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August 2015 Issue of the NJPH Journal Straight Line Post Marks of NJ: Lawrenceville by Robert G. Rose
The U.S. Philatelic Classics Society is in the process of completing an update of the American Stampless Cover Catalog, which was last revised in 1997. That project has been supported by the New Jersey Postal History Society, whose members have researched, collected and compiled data for the catalog’s New Jersey listings.1 The project has provided the author with the opportunity of taking a fresh look at the listings for the straight line postmarks which are among the most avidly sought by collectors of stampless covers. This article’s focus is on the straight line postmarks from Lawrenceville, which post office produced the widest variety of such markings.
Fig. 1: 50½ x 2½ to 4 mm black straight line, March 6, 1829 to Washington, D.C.
Between 1829 and 1854, the Lawrenceville post office used six different straight handstamps. All are detailed in the Coles Book.2 These handstamps were produced locally from printer’s type face giving rise to variations in length as the handstamps wore out and were replaced by those with different settings. In addition, minor variations as much 2 mm in length resulted from the resetting of loose letters in existing handstamps.3
In 1829 and 1830, Lawrenceville used two different handstamps. The first and largest is the black straight line, measuring 50½ x 2½ mm with variations in height to as much as 4 mm, illustrated in Figure 1. Coles records fewer than 10 examples of this marking. This folded letter, dated March 6, 1829 to Washington, D.C., was sent paid for 18¾ cents at the single letter rate of from 150 to 400 miles per the Act of March 3, 1825. This rate seems strange based on modern coinage, but came into being because of the prevalence of Spanish coinage in the United States prior to the Civil War, and represents the equivalent of 1½ reales.
A variety of the first handstamp is illustrated in Figure 2. This black straight line measures 50½ mm, but the height of printer’s type measures only 2½ to 3 mm. This June 8, 1829 folded letter was sent paid to Trenton, originally at 8 cents, and then correctly rerated at 6 cents, the single letter rate for not over 30 miles per the Act of April 9, 1816.
Fig. 2: 50½ x 2½ to 3 mm black straight line, June 8, 1829 to Trenton.
At the same time that the first handstamp and its variation were used in 1829-30, a second slightly smaller handstamp saw service. This black straight line measures 49 x 2½ mm and is illustrated in Figures 3 & 4. The 1829 usage was sent unpaid at 6 cents, the single letter rate for not over 30 miles per the Act of April 9, 1816. The 1830 usage was sent unpaid for 18¾ cents at the single letter rate of from 150 to 400 miles per the Act of March 3, 1825.
Fig. 3: 49 x 2½ mm black straight, December 22, 1829 to Trenton.
Fig. 4: 49 x 2½ mm black straight line, August 31, 1830 to Huntington, Pennsylvania.
From 1838 to 1841, a third black handstamp was used measuring 34 x 2 mm and is illustrated in Figures 5 & 6. The 1838 usage was mailed “FREE” as evidenced by the handstamp, to U.S. Senator Samuel Southard in Jersey City at a time when he was president of the Morris Canal and Banking Company which was then headquartered in that city.4 The 1839 usage (see Figure 6) shows a variety in the type face as evidenced by the vertical drop of the first three letters “LAW” in the handstamp. It was prepaid as indicated by the “PAID” handstamp at the single letter rate of 10 cents for 30 to 80 miles per the Act of April 9, 1816.
Fig. 5: 34 x 2 mm black straight line, October 31, 1838 to Jersey City.
Fig. 6: 34 x 2 mm black straight line, dropped “LAW” variety, January 7, 1839 to New York.
A fourth black handstamp, measuring 36 x 2 mm was used from 1842 to 1843 as shown in Figure 7. This 1843 usage was mailed unpaid at the single letter rate of 10 cents for 30 to 80 miles per the Act of April 9, 1816.
Fig. 7: 36 x 2 mm black straight line, July 3, 1843 to Crooked Hill, Pennsylvania.
Following the brief period of use of a rimless circular handstamp from 1844 to 1847, Lawrenceville again returned to the use of a fifth straight line handstamp. However, a most unusual format was chosen, the use of a slanted lettered handstamp. This 41 x 2 mm handstamp was used in black only in 1849 and in blue from 1849 to 1850. Figure 8 shows the use of the black handstamp on a folded letter sent unpaid at the reduced 5 cents ½ ounce letter rate under 300 miles per the Act of March 3, 1845. Fewer than 10 examples of this black handstamp are reported.
Figure 9 shows the use of this same handstamp in blue, prepaying the same 5 cents rate as indicated by the matching blue “PAID” and “5” handstamps. Fewer than five examples of this straight line handstamp in blue have been reported. Curiously, both of the handstamps in the illustrated covers are missing the “J.” of “N.J.”
Fig. 8: 41 x 2 mm slanted lettered black straight line, September 20, 1849 to New York.
Fig. 9: 41 x 2 mm slanted lettered blue straight line, April 25, 1850 to Huntington, Pa.
The sixth and final straight line used by the Lawrenceville post office is a 41 x 6½ mm double line handstamp with date below that is reported from 1853 to 1854, just prior to the end of the stampless period in 1855. Figure 10 shows the use of this handstamp on an 1854 cover sent prepaid, as indicated by the matching “PAID 3” for the single letter ½ ounce rate of 3 cents not over 3,000 miles per the Act of March 3, 1851, which again reduced postal rates. This double line handstamp is also seen occasionally on covers with the 3 cent 1851 issue, Scott No. 11.
Fig. 10: 41 x 6½ mm double line handstamp, August 23, 1854, to Trenton.
As evidenced by the two to three year usage of these straight line handstamps, markings made from printers’ type face proved not to be durable. Yet alone among New Jersey post offices, Lawrenceville used them to postmark its mail for almost 25 years, to the exclusion of the typical circle handstamps that came into widespread use by the 1830s.
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ENDNOTES: |
1 Ed Siskin has compiled the Colonial postmarks, Steven M. Roth the manuscript postmarks, and this author the
handstamp postmarks.
2 Coles, Jr., William C. The Postal Markings of New Jersey Stampless Covers, Collectors Club of Chicago, 1984,
pp.198-99.
3 Ibid, p. 199. Coles suggests that these minor variations “are due probably to inaccurate resetting after hand stamp
was dropped.”
4 Birkner, Michael, Samuel L. Southard: Jeffersonian Whig, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1984, pp. 185-186. For an illustrated history of Southard correspondence from New Jersey, see the series of articles by Jean Walton appearing in NJPH, Whole Nos. 110-111, 114-117, 121-123, & 142-147, November 1994 to September 2002.
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Past Featured Covers
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May 2015 Issue of the NJPH JournalLINCOLN FUNERAL TRAIN PASSES THROUGH NEW JERSEY by Jean Walton
The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, and only one week later, our 16th President was
dead from an assassin’s bullet. This mourning cover for Lincoln....
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February 2015 Issue of the NJPH JournalSHORT-LIVED NEW JERSEY POST OFFICES
By Arne Englund
New Jersey has had over 900 name-different post offices over the course of time. Of
these, however, 124 were in operation for only a year or less. Another 28 operated for less than
two years..
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November 2014 Issue of the NJPH JournalN.J. LOCAL POSTS: Bayonne City Dispatch
By Larry Lyons
This is the third of a series of articles on New Jersey’s local stamps. Local Posts were established as
early as the 1840’s by enterprising private individuals and companies who carried letters within city
limits – including to and from Post Offices.
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August 2014 Issue of the NJPH Journal AN EARLY BURLINGTON POSTMARKED COVER
By Ed & Jean Siskin
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.
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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.....
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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...
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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.
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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?
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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.
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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..... |
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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!
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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..... |
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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..... |
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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 |
