|
1850-69 New York Foreign Mails
Hubert C. Skinner presented "The Cancellations and
Postmarks of NYC: 1845-76, Their Usage and Their Postal History" at
the P.F. Seminar Series #3 on Postmarks and Cancellation in 1990. He
was the first student to chronologically study the use of New York
obliterators on the various classes of mail handled.
"In mid-1851, concurrent with the innovative
postmarks used on NYC domestic mails, a series of individual obliterators
was put in service in the foreign mail division to cancel the adhesives on
letters to Europe, the Orient and other distant foreign destinations. None
of these was a duplex device and all were different from those used
on ordinary first class letters. Cancels from the early 1850s were struck
in red or black and were accompanied by a dated circular handstamps
(generally struck in red) that indicated the sailing date, the type of
packet services, and later on, the amount of credit or debit forward from
the post of New York. New York foreign mail obliterators are here
defined as those used to obliterate the adhesives on mail that originated
in New York and was dispatched from the city on mail packets bound for
foreign destinations. Foreign mail obliterators were never part of a
duplex device until the transitional period to standardize handstamping
devices that began with the adoption of the UPU convention in 1875."
This seminar was published by the Philatelic Foundation in
a textbook in 1992. It contains Mr. Skinner's listing of NYFM
cancellations with a numbering system of code letters (NYFM) and numbers
indicating the year first recorded and a serial for that particular
marking.
Our 1850-69 NYFM offerings use Mr. Skinner's numbering system.
|
