Welcome to the 99th entry of Postal History Sunday, featured weekly on the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog. If you take this link, you can view every edition of Postal History Sunday, starting with this one (the most recent always shows up at the top). Only one more PHS entry before I can stop the countdown that has appeared for the past several weeks!
This week, I am going fall back on the small niche of postal history for which I have the most comfort - and that is material that bears the 24 cent 1861 stamp from the United States going to foreign destinations. Today, I thought it might be fun, since we just did a blog that highlighted how taking a different route could result in a different postage rate, to do the same thing with the US and Switzerland in the 1860s.
Hang
on to your hats! There is a great deal to talk about here. I strongly
recommend you go get your favorite beverage and put on those fuzzy
slippers before starting. The good news is that there is NOT a quiz
afterwards. You can simply slip happily through the words that follow,
enjoying your virtual travels with letters that went from here to there
in the 1860s.
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| Double the 21 cent French Mail rate from the United States to Switzerland |
Letter mail between countries prior to the General Postal Union (1875)
relied on postal conventions that were established by treaty between
nations. Needless to say, not every pair of sovereign states had a
direct agreement that dictated how mail would be exchanged. Mail
between nations that did not have a direct agreement relied on a chain
of postal conventions that connected them. In most cases, that chain
was created by finding one intermediary that had independent agreements
with both of the states in question. Mail that does not originate
within a country and also does not reach its destination within that
nation is said to be in transit through its postal system.
Case in point, Switzerland and the United States had no postal
convention in place until 1868. This makes sense for several reasons,
but the most obvious is that there was no way mail could be carried
between the US and Switzerland without transiting a third nation. A
quick look at a map will show you that Switzerland has no direct access
to ocean transport. The Swiss would have to travel through one of
Italy, Austria, France, some of the German States (Wurttemburg, Bavaria,
etc) and possibly have stops in Belgium or other nations along the
way. Any postal agreement between Switzerland and the United States
would require connections to other agreements just to manage the transit
through some or all of these independent states.
In 1860, the United States maintained postal agreements with the French, Prussian, Bremen and Hamburg systems. It was also possible to send mail to the British mail services to be sent on through whatever routes were available between the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
That's actually quite a few choices a person could make just to send a letter to one, smallish, country in the middle of Europe!
French Mail to Switzerland
The French mail system provided the United States with services to Switzerland from April of 1857 until December of 1869 at a cost of 21 cents per quarter ounce (7.5 grams) for letter mail. Much of this postal convention can be viewed can be viewed here if you are curious.
Mail to Switzerland via France would travel by trans-Atlantic steamship from New York, Boston, Portland (Maine) and Quebec bound for locations in England, France and Germany, depending on which steamship line carried the piece of mail in question. Items bound for France would typically sail directly to France or travel via Britain. The entry point in France was most often Calais (or the rail line from Calais to Paris), but it could also be locations such as Havre and Brest. If you would like more detail on how mail got to France during this period, this post will provide you will provide you with that information.
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| border region of France and Switzerland |
The rail systems in France were developing rapidly from the 1840s through the 1860s. For most of the 1860s, foreign mail was carried by train to Switzerland via three primary border crossings. There were other crossings that typically handled local mail and were unlikely to carry foreign mail, though it is technically possible. Mail could enter Switzerland in the north at Basel, west at Pontarlier and south at Geneva. The route was chosen based on a combination of train schedules and location of the destination relative to the border crossing. The hope was to send the mail via the route that would see the quickest delivery time.
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The envelope shown above (and at the beginning of this post) is presumed to have gone via Pontarlier based on some incomplete train schedule data that I have located. It is entirely possible that this is incorrect and I hope to be able to decipher the route more fully in the future. The 1864 year date makes it possible that the entry was in the south at Geneva depending on the completion dates of some of the rail lines in the Jura mountains.
The
difficulty for a postal historian who wants to figure out the route a
letter took is that letters transiting France to Switzerland from
the United States were not provided some of the same markings seen on
Swiss/French mail. As a result, we get fewer clues from the
piece of mail to isolate the route once it was in Europe. Instead, we
are left to speculate by looking at train schedules and, perhaps,
looking in a crystal ball or some tea leaves.
The letter shown above appears to have been sent from New York City to
La Chatelaine near Geneva, Switzerland. The portion of the address
panel that reads "pres de Geneve" simply indicates that this is
La Chatelaine "near" or "next to" Geneva. The larger, red circular
marking was applied in New York, dated March 9 and indicates that 36
cents of the 42 cents collected in postage is to be passed to France to
cover postal expenses not rendered by the United States postal system.
The French then passed money to the British and Swiss postal systems to cover their parts in carrying this letter.
The breakdown of the postage rate is often not as simple as saying 6 US
cents go here and 12 US cents go there. What can be said entirely
accurately is that 42 US cents were collected via US postage.
Thirty-six of those US cents were passed to the French postal system.
An amount roughly equivalent to 16 US cents was sent in French centimes
(probably 80 centimes) to the English to cover the sea passage and the
transit on British rail from Liverpool and the English Channel
crossing. This left 20 US cents, which is in the neighborhood of 1
franc in French currency, to cover transit through France and the cost
of mail in Switzerland to deliver to the recipient.
For the sake of argument, mail from France to Switzerland cost 40
centimes (French) per 1/4 ounce. So, this double weight letter would
have cost 80 centimes if it originated in France. This rate was split
at 50 centimes for French postage and 30 centimes for Swiss postage.
So, it is not unreasonable to speculate that 30 centimes (about 6 US
cents) was passed on to Switzerland to cover their postage costs.
Did you follow all of that?
No?
Let's try this instead:
- The US retains 6 cents of postage.
- France receives 36 cents from the US.
- Britain receives 80 centimes from France.
- Britain pays 6 pence to the Cunard Line for trans-Atlantic crossing.
- Britain retains 2 pence for internal rail service and the English channel crossing.
- France passes 30 centimes to Switzerland (equal to 30 rappen) for the Swiss mail service.
- France retains 70 centimes for their internal mail.
Now
you're all saying - why didn't just put it this way in the first
place? The answer? I don't know, I think it's because I like to hear
myself write.
All of these amounts are estimations because I am not currently willing
to work out all of the details as to actual exchange numbers between all
of the players. involved. For this excercise, I am operating under a
simple 5 French centime to 1 US cent conversion, though the actual rate
was 5.26 centimes per 1 US cent. In the end, that conversion number
matters less because the actual postage breakdown numbers are filtered
through three sets of postal treaties; the treaty between the US and
France, the treaty between France and Britain and the treaty between
France and Switzerland. In the end, it appears that the French make out
like bandits since their internal rate was 40 centimes for a letter
weighing 10 to 20 grams and they walk away with 70 centimes instead!
There is still plenty that can be explored regarding this cover. If you
look, you will notice several manuscript markings. A pencil "2"
notation certainly was applied to indicate that this is a double weight
letter. I have no idea whether the "53" is a postal marking or a filing
docket placed on the envelope after it was received. The "12" has all
of the hallmarks of a postal marking, but I am currently at a loss
regarding its importance. It is crossed out which may mean it was
placed on the cover in error OR it shows an amount passed and then
recognized as passed and crossed out. In that latter case, crossing out
the amount makes it clear that it is not a due amount for the
recipient.
Prussian Closed Mail to Switzerland
The Prussian mail system provided mail services for the United States to
Switzerland starting in 1852 until December of 1867 when the Prussian
system was superseded by the North German Union mails (essentially the
Prussian mails with other German mail systems consolidated with it - a
topic all its own). The postage rate was 35 cents per half ounce (15
grams) until May of 1863 when the rate was reduced to 33 cents. *
* This may be, in part because Baden's rate drops from 30 cents to 28
cents in May of 1863 to align it with the rest of the German-Austrian
Postal Union. Also a topic worthy of more discussion. I told you this stuff could get a bit complicated sometimes!
Mail to the Prussian system typically traveled through Belgium after a stop in England. Mailbags would enter the Prussian mail officially at Aachen (Aix la Chapelle) or on the mobile post office between Verviers and Coeln.
Both Belgium and Prussia featured highly
advanced rail systems that facilitated rapid mail dispersal. Travel to
Switzerland from Aachen required transit through Prussia and Baden or
through Prussia, Hessian states, and Wurttemburg.
In the case of the item below, the markings include the Prussian
"Aachen" marking on the front, a Baden railway marking on the back and
two Swiss markings also on the back.
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| 28 cents paid only to the border of Switzerland |
The Prussian system is interesting in that it would allow mail from the United States to be paid 'up to the outgoing border.' In other words, the sender could opt to pay the 28 cent rate to get a mail item to anywhere within the German-Austrian Postal Union (GAPU). Once it reached the border, it would be sent on - essentially as an unpaid piece of mail from the Prussian system to its destination in Switzerland.
In this case, the recipient was required to pay 10 rappen (or centimes) in Swiss postage for the
privilege of receiving their mail in this case. Remember last week,
when we had some mail that went from Switzerland to Rome and the send
paid for some of the postage and the recipient paid for the rest? Yep,
it's just like that.
The 28 cents in postage was divided into 7 cents for Prussia and 21 cents for the United States. The U.S. was responsible for covering their own internal mail costs and paying for transit via England (which included the trans-Atlantic portion). The Prussian mail system paid Belgium for the transit via Ostende (the equivalent of 2 US cents) and it retained 5 US cents for travels through the GAPU mail.
Bremen or Hamburg Mail Treaty to Switzerland
Bremen and Hamburg were two Hanseatic cities that negotiated mail treaties with the United States including mail service to Switzerland beginning in July of 1857 at a rate of 27 cents per 1/2 ounce. The rate was reduced to 19 cents in October of 1860 and became obsolete when these mail systems were combined with the North German Union postal system in January of 1868. Initially, mail packets (steamships) traveled between New York and Hamburg every four weeks , but that increased to every other week (alternating with the ships that traveled to Bremen) as we progress through the 1860s.
Mail from Hamburg and Bremen typically traveled through Frankfort
(Hessian territory) and would go through Baden to western Switzerland and Wurttemburg to eastern
Switzerland.
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| US to Switzerland via Hamburg Mails at double the 19 cent rate. |
The different numerical markings help us figure out how the postage was
shared between mail systems. First, the blue "8" is in the German
silbergroschen currency, which
would translate to 19.2 US cents approximately. It appears that the
blue "8" was applied in Frankfort A Main, which would imply entry into
the Thurn and Taxis posts. They would have
kept 6 silbergroschen for their transit of mail to Switzerland and 2
silbergroschen would have been passed to Switzerland for their surface
mails (about 5 cents). The red marking next to the "8" is "2
fr"* which represented the amount passed to Switzerland.
* this is a weiterfranco marking, weiterfranco is a German postal
term that indicates an amount of postage passed forward to the next
postal service.
British Open Mail to Switzerland
The postal convention with England had a fully prepaid option to Switzerland from March of 1848 until June of 1857. After that point, there was no prepaid option from the US via British mail. I find that to be extremely interesting because that seems like a step backward in postal progress, something the British were not prone to doing.
Instead, a
person had the option of paying the U.S. portion of the postage and then
allowing the British Open Mails to arrange to have the letter sent to
its destination, where all costs of mailing from the British system to
its destination would be collected. While this open mail was not in
effect for all possible destinations, it was available for most of Europe.
The open mails were especially valuable for mail that was overweight but not paid as such - just as is seen in the item shown on the exhibit page and seen below. The sender appears to have intended to pay the 21 cent French rate to Switzerland. However, the item must have weighed more than 7.5 grams (1/4 ounce), which would require 42 cents in postage. The postmaster realized that at least some of the postage applied to the envelope could be useful by paying the US portion of the trip to England, so the item was sent via the British Open Mail (21 cents per half ounce since an American contract ship took this mail across the Atlantic).
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| An alert clerk prevented loss of the entire 24 cents postage paid by using British Open Mail |
- French Mail: 21 cents per 1/4 ounce
- British Open Mail: 5 cents per 1/2 ounce OR 21 cents per 1/2 ounce with remainder to be collected from recipient in Switzerland.
- Prussian Closed Mail: 33 cents per 1/2 ounce (35 cts prior to May 1863)
- Prussian Closed Mail to border: 28 cents per 1/2 ounce with remainder to be collected from recipient.
- Bremen or Hamburg Mail: 19 cents per 1/2 ounce.
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