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…
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. They flourished for a number of years until they were finally outlawed by the government. The author, Larry Lyons, is a noted authority on United States local stamps, and is the editor-in-chief of “The Penny Post,” the prize winning journal of The Carriers and Locals Society. We appreciate his contributions.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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 were from a rented home on Chatham Street, now Park Row, in lower Manhattan. The company began as a snuff grinding factory. Lorillard is recognized as the first man to make snuff in America…
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. Later beginning in 1847 some post offices began to mark valuable mail at the post offices of mailing. There were other post offices which applied markings on receipt and a few which applied markings on transient mail that was registered. The author has written several articles and a book on this subject.
By Steven M. Roth
This completes the two-part article on New Jersey stage lines, begun in our last issue, by Steven M. Roth (see NJPH, Feb. 2013, Vol 41, No. 1, Whole number 189 for a comprehensive introduction to the subject). See also our May 2013 Featured Cover page.
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 the US Post Office Department had established many routes across the continental US to speed the transportation of mail. Transatlantic mail on the other hand remained the purview of the fast ocean steamer. It was only in 1927 that Lindbergh had finally conquered the Atlantic by aircraft.
By Ed and Jean Siskin The franking privilege is the right to send and or receive mail free from postage. The word frank comes from the Latin via French and Middle English and means free. Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of 1755 defines Frank as “A letter which pays no postage” and To Frank as “To exempt letters from postage.”
