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February 2015 Issue of the NJPH Journal SHORT-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. Discussed and illustrated in this article are examples from three of these small, short
lived post offices: STEWARTSVILLE STATION, AND MILLDALE, both of which lasted only
a short time as the sole incarnation of a post office at each of those particular locations, and
CUTTOFF, a name which was used briefly with the reopening of an office which had already
been discontinued and re-opened once before, and which has now been in operation under
various names for a good part of the last 190 years.
STEWARTSVILLE STATION (Greenwich Twp., Warren Co.)
–Est. May 15, 1884 – Disc.
May 24, 1886. Postmaster Henry H. Stone (previously postmaster for Stewartsville, June 1882 to
May 1884). According to Snell’s History of Sussex & Warren Counties (1881), Stewartsville
had four stores in 1881, with H.H. Stone being listed as one of the proprietors. Stone’s store was
probably the same as shown in the immediate vicinity of the depot and freight house, and as
listed under the proprietorship of D. Hulshizer on the map of Greenwich and Lopatcong
Townships in Beer’s 1874 Warren County Atlas (see map). The section of the Morris & Essex
R.R. from Hackettstown to Phillipsburg had been opened for operation in 1866, and
Stewartsville Station was one of the original depots on the line.
Stewartsville Station was only about ½ mile northwest of Stewartsville, in the area of
current Rt. 57, and it is somewhat surprising that the P.O. would have been established with the
Stewartsville P.O. already in operation so close by.
Also pictured is a c.1905-10 postcard view of the Stewartsville, NJ station (or converted
freight house). In Robert W. Millmore’s Railroad Stations of Northern New Jersey (2003),2 he
says of the station, “Stewartsville was an original stop on the line, and until 1901 boasted a large
two story station with a cross gable and center ticket bay. It was torn down in 1901 and a portion
of the freight house converted to passenger use. The agent was discontinued in the 1930’s, and
there is nothing remaining at the site in the area along Beacon Street.
MILLDALE (Chester Twp., Morris Co.)
– Est. March 3, 1893 – Disc. April 14, 1894.3
Postmaster – James Van Derveer. Located at Milltown, between Chester and German Valley
(current Long Valley) across from the old Cooper Grist Mill and in the area of the Hacklebarney Iron
Mines, the post office was called “Milldale”, as there was already a “Milltown” P.O. in New Jersey.
The Milldale post office was located in the general store of John P. Rockefeller. A
ca.1905-10 realphoto postcard view of the store is pictured. According to Frances Greenidge’s
Chester, New Jersey, A Scrapbook of History,4 “one corner of the store was ‘fenced off’ for a
branch post office, and Oliver Van Fleet brought the mail on a bicycle every day from the Chester
"post office.”
A 2c Columbian Postal Stationery cover (U349) with a fairly strong “MILLDALE DEC
6 1893” N.J. CDS is illustrated below in Figure 6. The letter was addressed to Bedminster, N.J.,
and then forwarded to Peapack, N.J., where it arrived on Dec. 8. Notice the routing on the front
and back of the cover. It was cancelled at Milldale on Dec. 6, arrived at Chester 7(?)pm the
same day, went by train to New York, where it was cancelled at 11:30am on the 7th, went back to
New Jersey, where it was received at Summit at 5pm on the 7th, left Summit at 4pm on Dec. 8,
was received at Bedminster and forwarded to Peapack where it was received at 6pm on the 8th.
Pretty fast and efficient!
Rockefeller’s store at Milldale/Milltown burned down on Jan. 31, 1913. The Old Mill
Tavern building has for many years stood on the foundation of the old store.
CUTTOFF (Green Twp., Sussex Co.) – Est. March 11, 1915 – Disc. November 5, 1915.
Postmaster – Floyd F. Marvin. Located a couple of miles north of the village of Tranquility, the
post office, at what for a short time was called Cuttoff was established originally as Greenville
in 1824 with William Green as postmaster. As Greenville, this post office operated until 1851, at
which point it was discontinued, possibly as the result of the Tranquility post office having been
established in 1850.
The office was re-established in 1870 as Lincoln, NJ, and as such operated until 1891,
when the post office here was again discontinued.
In 1915, the P.O. was again re-established, this time as Cuttoff, operating under this
name for only 8 months. The office was most likely in the Greenville general store, shown here
in a c.1910-15 postcard view. On Nov. 5, 1915, the name was changed to Greendell, with Floyd
F. Marvin still serving as postmaster.
The Cuttoff (yes, correctly spelled with two “tt”s) post office took its name from the Lackawanna Cutoff, a 28 ½ mile rail line constructed by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western
in 1908-11 at a cost of $11,000,000. The Lackawanna Cutoff superseded the DL&W’s Warren
Railroad, which had been completed by John I. Blair in 1862, thus becoming the DL&W’s new
mainline. The Lackawanna Old Line, as the Warren R.R. then came to be called, was a more
circuitous route, being 11 miles longer, and containing many curves and grades, as well as the
two tunnels at Manunka Chunk and Oxford. The DL&W Cutoff, which saved 1/2 hour of travel
across the State versus the old route,5 operated from 1911 to 1960, and ran from Slateford
Junction by the Delaware Water Gap, thru Blairstown, and Johnsonburg, then thru Greendell and
on to Port Morris in Morris County.
Included below is a list of 123 N.J. Discontinued Post Offices which were in operation
for 1 year or less. Does anyone else have examples of any of these small flash-in-the-pan P.O.’s
which they’d like to share with us?
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ENDNOTES: |
1 Cover photo of Through the Years: Stewartsville and Surrounding Areas, Greenwich Twp Historical Society, 1986
2 Millmore, Robert W. Railroad Stations of Northern New Jersey (2003),
3 Date from John Kay’s updates to New Jersey Postal History, in NJPH Whole No. 42, March 1981. For other
updates to Kay & Smith’s book, see NJPH Whole Nos. 26 (Jan 1978) and 52 (Mar 1983).
4 Greenidge, Frances Chester, New Jersey, A Scrapbook of History (1974).
5 George Wyckoff Cummins in his 1911 Warren County History says "... a gain in time of half an hour will be made
between New York and the West." Some of this was because of shortened distance and some because trains could
move at higher speeds on the straighter route.
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Past Featured Covers
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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.
Read more..... |
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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.
Read more..... |
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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...
Read more..... |
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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.
Read more..... |
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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?
Read more..... |
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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.
Read more..... |
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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!
Read more..... |
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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 |
