Michael Laurence was our speaker for December on the topic “Hanover, NH postal history.”  After first discussing collector interest in home town cover collecting, he produced a very comprehensive showing of the different types of postal markings used in this well-known town (home to Dartmouth College), both on stampless and stamped covers. Michael first showed a wide range of straight line postmarks used in the 1790s and into the early 1800s.  This was followed by the dotted oval postmarks, i...

Marvin Platt, our speaker for November on the topic “Columbian Potpourri, Up Close”, provided us with a comprehensive review of important postal stationery associated with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, including both envelopes and postal cards. The presentation started with an original pencil drawing of the two cent Columbian envelope indicia and then went on to illustrate the order of production of both the essays and the actual envelopes.  He described many details of the various dies u...

Terence Hines spoke on “Economic Information from Postal Documents” at our Chapter meeting on October 14.  He first discussed the relationship between postmaster income and mail volume (which was very directly related), and then described how postmaster compensation could be related to economic activity across the U.S. at any specific point in time. Terence noted how GDP and nationwide postal income had a correlation of 0.98!  He also described the use of the Federal register to determine com...

Our speaker for September was Roger Brody, on the topic “U.S. Stamped Revenue Paper”.  While Roger was relatively new to this particular collecting area, he put together a rather impressive PowerPoint presentation that reflected his considerable knowledge of this somewhat esoteric subject. Roger’s presentation provided us with an in-depth history of various forms of taxation in both the Colonies and the early Federal period.  He noted that Massachusetts and New York were the first colonies to...

Ed Siskin, our June speaker, gave us a very thorough and fascinating presentation on the topic of “Free Franks.”  Starting with the early British origins of free franking of mail, Ed then discussed early Colonial mails in the U.S., leading up to the Revolution, and the franking rules set out by the Continental Congress.  His presentation included many examples of free franking in the early 1700’s. Ed went on to discuss the signers of the Declaration of Independence and he showed a number of e...

Our May 13 meeting featured four speakers, Scott Trepel, Dan Knowles, Wade Saadi and Michael Heller, on the topic: “Long Island – Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk postal history.” Dan Knowles presented a number of very early letters sent to or from Sag Harbor, starting with a 1708 letter from South Hampton, perhaps the earliest known letter from Long Island.  One of the most fascinating items was a letter mailed in 1837, containing the first mention of the Spanish slave ship Amistad off t...

Our March speaker was Larry Lyons, on the topic: “1847 Covers taken to the Post Office by Local Post”.  Larry began his talk with a review of the number of known five cent (310) and ten cent (28) 1847 issue covers with local stamps or handstamps.  He noted that most of these covers were mailed either from New York City or Philadelphia. He then showed many such covers with a variety of different local stamps or markings.  Included were:  Two five cent 1847 covers with Boyds local stamps; Bouto...

Dan Ryterband, our April speaker, brought a comprehensive group of material to illustrate his talk: “1847 Stamps and Covers”.  This included five cent and ten cent 1847 issue stamps with interesting cancels and many covers showing a wide variety of postal markings.  Most importantly, virtually all stamps and covers were in pristine condition, usually with four-margin stamps. Some of the highlights of the five cent stamp (#1) included: scarab cancel; Hudson River mail; Dot in S variety; severa...

Michael Heller was the speaker at the February 11 meeting, on the topic of “19th Century New York City, Illustrated.”  The main focus was on illustrated advertising covers that depicted various NYC hotels and businesses throughout the borough of Manhattan during the 1800s. The talk started with a couple of “cameo” covers from the 1850s and 1860s, including an unusual one that had cameo advertising on both front and back.  Where possible, Michael tried to give a little history regarding the bu...

Our January meeting was the ever-popular Members One-Frame exhibit and we had a very nice turnout of members that evening.  Presentations that evening included: Roger Brody exhibited varieties of the 1902 Series stamps.  This exhibit included: plate printer initials; transfer relief breaks; paper folds; perforation varieties including rouletting; printer’s waste examples and watermark and other paper varieties. Roger also showed a very rare imperforated in-between pair of the two-cent stamps....