Breaking One Down - Postal History Sunday

In case you had not noticed, we get five Sundays in the month of April this year, which means we have five different Postal History Sunday entries.  For the fifth time this month, I get to invite you to put on your fuzzy slippers, pour yourself a favorite beverage (and keep it away from your keyboard and any paper collectibles) and push those troubles aside for a while.

Yes, treat those troubles the same way a cat treats anything it finds on a table or other flat surface.  Push them right off the edge, watch them fall and then walk proudly away knowing your mission has been accomplished.

In this week's entry, we're going to break down a single cover, taking you through some of the questions I ask myself each time I encounter a postal artifact.

How Much Did It Cost to Mail?

The first thing we can do is simply take an inventory of all of the markings, writing and stamps on the cover itself.  Each thing can give us clues that tell parts of the overall story.  Because my initial interest in postal history started with an attraction to postage stamps, I will begin there... because we have to start somewhere. 

The postage stamp represents 40 centimes in postage paid to the Belgian post office.  The stamp design features King Leopold I and is a design that had been in use since 1849.*  In 1863, the perforations were added to make it easier for stamps to be separated from the sheet.  The stamp denomination (40 centimes) makes it a good guess that the rate might have been 40 centimes. The stamp was printed from 1863 to 1865, which makes it likely the cover was mailed during that period (which it was - 1864).

*for our purposes this is good enough.  For those who are stamp collectors, you might note that there are more distinctions we could make.

The postage rate between Belgium and France was 40 centimes per 10 grams based on a treaty agreed upon by these two countries.  This postage rate started April 1, 1858 and ran through December 31, 1865.  There was a discount to this rate if both the origin and destination were within a certain distance of the shared border between France and Belgium.  The other exception was a 60 centime rate per 10 grams for mail that was not prepaid and sent collect to the destination.

This particular cover did NOT qualify for the special border rate and it was fully prepaid. The "PD" represents "payée à destination," which translates to "paid to destination" and confirms that the post office recognized full payment.  

It is interesting to note that various postal agreements between countries had their own requirements to indicate prepayment.  Belgium and France tended to favor the "PD" markings.  The Netherlands, on the other hand, preferred to use the word "franco" which was often handwritten rather than stamped on the mail.

Where was it mailed and where was it supposed to go?

This is where we look at postmarks and the address panel on the cover.  I'll start by listing the markings:

Mons July 4, 1864 - 6S
Belg 5 - VALnes - 5,  July 5
Paris July 5 (on the back)

The Belgian Mons marking

Mons is a city in Belgian and is the location where this letter was mailed on July 4th.  Mons was identified as an exchange office in Belgium for mail going to (and from) France.  So, after this postmark was applied to the letter, the letter was placed into a mailbag with other letters bound for France.  

The French VALnes marking

The red marking is the French exchange marking and it was applied in Paris at the point when the mailbag was emptied.  This might seem a bit odd, because VALnes was a shortened version of Valenciennes, which is located near the border with Belgium and it certainly is NOT the same thing as Paris!

However, the 5's that can be found in the outer ring of the red marking actually tell us that the postal marking was applied in Paris.  But, they wanted to track that this letter crossed via the train crossing at Valenciennes - which explains why VALnes is there in the first place.

The Paris marking

The Paris postmark is the receiving marking for the Paris post office.  The recipient's address was in Paris, so this tells us the letter was prepared for delivery on July 5, only one day after it was mailed.  A carrier would have taken the folded letter to the street address shown on the front.

I realize that most of us don't walk around with maps of Europe (or anywhere else for that matter) in our heads.  Here is a map of Belgium that shows most of the border crossings and exchange offices in Belgium for the time.  I make no claims of completeness, but it can give you some ideas of what we're working with.

Please note, the bright red outline is Belgium's border.  The darker black lines represent active rail lines at the time.

If you look carefully, you will see that Mons is not situated very far from the border and also not very far from Valenciennes.  The actual border crossing into France for the route this letter took is at Quievrain. 

Mons was very much a junction point for many rail lines to various locations within Belgium and two border crossings that could be taken directly from the city (the other is Erquilinnes).  The train schedules often dictated which border crossing was used. 

Who Was It To?

I admit that I am more interested in the address at this point than I am the addressee.  Perhaps that is because I can't quite decipher the addressee's company name completely.  And I have to admit that, sometimes, you just don't feel the motivation to figure everything out.

4 Rue de la Vrilliere

The red circle would show the approximate location of this address.  The illustration is part of a colorized Turgot map from 1739.  So, clearly it is not a perfect representation for 1864, but I liked the three dimensional rendering to show the location.  The prominent feature in the area, the Place des Victoires, has a very interesting history, which is summarized well enough on the wiki.

This portion of an 1864 map of Paris - source of which I have carelessly misplaced for the time-being - shows the location reasonably well.  Rue de la Vrilliere is the diagonal street southwest of the Place des Victoires.  The royal gardens are just a bit further southwest and the Palais Royale is just south of that (near the Louvre).   The history of these sites alone can keep a person busy reading for some time.  I have only linked in wiki pages for this week.  Yes, I know, it's a bit of a shortcut, but some weeks I find that I run out of time.  We'll do better next week.

Who Was It From?

V Dessigny in Mons leaves a fair number of footprints in contemporary records.  If you wish to view any of these in a larger format, simply click on the image.

A Société Anonyme (SA) would be a general equivalent to a corporation in the United States, an Aktiengesellschaft (AG) in Germany or a Public Limited Company (PLC) in the United Kingdom.  This book, located via Google books, shows the record for V Dessigny in 1857, which shows a registration for a coal mining company in the Hainaut province, centered around Elouges, which is West of Mons (on the way to the Quievrain crossing).  Victorien Dessigny served as the 'banker' and an administrator for this concern at the time. 

And, here is another notification that shows V. Dessigny as the banker for the payment of dividends for another company.  While business transactions, of themselves, may not be very exciting - these clippings bring a person and his business further towards reality by showing real impacts on the world around them.

Victorien Dessigny was also involved in oversight of businesses in the Mons area, being assigned a spot on the Tribunal of Commerce in 1864.  A short monograph on the Industrial Revolution in the Mons area by Hubert Watelet mentions a Victorien Dessigny multiple times.  I suspect this was likely the father of the Victorien referenced by these other sources, but I cannot confirm that point at this time.

And there we go, a single cover broken down into most of its component parts.

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

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Postal History Sunday is published each week at both the Genuine Faux Farm blog and the GFF Postal History blog.  If you are interested in prior entries, you can view them, starting with the most recent, at this location.