Fair Exchange - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to this week's edition of Postal History Sunday, hosted on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  Everyone is welcome at this place, where the farmer shares a hobby he enjoys.  Questions are always welcomed - and it doesn't matter whether yours is from the perspective of someone who knows very little about postal history or someone who is an expert in the field.

For the time being, let me encourage you to put on your fluffy slippers and grab that favored beverage.  Take your troubles and smear some bacon grease on them, then let the neighborhood dogs at them while you read Postal History Sunday  By the time you are done and the dogs are done with your troubles, there might not be much left to concern you!

How did this mail get from here to there?  That's one of the key questions a postal historian asks each time they encounter an old letter or other piece of mail.  Sometimes the answer comes from documents that outline the regulations and procedures of the time.  And, if we are looking at mail from the 1850s and 1860s, we can look at the envelopes and covers themselves for evidence of the travels required to get from point A to point B. 

You don't have to be a super sleuth to look at the envelope shown above to figure out that this letter probably originated in Boston, Massachusetts and reached its destination in London, England.  The clues are everywhere.  The envelope is personalized, showing "C. Burrage & Co Boston" (see bonus material at end of this blog) in the preprinted design, so we can assume this is who the letter came from.  There is a red Boston postmark dated June 12 and there is a London postmark dated June 23.  The letter is addressed to B.J. Lang in London.  

Yes.  I think that much is pretty simple.

There is actually another clue at the top left.  The docket reads "Str Persia N.Y. June 13th." 

If you are a person who knows a bit about world geography, but nothing about postal history of the time, you might be a bit confused by the docket.  There IS a town named Persia in New York state, so that might distract us.  And, no, I don't think this letter would go from Boston to Persia (Iran) and then to London - so that's not on the table. 

What the docket is referring to, however, is a sailing of a ship called the Persia from the New York harbor on June 13.  So, this letter started in Boston, went to New York, boarded the ship Persia and went across the Atlantic.  We just happen to know, based on historical references, that the Persia dropped off the mail at Queenstown (Cobh, Ireland).  The mail then went by train to Kingston (by Dublin), crossed to Holyhead and then went by train to London.

The question then is why there are no markings on this envelope for New York, Queenstown, Kingston, Holyhead or maybe even the ship called the Persia?

That's a good question - thanks for asking!

When nations exchange mail

In the mid-1800s countries who wished to exchange mail would either establish postal treaties with each other OR they would rely on finding an intermediary to get the mail from here to there.  The piece of letter mail shown above was sent under a postal agreement that was established in 1848 between the United States and the United Kingdom.

One of the details often determined by these treaties was the identification of the post office locations in each country that would serve as exchange offices.  With the initial treaty in 1848, there were only two exchange offices identified in the United States that were allowed to exchange mail with the United Kingdom.  These post offices were in New York City and Boston.  In the United Kingdom, we see mentions of Liverpool, Southampton, and London.

The exchange offices in each country were charged with processing the mail that was outgoing to and incoming from the exchange offices of the other country.  They would check that postage was properly paid, determine the best route to send the letter, put a marking on the envelope, and then place the envelope into a mailbag that was traveling to the destination exchange office.  They were also tasked with filling out proper documents that would include the accounting of the contents in the mailbag.

Once that mailbag was sealed, it was not opened until it reached the destination exchange office.

And that's the simple answer as to why we don't see any postal markings between Boston and New York.  This letter stayed locked up in a mailbag between the two exchange offices.

More Mail Volume = More Exchange Offices

By the time we get to the 1860s, the volume of mail between the United States and the United Kingdom had grown.  As a result, additional exchange offices were established that could handle mail between the two postal services.  

Additional articles were added to the postal convention in 1853 that added Philadelphia to the list of U.S. exchange offices.  By 1859, Chicago, Portland and Detroit were authorized to be exchange offices in the US while Cork (Cobh), Dublin and Galway in Ireland were added for the U.K.

The biggest motivator for adding new exchange offices between the US and the UK was simple.  New steamship companies with contracts to carry the mail traveled between established ports that did not work well with the existing exchange offices.  Once the Canadian Allan Line started service from Quebec/Portland to Liverpool, it made sense to establish exchange offices in the midwest (Chicago and Detroit) so mail would not have to go via New York or Boston to travel on those ships.

The letter above originated in Davenport, Iowa and went through the Chicago exchange office.  I know this because the "3 cents" marking at lower left is known to be a Chicago marking (and because mail from Iowa typically went through the Chicago or New York offices).  This letter was not taken out of the mailbag once it was placed there in Chicago until it got to the London exchange office.

Not Just the US & UK

Shown above is a nice folded letter sent from Zurich, Switzerland to Mulhouse, France in 1868.  The postmark for Zurich is dated May 7 and there is a Basel, Switzerland postmark on the back dated May 8.

In this case, the exchange offices were Basel and Mulhouse.

Unlike the case for mail between the US and the UK, the distances between the exchange offices were not necessarily all that great.  After all, France and Switzerland share a border.  In fact, Basel, is a border community with France and it was not at all uncommon for border community post offices to also serve as exchange offices.  If you think about it, this makes perfect sense.  With a little imagination, you could see how a postal worker could cross the border and deliver a bag of mail to France to the clerks there and then return with a mailbag full of items from France to Switzerland!

And, here is just such a letter.  St Louis is the community just to the northwest of Basel in France and this exchange office would handle a significant amount of mail that was leaving Switzerland in the 1850s and 1860s.  This letter would eventually travel on to Paris for its ultimate destination.

By the time the 1865 convention between France and Switzerland came into effect, rail transportation had proliferated to the point that there were many options for the speedy transit of mail.  As a result, the list of exchange offices gets pretty long!  The list above are the exchange offices on the French side of the border at that point.

This actually gives a person an opportunity to hunt for some different things.  Remember, in addition to mail that was traveling between the big cities like Zurich and Paris, there would be mail between small towns by the border.  

The letter above was received by the French exchange office of Bonneville in the Duchy of Savoy (southeastern France).  This exchange office is not frequently found, so it can be a bit of a game to try and find items that clearly went to some of the smaller offices between these two countries.  It is made easier by the fact that France was particularly interested in their exchange offices placing easy to find red markings on the letters taken out of mailbags at their exchange offices.  Switzerland, on the other hand did not necessarily provide markedly different handstamps to indicate that the marking was applied by an exchange office.

If you have interest, feel free to click on the map above to see some of the points of interest near the borders of France and Switzerland.  The Duchy of Savoy is outlined separately because it was actually a part of Sardinia until 1860, but became a part of France thereafter.  You can find Bonneville to the southeast of Geneva, Switzerland.

Knowing What You're Looking For

Just because the US and the UK did things one way, that did not necessarily mean things would look exactly the same between the US and other postal services.  The Prussian Mails favored a square marking that was typically in blue ink during the latter half of the 1860s.  Aachen was the site of the exchange office, residing on the border with Belgium.  The Boston marking, on the other hand, seems to be pretty similar to what we're used to seeing with the US/UK mail.

Once again, Boston and Aachen were the exchange offices and this letter stayed in a mailbag for its entire trip between the two.  This item would have traveled through the United Kingdom and Belgium to get to Aachen, but no markings will be found to give us this evidence.  Instead, we have to use knowledge of how mail was carried between these exchange offices to fill in the blanks.

For those who are curious, the letter above also went to New York' harbour where it boarded the HAPAG Line's Germania.  The mailbag was offloaded at Southampton, England and taken across the channel to Ostend, Belgium.  From there, it crossed Belgium by rail to Aachen, in Prussia.

Before you get too comfortable, consider this letter from the same time period from the UK to Austria (via the Prussian Mails).  The round PD (London) marking served as the exchange marking for the UK, while the big, blue round marking was applied in Aachen for the Prussians.  

Markings could differ between pairs of nations - and sometimes no marking was applied at all by the receiving country.  Though, usually, the sending country would be required to put some sort of marking on the item to indicate whether postage was paid in full or if postage was due.  It was all a matter of two postal services coming to some sort of agreement that made sense to each of them how they would communicate with each other.  And that, as much as anything, should explain to you and me why agreements would limit the exchange of mail to a subset of all of the post offices in each country.  The special processes required for foreign mail exchange required additional training - training that was not going to be possible to give to every clerk in every post office.

Bonus Material

The envelope above is likely from the company J.C. Burrage in Boston.  This resource places the business at No 3 Winthrop Square in Boston.  The company itself is referenced multiple times in the Burrage Memorial and the company served as merchants for woolens (see pages 127, 132 and 152).

The recipient, B.J. Lang, was a musician, conductor, pianist, teacher, and composer.   We'll probably go deeper into this person's biography in a different Postal History Sunday.

There is something else about this piece of postal history that is interesting and I think we'll also cover that in a future Postal History Sunday.  Can you figure it out?  Here is an earlier post that talks about the mail between the US and the UK - it might help.

I hope you enjoyed today's entry.  Have a great day and a wonderful week to come.

On the Shoulders of Others - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to Postal History Sunday on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  Believe it or not, this is the 83rd entry in this weekly series that, oddly enough, seems to appear on Sundays.  I wonder why that might be?

Let's set those troubles aside for a few minutes (no - don't think hard about where you are putting those troubles - maybe you'll forget where they are and they won't bother you for a while AFTER you finish reading).  And perhaps, we can all learn something new!

This week I wanted to focus a little bit on some of the resources and works that have led me to the point where I can successfully look at pieces of postal history and read some of the story that they carry with them. 

But first, let's start with a piece of postal history!

The envelope you see above was mailed from New York City in 1863 to Shanghai, China.  There is 45-cents of postage on this envelope in the form of two ten-cent stamps (green), a one-cent stamp (blue), and a 24-cent stamp (lilac).  Each of these postage stamps have been marked by a cancellation device that left ink in the shape of a circle filled with grid lines on each stamp.  The basic idea was that, by marking these stamps, it would be difficult for someone to try to re-use them on another piece of mail.

The red circular marking at the top reads N. York Am Pkt Paid Jul 18 and tells us the day of departure of the trans-Atlantic mail packet (steamship) from the New York harbor.  It even tells us that this ship was under contract with the United States (Am Pkt) to carry this mail.  In fact, I can tell you all sorts of things about the voyage of this letter.

This is the route this letter took and the approximate dates at each location along the way:

New York Jul 18, 1863
    departed on Inman Line steamship City of Washington
London Jul 30
Southampton Aug 4
Malta Aug 14
Alexandria Aug 19
Suez Aug 23
Bombay Aug 29
    departed on Peninsular & Oriental Line steamship China
Singapore Sep 13
     typhoon Sep 20 - the China is delayed by 3 days
Hong Kong Sep 23
Hong Kong Sep 25
    departed on the Peninsular & Oriental Line steamship Ganges
Finally arriving at Shanghai on Sep 30

I can also tell you that the postage rate from the US to China was 45 cents per half ounce of weight and that this rate was effective from September of 1861 until December of 1867 - as long as it took the route via Southampton.  You can see that this route was indicated by a docket at the top of the envelope.  This was the slow way to China, taking the sea route around the Iberian Peninsula (where Spain & Portugal are) until it got to Malta.  The quicker, and more expensive route was overland through France (via Marseille).

The magenta colored "24" indicates that 24 cents of the 45 cents collected was to be passed to the British mail system, and the United States retained 21 cents to cover their costs, including the trans-Atlantic ship contract.

But, how in the world did I figure all of that out?

It started with postage rates

I am a fortunate individual.  I have been able to ride on the shoulders of others who had the ability and desire to study and do research with respect to how mail was handled between nations in the 1800s.  And, not only did they do this research, they shared the fruits of their labors with others by publishing their work.  I can say with certainty that I would not be doing what I am today with postal history if it were not for these, and numerous other, works.

One of the first pieces of literature that centered around postal history in my library was the 1990 edition of the work by Charles Starnes (United States Letter Rates to Foreign Destinations 1847 to GPU-UPU).  Prior to this effort, people would have had to rely on finding rate schedules and official announcements for rate changes from primary sources.  While that could be effective, it could also be cumbersome.  What this book did was put a quick reference in front of anyone who wanted to learn more about that old letter that was sent from the US to some other country during this time period.  You did not have to have access to a library that had copies of those primary sources.

In my mind, some of the most useful information a person can have are the effective postage rates between nations.  This knowledge by itself can help you understand whether an old cover is a valid representative of normal mail handling for the time, if it is an interesting exception to normal processes, or if it could possibly be a fake, altered, or damaged item.

This is why, as I expand my own knowledge of postal history, I often look for sources that help me to get a handle on postage rates.  For example, J.L. Bourgouin's web site features French postal rates to foreign countries and has given me a platform from which to work on cool things like this, an 1858 letter from France to Sweden.  And yes, this item shows a valid rate for the time.

In a future Postal History Sunday, I'll try to share various resources I have found over the years that have helped with postal rates.  But, suffice it to say, I have not found everything I have been looking for and the search continues.  Sometimes it is because I do not yet know where to look.  Sometimes the easy-to-use reference, like the Starnes book, doesn't exist yet for a certain area.  After all, postage rates have never been a simple study - so any useful and comprehensive resource will require significant effort to create.

The ocean caught my fancy

Walter Hubbard and Dick Winter's work, North Atlantic Mail Sailings: 1840-1875 came out in 1988 and its presence opened up a whole new world to me as a postal historian.  Suddenly, a person like me - someone who did not have easy access to newspaper archives and other resources to confirm ship departures and arrivals - was able to use a single reference and have a good shot at determining how a letter crossed the Atlantic in the 1860s (my primary focus of study).

Because this work was made available, I was given another way to look at a cover.  Another way to read the story.  Another opportunity to find something new and interesting.

If it were not for this work, I may not have been able to discover and explore the story of the Saxonia as it fought through a gale, arriving a bit late, but still successfully delivering its mailbags.  And, I would never have even thought that the item in this Postal History Sunday called Run Aground! was anything that was at all special.  Instead, it is one of my favorite things in my collection and a story I enjoy telling and retelling to anyone who might be willing to listen.

If this book did anything, it taught me how to read the exchange markings on letters that crossed the ocean.  And, in reading them, I find I can learn a great deal very quickly.  And, it helped me determine that this item is pretty cool.

Aside from looking a bit different from many letters from the time because of the stamp selvage sealing up the sides, this item was carried by a ship from the Galway Line.  Only 1.8% of the trans-Atlantic mail carried in 1863 was carried by this line, which is the only overlap the Galway shipping line had with the 24 cent stamp I enjoy.  In other words, you don't find much carried by a Galway Line ship.

Dick Winter continues to be prolific, writing Understanding Trans-Atlantic Mail (vols 1 & 2) and continues to write.  I always look forward to his work.

And I learned what guided postal services to do what they do

It was clear from the beginning that both the Starnes and the Hubbard/Winter books were references that you went to when you had an item that you needed to figure out.  The Starnes book is primarily tables with very little additional text.  The Hubbard/Winter book is also mostly ship sailing tables, but there is enough text to teach you about many things if you are willing to read for the details that were not the primary purpose of the book. 

History of Letter Post Communications Between the United States and Europe: 1845-1875 by George Hargest, on the other hand, is not what you would call "light reading."  Nor is it necessarily a reference book you go to for a quick answer.  And yet, it is this book that I attribute much of my ability to understand the mechanics of mail between postal systems. 

I know that I read portions of this book multiple times until the combination of my own personal experience and my "book-learning" finally matched up and provided me with what I call "operational knowledge."  Sure, I could have read this book once and had a few general ideas about how things worked.  But, until I could apply the things I found there to actual pieces of postal history,  I couldn't say I had really learned what I needed to.

I will admit that this process took me a while.  It is, once again, a difficult read that is full of information.  But, I recognized its value early on and kept coming back to it as my understanding grew.

This is the book that helped me understand how the postage was divided between nations and this is the book that introduced me to the postal treaties that set the foundations for mail between nations.

And much more, of course

I am only focusing on a few of the key resources that helped get me started.  These three books, along with the people who populate Richard Frajola's Board for Philatelists, were probably the most influential in encouraging me to go down the paths I have chosen to walk in the world of postal history.  If I were to focus on all resources I have used, I am afraid I would never finish this Postal History Sunday entry - and I don't see how that will help anyone.

If you were to categorize each of these resources, you might say the Starnes book was the practical reference that kept me from hurting myself too much.  The Hubbard/Winter book added a bit of window dressing that made the story line for postal history more attractive.  And, the Hargest book could be likened to a Chilton's repair manual, it gave me some understanding about what was "under the hood" when it came to mail between the United States and Europe.  The Board for Philatelists provided a sense of community that rounded it all out.

And that is the starter recipe for Postal History Sunday.  I have climbed onto the shoulders of others - and is still seeing how much further he can reach with their assistance.

Have a fine day and an excellent week to come!

Williams Creek - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to Postal History Sunday on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and GFF Postal History blog.  It's time for us to set our troubles aside for a short time while I share something I enjoy with you.  Perhaps we'll all learn something new in the process and, if we do this right, we might even forget where we put those troubles once we're done with the Postal History Sunday post.

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One of the fascinating things about postal history is that a single item can provide us with a window to view interesting events, people, or situations that occurred in the past.   Sometimes, we are fortunate to find something that provides us with opportunities to go in all sorts of directions.  

Starting to make sense of this cover

There is a lot to see and a fair amount to figure out with this particular item - which is just one reason it appeals to me.  The hardest part is figuring out where to start.  In my case, I started with the part I understood the best - the use of a 24 cent United States stamp to carry a letter from San Francisco, leaving July 31, 1865, to Liverpool, England.

The postage stamp at lower right, with the lilac coloration is the United States postage stamp.  The cogwheel shaped cancellation was used in San Francisco during the 1860s, so that matches up nicely with the round marking at the lower right corner of the envelope that gives us the July 31st date from San Francisco.  The postage rate at the time was 24 cents for a simple letter weighing no more than 1/2 ounce that left the United States for a destination in the United Kingdom.  If you want to review that particular rate, this Postal History Sunday from January of 2021 will help.

That was the easy part, but what is it with all of those pink colored stamps - of which one is almost entirely under the 24 cent stamp?

The pink stamps are denominated as paying 2 and 1/2 pence of postage for the colony of British Columbia (north of Washington state in the US), which is now part of Canada.  Prior to 1858, this area had been an "unorganized" British colonial territory known as New Caledonia, but with the gold rush in the Fraser Canyon and the corresponding influx of people, the area became a British colony.

So, the person who mailed this letter, paid for internal colonial mail services in British Columbia AND they paid for the United States postage to get the mail from San Francisco to Liverpool.  All of this apparently paid with postage stamps - a statement that will not be entirely true as you'll see later.

That's enough to start with - and we'll get back to more details after a - hopefully interesting - interlude.

Getting from here to there

Williams Creek was the site of much of the early successes during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.  Settlements such as Marysville, Richfield and Barkerville sprang up to gain varying levels of importance.  Barkerville had a documented office for Barnard's Express, a private company that carried mail, early in the 1860's and that's where I suspect the first Williams Creek post office was established.

This item likely followed this route:

• Barkerville (Williams Creek) - July 21 to July 23 based on typical travel times
  
• carried by Barnard's Express on the Cariboo Road (you can see it on the map from Soda Creek to Ashcroft and Lytton)
  
• carried by Dietz and Nelson at Yale (another private carrier) to New Westminster on July 26
• Across the Strait of Georgia to Victoria, Vancouver Island
• Victoria to San Francisco via steamship
• Overland to New York - sometimes by train, some of the route by stagecoach.
• across the Atlantic Ocean on Cunard's Persia to Liverpool

The usual stage time from Yale to Barkerville (approx 380 miles) was four days.  A special express, that included driving the coach during night hours, set a record at 30 hours - which is quite an accomplishment if you start looking more closely at the route these coaches would have to take to get from Williams Creek to New Westminster.  It would not be unreasonable to expect letter mail to be sent on the express, so a July 23 send date is not out of the question.  

Some of the material I read suggested that this mail circuit was completed twice a week - so departure from Williams Creek would have depended on that schedule.

The Cariboo Road

Sketch map of the existing routes circa 1860 - signed R.C.Moody

Prior to the gold rush, much of the travel in the region was accomplished via water routes and less developed trails  The map shown above (you can view a larger version by clicking on it) is a sketch map of the region that likely reflects the state of transportation in 1860.  Richard Clement Moody had accepted the post of Commissioner of Lands and Works and Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia (August 1858) and was also made Commander of a detachment of Royal Engineers.  The sketch map shown above was signed off by him.

If you look closely, there are two routes that combine land and water travel to the North in the late 1850s.  The western route starts at Harrison Lake and goes north to Lillooet.  The Dietz and Nelson company maintained services along this route as well as service from Yale to New Westminster.

However, the development of a wagon road was not something that interested Moody as much as other projects.  On the other hand, Governor James Douglas was adamant about development of proper routes of transportation.

In 1862 the Cariboo Gold Rush attracted 5,000 miners. On this occasion, Governor Douglas produced his plan for a major wagon road, 18 feet wide, to run 400 miles from Yale, beyond the river’s gorge northward to Quesnel, and eastward to Williams Creek. The Great North Road, to be built by Royal Engineers and civilian contractors, was to end the threat of American economic domination by making the Fraser River, despite its obstacles, the commercial and arterial highway of British Columbia. He hoped that the road could be extended to link British Columbia with Canada. “Who can foresee what the next ten years may bring forth,” he wrote in 1863, “an overland Telegraph, surely, and a Railroad on British Territory, probably, the whole way from the Gulf of Georgia to the Atlantic.”  Quoted from the Dictionary of Canadian Biography on March 4, 2022 

Part of the Great North Road referenced by Douglas was to become the Cariboo Road.  It was this route that was favored by Barnard's Express to carry mail south from Barkerville.

Cariboo Road along the Thompson River 1867, from wikimedia commons

The construction of the Cariboo Road is considered to be quite an accomplishment, requiring work in all sorts of terrain (from swamps to sheer cliff faces).  Building of the road was most likely complete or very close to complete at the point the letter from Williams Creek was mailed in July of 1865. The road was over 400 miles in length and it effectively connected the Cariboo gold fields to the rest of the colony.

If you view the map shown above, you can see the two alternative routes in the southern portion.  The older route going through Douglas and Lillooet and the newer route through Yale and Lytton.  The completed route in 1865 would not have gone through Lillooet at all.  The first photo of the Cariboo Road shown above would have been taken north of Lytton (the Thompson River is just to the East of the road.

In the present day, there is a movement to restore portions of the Cariboo Road and to research the exact locations of the original roadbeds.  

Cariboo Road north of Yale circa 1880 from this Canada Parks site (viewed 3/11/22)

Getting to the Cariboo Road

Competing routes brought about competition for transportation services.  And, the competition was mostly in the portion of the route that got to the Cariboo Road itself.

The general rule of thumb is that land routes were normally faster than water routes.  This, of course, assumes the path of travel was developed to allow fast stage travel.  This might not be the best assumption in rugged areas such as those required for this trip. In fact even in later years (1900s) the paved road that followed the Cariboo Road was considered hazardous by some, with no guardrails to provide some sense of security for travelers who might look down form the precipice.  You can listen to a CBC archived broadcast that includes interviews of people who remember driving automobiles on that road and remembering how difficult even that could be.

Regardless, the development of land routes to speed travel had become very important in the Cariboo region simply because the British Columbian government wanted to be able to prevent the interests of the United States from overriding those of the colony.  The road also provided an opportunity to maintain some control and collect some of the wealth that was being generated there. 

The advertisement shown in two parts here references the two routes in competition.  The western route is labeled as the Douglas to Lillooet to Junction route.  This is the same as the Lake Harrison route shown in the sketch map.  The Yale and Lytton Wagon Road would be the eastern option.  Already in 1863, as the Cariboo Road was under construction, the shift had begun to favor the newer, shorter (and faster) route.

 From the Aug 8, 1863 British Columbian published in New Westminster

Barnard's Express, Dietz & Nelson and the BX Ranch

 At the time this letter was mailed (1865), the Dietz & Nelson company carried mails from Victoria to Yale and they also ran a route from Victoria to Lillooet via the western route.  Starting in 1862 Barnard's Express carried the mail either from Yale or Lillooet to the gold fields in the north.  In other words, it was Barnard's Express that carried the mail on the Cariboo Road.  

Barnard's Express became the British Columbia Express Company and was often simply known as BX.  In the winter of 1863, Barnard's added sleighs for winter transport.  In 1864, they added a four horse, 14 passenger stage to the route.  By the time we get to 1867, Barnard's was able to buy out the Dietz and Nelson express company and incorporate it into its own business.  In 1868, Barnard purchased 400 horses as breeding stock and founded the BX Ranch that would supply the engines that made this enterprise go.

Ad in the British Columbian (New Westminster) newspaper published Dec 12, 1866

An excellent history of BX can be found here at the Barnard's Village site.  If you would like to learn more, this book by Ken Mather (Stagecoach North: A History of Barnard's Express) is available through the Royal BC Museum.

Not bad for a guy (Joseph Barnard) who bought a mule so he could put the mail on its back and lead it up the existing trails in 1861.

George Dietz and Hugh Nelson purchased the Ballou Express in October of 1862 and came to an agreement with Barnard in 1863 to connect an express line.  They also made a connection with Wells Fargo in Victoria for mail coming to or leaving from British Columbia.  By December of 1867, Dietz and Nelson decided they could not make money with this situation and sold their interest to Barnard, who clearly made the most of it.

Williams Creek Gold Fields
The map below from Great Mining Camps of Canada can give us an idea as to why some of the settlements developed where they did.  Places like Barkerville essentially appeared where the density of staked claims was higher.  And, where claims clustered, services, such as the carriage of mail, tended to follow.

Placer miners discovered the south end of the gold field in 1860 and all of the river and stream sites that would end up producing significant amounts of gold would be discovered the following year.  Production would peak by 1863, but there is still active gold mining in the region even today.

Barkerville 1863 from Great Mining Camps in Canada

Placer mining focuses on looking for the target ore in sand or gravel, rather than attempting to find a vein of gold in solid rock.  The simplest approach with the least equipment and investment would be to "pan" for gold, placing some of the sand or gravel mix into a shallow pan with water.  Swirling the pan would separate the heavier gold from the sediment, which was washed out by the water.

The power of the river could be used by building sluice boxes.  These provided the opportunity to process larger volumes of the raw material and separate the gold from sediment.  If you would like to learn more, I suggest this U.S. National Park Service page that discusses placer mining.  

Getting Back to the Postal History

I suppose it is about this point that I should bring you back to the piece of postal history that started all of this discussion about placer mining, horses, road building, and the beginnings of British Columbia.  At the start I outlined the route this letter took, but I didn't necessarily show you the things that tell me about that route and the postage rates.

The first clue is the cancellation that can be found on the 2 1/2 penny stamps.

There is a blurred marking that is actually an oval with the number "10" in the center.  If it were clearly struck, it would look like this:

This marking was known to have been applied in the Williams Creek post office (Barkerville most likely), which was established in June of 1864.  That office was actually supplied with two postmarks - and neither of them provide the name of the location or a date.  The second marking can be seen at the bottom left of the cover.

The purpose of this mark is very clear - it indicated to postal clerks down the line that the entire postage had been paid at their post office.  And, cutting right to the chase, the total amount paid was 1 shilling and 9 pence.  The 9 pence was paid by the pink British Columbian stamps (which had been supplied to the Williams Creek post office) and one shilling was paid in cash, which was indicated at top left.

The slash in markings like this separates the shillings from the pence, so this marking is stating that one shilling and no pence were paid towards the additional postage required.  That additional postage represented the 24 US cents required to mail the letter from San Francisco to Liverpool.  

As a quick review - or maybe this is new to you - 12 pence were equal to a shilling.  Two US cents were equal to each British Columbian penny, so 12 pence (1 shilling) is equal to 24 US cents.  The one shilling in cash paid for the 24 cent stamp that sits very nicely on this envelope.  And, that 24 cent stamp was applied on the envelope in New Westminster, but it was not postmarked until it got to San Francisco.

This is one of those interesting practical solutions that were put into place just to get things done with the systems that were in place.  The only way someone in the British colony of British Columbia was going to write home to the United Kingdom was going to be via the United States.  And, in fact, any such piece of mail was going to go through either New Westminster or Victoria (on Vancouver Island).  Both of those post offices maintained a supply of US stamps which they would apply when appropriate.

The other practical adjustment comes about with the pink postage stamps.

If you will recall, I told you these stamps had a denomination of 2 and 1/2 pence EACH.  That's 7 and 1/2 pence in postage.  But, a few paragraphs ago I just breezed a little factoid past you when I said that NINE pence in postage were paid by these stamps.

The internal postage rates had been increased as of June 20, 1864.  The internal postage rate from the Cariboo Region to New Westminster was 6 pence per 1/2 ounce.  In addition to that, there was a 3 penny foreign mail fee, for a total of 9 pence in internal postage required.  The problem was - there weren't any 3 pence stamps printed and available at that time.  

The solution?  Sell the 2 1/2 pence stamps for three pence and just use them as if they were worth three pennies each.  

Works for me - and it worked for them.

There were multiple periods where Williams Creek had to operate without stamps and this excellent article by Steve Walske tells that story.  Mr. Walske is to be credited with providing many reference materials that gave me the tools I needed to read this cover, including this article that discusses the postage rates that applied during the gold rush period.

The back of the envelope features another "Paid" marking from Williams Creek and a larger, round marking that was applied at the "General Post Office" in New Westminster on July 26.  Now you know how I had a date for its arrival at that location!

To the right is a Liverpool marking dated September 16, 1865.  If we assume a July 24 send date, this letter took 53 days to make its way to the destination and it collected a whole host of storylines for us to explore for this Postal History Sunday.

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Thanks again for joining me this week.  As you can probably guess, some entries take a bit more effort to put together than others.  As always, the issue is how much detail is enough detail to accurately and correctly tell the story without getting bogged down in too much of the finer points.

For those who might like to learn more about any or all of the things covered here, take the links found in the text and/or check out some of the resources provided below.

Have a great remainder of your day and a fine week to come!

Cariboo Road at Soda Creek

Resources:

Walske, Steve, Stamp Shortages in the Cariboo Gold Country: Mail from Williams Creek via San Francisco, 1864-1868, US Philatelic Classics Society, The Chronicle, no. 218, vol 60, no 2, May 2008, pp 117-128

Walske, Steve, Postal Rates on Mail from British Columbia and Vancouver Island via the United States, 1858-1870, US Philatelic Classics Society, The Chronicle, no.212 ,vol 58,no 4, Nov 2006, pp 289-297
     - Some excellent work here and the rate tables below come from this article.

British Columbia and Vancouver Island Rate Tables on Western Cover Society webpage

Forster, Dale, Paid, Unpaid, Collect and Free Markings on BC and VI Covers, Postal History Society of Canada Journal, No 107, Sep 2001, pp 49-57.

Wellburn, Gerald E, The Stamps and Postal History of Colonial Vancouver Island and British Columbia: 1849-1871, (1987).
     - Since Wellburn's time, postal historians have been able to gain access to more primary sources with far less effort.  As a result, some of the details in this "coffee-table" book are incorrect.  Nonetheless, an enjoyable book to view.

British Columbia and Vancouver Island Covers on Western Cover Society webpage

The BC Gold Rush Press WAS a blog that has dedicated itself to the history of the gold rush in this area and provided interesting perspectives. It was still active Jan 2018, but the domain now appears to have been abandoned.  If anyone knows if this is still housed somewhere, let me know.  This is why I sometimes get very nervous about resource materials that are housed primarily online, their volatility is high.

Downs, Art, Cariboo Gold Rush: the Stampede that Made BC, Heritage House, 1987
     - This book is focusing on making the story entertaining but does so with the integration of primary sources. 

Brown and Ash, Great Mining Camps of Canada: the History and Geology of the Cariboo Goldfield, Barkerville and Wells, BC, Journal of the Geological Association of Canada, Vol 36, no 1 (2009).
     - Lots of detail, well researched.  The focus, of course, is on the geological side of things, but the accompanying historical information is also of use here.  You may have to get past some terminology hurdles.

Some interesting maps can be found at University of Victoria's Digital Collection.  Of note are carriage road maps (proposed in 1861). 

Ken Mather (Stagecoach North: A History of Barnard's Express) is available through the Royal BC Museum.

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!  These articles are cross-posted to our GFF Postal History blog for those who may only want to visit a blog that sticks to postal history (while the farm blog has multiple posts a week on a wide range of topics.

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 gave me 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 the ship's travels 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.  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 (perhaps 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.  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 for 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, especially if they were traveling and had given an itinerary to those who might want to contact them.  

Much of the mail in the rural United States was simply held at the post office to be picked up in 1869 - 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 long the consul held this letter.

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.  If evidence could be found as to the location of the sender, it would get sent back to them.  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! 

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Thank you for joining me today for Postal History Sunday.  Have a great day and a wonderful week to come.