Our January meeting was devoted to Brooklyn as a symposium as no one was willing to serve as seminar leader. It brought quite exuberant responses from the attendees who kept interrupting each other with reminiscences and comments on the covers shown. Several corner card examples of the Hotel St. George were shown and they elicited the most comment. This hotel was known as the largest in the United States, cover two full blocks. It also was the subject of one of New York's major fires in 1995-a 1...

For Lincoln's birthday, February 12th, the seminar leader was Professor Sample Pitman, who with his charming wife led the presentation on the Emancipation Proclamation and its origin. Dr. Pitman is a Texas boy who came to New York to teach at City College. He has assembled a remarkable holding of artifacts (carvings, chains, whips, tags, etc) similar to some of those shown in the leave-behind, particularly name tag identifications, which he slyly pointed out were the first records of affirmative...

      Dr. Norvil Rasmussen, who focused upon West Virginia pre-statehood postal history (pre June 30, 1863), led the March 12th seminar. At the dinner beforehand, much of the discussion focused upon the state of history teaching in our schools and colleges. A number of members commented upon their own student days and those of their children in this respect noting that stamp collectors have a much better sense of both history and geography than most because of their hobby. To begi...

                            Our seminar leader for the April 11th meeting was Bernard Biales who took the subject of the New Haven Beehive Enigma and detailed how the philatelic perceptions shifted from a rare postal marking to a forerunner of the Civil War sanitary fair markings and adhesives. While some might have wanted a direct link setting forth the problem and the solution, Mr. Biales, with my interjections, chose to show the misconceptions, dead ends, and serendipity effects that led ...

The May 14th presentation by Jim Kotanchik on the first newspaper issue of 1865 was well received by those attending and the speaker enjoyed the opportunity sufficiently to wish to return with a different topic in the future. Combining the information provided by Luff and Tiffany, these newspaper stamps were issued in mid-1865 and no longer were issued after February 1869. The stamps were used principally at Chicago and Milwaukee according to the May 1867 Stamp Collector's Magazine. The purpose ...

             The June 11th seminar was led by Calvet Hahn and focused upon Alvin Adams and his Adams Express Company. Cal attempted to lay out some of the web of companies that centered around Adams over the years as he moved from being $10,000 in debt in 1837 to one of the wealthier men of his era by his death in 1877 - worth over $27 million and employing some 15,000 people that we know of. Like his contemporary and possible patron, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who also died in 1877 leaving a fort...

Mike Heller lead our October 8th seminar on printing methods used to create illustrated advertising covers and enclosures. He noted that during the 19th century there were basically three methods used: a) The best known is recess printing (colloquially referred to as engraving) used for most classic stamps. It is recognized by the raised ink likes on the printed surfaces that can be detected by oblique lighting or running one’s finger over the printing. Some recess printing versions are ...

                    Our last speaker, Edward Tricomi showed some of the great playing card revenue rarities. One tidbit was that cards were very likely among the first printed items in China during the 8th century A.D., when printing first developed and are definitely known there by 1120 A. D. They were apparently introduced into Europe by returning Crusaders circa 1377-79 A.D. Proofs of a playing card stamp for America in 1765 are known and illustrated in the leave-behind; however, there...

Our December 10th seminar was the very first showing of Nancy B. Z. Clark’s District of Maine holding and a spectacular showing it was with thirteen frames of material covering over 100 of the known postoffices as well as a slide show and various maps and documents dealing with the subject. As she noted the tale of how Maine became a state is one of political expediency, greed, religious rivalry and righteous hopes and plans. Both the French and English claimed Maine and the French claims...