Writing Home to Family - Postal History Sunday

For those who enjoy these Postal History Sunday posts, I am perfectly happy to answer questions.  In fact, I will often take those questions and queue them up as the topics for future postal history Sundays.  This one actually was prompted by a question - "Do you often get items that still have letters in them?  What would a letter from the 1800s look like?"

The first part of the answer is a large portion of mail from the 1800s, up until about the 1860s, was business correspondence.  If there are contents for items from that period, it is likely to be some sort of receipt or business letter with very little of a personal nature.  Most personal letters were mailed between those who were affluent.  When envelopes and covers were released to the collector market, the families would often opt to maintain control of the contents.  In some cases, they might even sell only on the condition that the addressee (and sometimes the address) be obliterated so it could not be easily read.

All that said - I thought I would share a piece of letter mail that did have a personal letter in it!  This item went from Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium to Bordeaux, France - December of 1845.  

At this point in time, it was common to simply fold up a piece of paper or two and address the outside (keeping letter content on the inside).  Sometimes items were sealed with wax, sometimes they were not.

The markings on this cover are as follows:

Bruxelles Dec 11, 1845

Belg Valenciennes Dec 13 (in red)

B.3.R. (in green)

Bordeaux Dec 15, 1845 (verso)

Bordeaux Dec 16, 1845 (verso)

"14" decimes due at Bordeaux (the pen marking that looks a bit like "1n"

How It Got There

In 1845, railroad development was in its earlier stages for both Belgium and France.  Belgium was looking to create some main lines crossing the country both from North to South and East to West.  France, on the other hand, opted to create a 'star' configuration with nearly all lines starting or terminating in Paris.  At the time this letter was mailed, it is likely it took a train in Belgium to the border.  There may also have been some train carriage to Paris.  At any point in between where a rail line was not ready, this letter was carried in a horse-drawn mail coach.

How Much Did It Cost to Mail?

This letter was sent unpaid from Bruxelles where 14 decimes (140 centimes) were due on delivery for the privilege of receiving this letter.

The postage was comprised of two parts:

Belgian postage: 4 decimes 

On January 10, 1831, the powers of Europe ratified Belgium’s declaration of independence, but the postal agreement operating between France and Belgium was essentially based on the 1828 agreement with the Netherlands of which Belgium had been a part.  There were three distances (rayons) in Belgium with the third rayon requiring the highest rate of 4 decimes.  Remember that "B.3.R" marking?  That stands for "Belgium, 3rd Rayon,"  which helps the postal people to determine how much needed to be charged of the recipient.

French postage: 10 decimes

French domestic rates were based on distance and weight.  The distance this letter traveled in France would be from the border with Belgium (Valenciennes) to Bordeaux (nearly 800 km).  

The internal French postage rate for each 7.5 grams of weight was established in January of 1828 was 1 franc (100 centimes) for internal mail that traveled 750 to 900 km.  

Letter Contents

This appears to be a letter between brother and sister with the family name Vigneau.  The handwriting is remarkably clean.  However, just like any handwriting that is not known to you, there are spots that I have difficulty deciphering. 

Below is an attempt at translating the first portion of the letter from French to English.  Of course, if someone can do better with the translation, I am happy to hear corrections!  It appears to be largely an attempt to get news and gossip about people the writer knows in Bordeaux.

"I wrote to Chatelie, and received a letter from him. He is doing well and gives you a thousand compliments. He is preparing to come around the month of January. I think I will do the work for him. Tell me, my dear sister, what the chronicle says about me when I left Bordeaux. Are you still on good terms with dear Marguerite? Finally, do you live together taking the long winter evenings?

Does Basterre always come to ?? talk about his decoration does he always make the little ??? that Aimee is counterfeit? And is Pechru more cheerful? These are things I want to have knowledge of...."

Who were the Vigneaus?

It is possible that these people are descendants of Gabriel de Vigneau who established Vigneau de Bommes (Bommes is SSE of Bordeaux) and the estate apparently changed hands in 1834 to Madame de Rayne.  It does make sense that this letter was sent between members of a family with means of some sort and it is possible that some searching could turn up more information.

Wouldn't it be interesting to find copies of the "Chronicle" mentioned in this letter and see if there was discussion of the departure of the writer?   Was Pechru ever cheerful?  And why was Aimee thought to be false?

We will likely never know any of these things ourselves - and yet, it is still fascinating to be transported back to 1845 and witness simple gossip and conversation between siblings.

I hope you all have a great day!  Feel free to ask questions to guide future Postal History Sundays!  I've got one in line for next week (how long did it take for some of these letters to travel from here to there?).  But, I would love to receive some other suggestions.

Here, You Pay For it! - Postal History Sunday

Here we are!  Must be time for some Postal History Sunday on the Genuine Faux Farm blog!  We are now cross-posting our Postal History Sunday posts due to suggestions that our content has sufficient meat that even people who already collect find them interesting.

If you'll recall (and even if you don't), we had a post two Sundays ago that talked about how the clerk or carrier would know whether a letter was fully paid at the point of delivery.  The main reason this was important was because it was a common practice to send mail unpaid or partially paid until the middle of the 19th century.  As we get into the 1860s, the system was moving steadily towards prepaid mail as the normal process.

It should be no surprise, then, that markings were important to indicate whether an item was paid or not.

India to France

Below is a piece of business correspondence that was sent from Calcutta, India to Lyon, France in 1863.

Let me explain quickly some of the markings that are clearly visible here.  The black circular marking (that is upside down) reads "Calcutta India Unpaid," which makes it very clear that this item will have to be paid by the recipient.  The red circular markings is a French transit mark that doesn't really play a part in today's story.

The numerical markings, however, do play a part!  The "27" in black ink tells the clerk in Lyon that they need to collect 27 decimes from the recipient.  And, just as a reminder, 27 decimes is equivalent to 270 centimes.  This is essentially the same as a person in the United States saying 270 cents or 27 dimes.

The other numbers (in blue) read "17/3."  The seventeen indicates how much this letter weighed in grams (17 grams) and that much weight required triple the base rate of postage (3).

The rate of postage from India to France using British sailing ships to Marseille was 90 centimes for every 7.5 grams of weight.  The recipient owed three times that amount or 270 centimes (27 decimes).

Pieces of the Puzzle 

Whether you knew it or not, you have just been exposed to one part of how a postal historian checks out an item for consistency and authenticity.  While it is not unusual for an item to have odd and unexplained markings that might even contradict, the vast majority of items should show a consistent story.  It is really a matter of reading the evidence.

The contents of the letter (click on the picture to see a larger version) clearly show a dateline from Calcutta that is consistent with the marking on the front.  The recipient and their location cited in the letter is also a match with the addressee and the Lyon postal marking on the back.  The number of days between the dates given with the postmarks for Calcutta, Marseilles, and Lyon are consistent with traveling times in 1863.  And, as we showed above, all of the postal rate markings can be explained as being consistent with the rates for mail between these two locations at the time.  We can even identify at least one of the ships that carried this letter if we wished to do so!

Thank you for joining us for our Postal History Sunday post.  We hope you enjoyed at least a little of it and we shall endeavor to keep helping you to learn something new each week!

Not Called For - Postal History Sunday

It's postal history Sunday!  The day of the week on the Genuine Faux Farm blog where we explore a subject the farmer enjoys and those who read the blog can be completely amazed that anyone would want to get into such detail over old pieces of mail!  And now - we are cross-posting to our GFF Postal History Blog for those who already have interest.  We think the lighter and more general style of these posts might appeal to some who already love the hobby.

You Must Not Delay!

 

We are actually going to look at this one 'backwards' from the normal approach I take with a piece of postal history.  The contents of the letter actually give us some depth to the story that might help everyone understand both the irony and the difficulty this particular letter encountered.

The letter appears to be written to someone on the Brig (ship) Union.

“You must not delay being in Falmouth. This is why I am sending you this to tell you that Mr. Labar etc have given me the balance of your departure, as well as the copy of the account and see to it credited for this amount of 1,412 francs.”

The letter is written in French, so I took the liberty of attempting to translate the introduction into English.  Please remember that I am fighting three things here:  1. handwriting is not always perfectly clear on old letters, 2. I am not perfectly fluent in French and 3. there may be references to culture, current events or other common knowledge of the time that I may not recognize.

But, the content of the letter conveys clearly that the writer was concerned about the speed of both the ship and that this letter get to the recipients in time.  But, this is no surprise as much of the business content I have viewed from the 1850s, 60s and 70s reference some level of urgency or expedience.  On the other hand, the writer seems to be giving advice regarding what the recipient(s) should be doing next.  So, I could see why it might be important to the writer that this letter get to them before they head off to some other less desirable port of call.

We Don't Necessarily Deliver For You

Monsieur Badille in Bordeaux was clearly anxious to get his directives to the recipients on board the Union - at least his letter seems to think imply that.  But, his address makes one wonder a little bit about how certain he could be that his letter would be received:

"Messiures Fox? per consul of France ask the captain of Brig Union - Falmouth, England"

In short - he seems to be implying that the postmaster or a representative at the French Consulate in Falmouth should ASK the captain of the ship to get the mail for passengers on his boat or at least to get the captain to tell his passengers to go get their mail.

It was common practice for mail to be sent to ports of call in care of a foreign legation for persons on board ship.  However, just because the foreign legation was used to serving as a holding location for mail to the captain, crew and passengers of ships that flew their country's flag, that does not mean they would trot on down to the docks to hand deliver each letter.  On the contrary, a captain - or his representative - would typically go to the legation to check for any mail pertaining to the ship.  It was likely presumed that passengers might take care of their own business.

So, let me back up a second.  It was actually fairly common in 1869 for people to go to the post office just to see if they had mail.  Much of the mail was simply held at the post office to be picked up - not delivered to the address.  In fact, much of the mail addressed at the time had no street address given!  Some people who read this blog may even have a memory of "General Delivery" services at the post office where an item was held there for you to pick up.

Part of the issue is - not everyone would go every day and if a person was not expecting mail, they might not even think to check.  Did Messieurs Fox check to see if they had mail?  It doesn't look like it.

Either that or the letter arrived after they had left!  Poor Monsieur Badille!

Not Called For

If you look at the front of the envelope, you will see that the words "Not Called For" appears twice on the envelope.  Once in black ink and another time in red ink.  It is possible the black ink was applied by the post office, but there is no way to be certain.  But, the red ink actually says "Not called for @ consul's."  So, that shows us the foreign consul was at least consulted by the post office - and maybe the letter even resided at the consul's for a time.  Frankly, there is no way to tell for sure how it was handled during that period. 

What we do know for certain is that the letter arrived in Falmouth on March 25, 1869, just two days after it was mailed in Bordeaux.  So, it is safe to say that the post office did its job with efficient mail travel.  We do know that the letter sat either at the French Consul's office or the Falmouth post office for some time and they diligently marked "not called for" on the envelope to show that no one had come to claim it.

And we know that the letter then LEFT Falmouth on January 28, 1870 - ten months after it arrived.

The Returned Letter Branch Office in London

Many post offices labeled unclaimed or undeliverable letters as "dead letters,"  the United States even had a "Dead Letter Office."  This letter was probably bundled into a batch of dead letters that the Falmouth post office had accumulated over time and the whole packet was sent to London.  London's dead letter office was known as the Returned Letter Branch Office.  That seems a little kinder than "Dead Letter Office,"  but it came down to the same thing.  These were orphaned letters that could not be delivered for one reason or another.

This office would determine what to do next with each item.  The vast majority would get sent back to the sender of the letter.  It is not hard to picture Monsieur Badille picking up his mail on a February or March day in Bordeaux and thumbing through the pile of business correspondence.  Among those things would have been this letter.

A letter he hurriedly penned a year before with urgent instructions for the his people on the Union.  

Well, at least this explained why his instructions might not have been followed!

How Did They Know? - Postal History Sunday

It is Sunday!  And we all know what that means, don't we?

We don't?  Oh.

Well, around here it means it is time for a postal history post on the Genuine Faux Farm blog, that's what it means!

Hurray!

I had a very good question asked of me regarding some of the early letter mail I have shown in the past.  An inquisitive person wanted to know how the destination post office knew whether or not the letter they were delivering had been paid properly.

How did they know the postage was fully paid?

As you might guess, the answer to this question can have many different answers depending on the time and place in history.  For now, I will just give some examples from the 1850s and 1860s in Europe.

The envelope shown above carried a letter from Rome to Paris in 1856.  The cost of mailing such a letter was 20 bajocchi and there were three stamps properly paying that postage on the envelope.  That's great that I know that (and now you do too!).  But, how did the person who delivered this letter know that the recipient did not have to pay anything more?

Remember - at this point in time, you also had the option to send letters UNPAID with the expectation that the recipient would pay the postage.  It really would be helpful if the carrier who delivered this item would not have to carry a big book of postage rates along with them to check to see if it was all taken care of!

In this case, I see the red box with the "P.D." and that tells me (and the carrier) that this item was "payée à destiné," which translates to "paid to destination."

There is also a red circular marking applied in France.  Red ink was often code that implied an item was paid and black ink was often code for when it was not fully paid.  So, this cover had a couple of clues for the postal carrier that no additional postage was due from the recipient.

 

The folded letter (they folded the letter over itself rather than put the letter into an envelope) shown above was mailed from Sardinia (which was becoming a part of the Kingdom of Italy) to England in 1860.  Now that I have given you a clue as to what to look for, I suspect you can find the marking that told the receiving post office that the postage was properly paid to get the letter from Italy to England.

Yes, it isn't in red ink this time - but it is the same thing - "payée à destiné."  In addition, there is a red circular marking below the P.D. that was applied in London.  Two clues for the destination post office that all was well.

If you will recall from prior posts - countries had postal conventions where they agreed with each other HOW they would exchange mail.  Not every country had an agreement with every other country, but there were usually sufficient agreements to get mail from most every here to nearly every other there on the planet in 1860.  These agreements often dictated exactly how countries would indicate to each other that the item was properly paid or not.  Many countries in Europe agreed on the "P.D." as a standard signal that an item had no postage due.  But, that was not always the case.

Slashes and X's

The next couple of examples are not quite items that were mailed from one country to another, but they illustrate some other ways an item was marked as 'paid.'

The item above was mailed in 1857 from Cento (near Bologna) to Rome.  At the time, both of these locations were located in the Papal States of Italy, territory under the direction of the Vatican.  The letter cost 6 bajocchi to go from Cento to Bologna to Rome and a green stamp was used to pay that postage.  The post office in Cento used a blue handstamp with the town name (Cento) to mark the stamp to show that it was recognized as paying postage - and to prevent it from being reused in the future.

The Rome office, during the 1850s and 1860s, indicated that postage was paid by putting a long diagonal slash in ink on the face of the mailed item.  It was quick.  It was fairly efficient.  And it served a purpose.  

Now, when the clerk (or carrier) handed this item off to the recipient, they could quickly and easily see that nothing more was due on delivery.  

And here is another Italian item that was sent from Modena to Mantua (Mantova).  Mantua, during this period, liked to do a full "X" marking on items that had no additional postage owed.  These "X" markings were normally big and bold - quite hard to miss!

Franco means paid

The Dutch and Germans tended to prefer "franco" to "P.D." for obvious linguistic reasons.  This item was mailed in Rotterdam in 1866 and sent to Gladbach in Prussia (Germany).  The Dutch post office combined the handstamp to 'cancel' the stamp with the marking to indicate that postage was paid.  The boxed word "Franco" clearly defaces the stamp and is visible for the delivering clerk to see.

And, in some postal agreements, both countries were required to indicate that an item was fully paid.  This item from Amsterdam to London (1865) has the "Franco" marking on the postage stamps (applied in Amsterdam) AND the word "Paid" in the London circular marking.  As if that were not enough, the person who addressed this letter also wrote the word "paid" at the lower left.

Sometimes, a person was pretty excited that something was fully paid.  I am not sure adding exclamation points make it any more likely that the postal people would notice it was paid enough - but I do hope at least one person who handled this item was a little bit amused.

How many clues on this envelope from Faribault, Minnesota (US) to Oldenburg (Germany) can you find that told the delivering clerk that it was fully paid?

 So, what would NOT paid look like?

This is a whole topic of its own, but I thought I should show at least one example.

Well - here we are.  A letter that has a stamp on it, so it is possible that postage was paid.  And, there are some red markings on the cover too.   Hmmmmm.

The first clue that this item is NOT fully paid are the numerical markings on this letter.  The red "40" is actually the amount to be collected from the recipient to pay for postage.  Believe it or not, the black 'squiggle' to the right of the "40" is also a "4," which is the same amount due.

The second clue is that there is no "franco," "paid," or "P.D." anywhere to be found on this item.  

The third clue is the red boxed marking that says "affranchissement insuffisant."  This roughly translates to "insufficient postage."  

In a very real way, postal history can be a bit of a puzzle - but it is an enjoyable one that begins to make more sense as you learn the rules.

Thank you for joining me on the postal history Sunday post.  I hope you have a good day!