital images. Just ask. Remember, we are always looking for articles of interest for the NJPH Journal, and would welcome your contribution whether it's a single page or five page article.

If you are not yet a member, please consider the benefits of joining and the satisfaction you'll get by sharing with your fellow collectors: Become a Member

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