Need Cancel Company ID Help

I really wish Google had the ability to do wildcard searches!

I browsed through the first 15 pages of search results for "petroleum co. 1865" and came up goose egg.

Cancel appears to read The Benne****un Petroleum Co. I suppose the you before the n could be an a.

Could be Bennett***un, or what might appeat to be tt could also be a capital letter (H or K?) of a second word.

Any ideas?

Based on the font I would go with "The Benne H****un Petroleum Company". The problem is that the petroleum industry in the 1860's(and later) was many companies went belly up or were bought by other companies, then those were bought, and so on. Many of these smaller companies were private not public. But you could try to find a list of NY Stock exchange companies in 1865. That is also the same year the exchange moved to Broad St. in Manhattan. I think that also might be the year they merged with the petroleum Stock Exchange. You could also try to find an 1865 list of the P.S.E. Companies as well.

I would concentrate on PA. and W.VA. as most oil in the US at the time came from those area's.

Your wish has been granted! Inserting an asterisk (*) between the words that you know will find pages containing your search terms seperated by one or more words.

A Google search using Benne * Petroleum Co. returns a number of pages, at least three of which refer to "The Bennehoff Run Petroleum Company." Another search on Bennehoff Run Petroleum provides links to nine pages.

Hope this helps.

Steve

Assuming the cancellation is from "The Bennehoff Run Petroleum Co." of Pennsylvania, here's a period photo that may be of interest:

If anyone's interested in reading of crime stories, the chapters from this book make for interesting reading as it relates to a Bennehoff robbery of $500,000 in 1868, and is very likely the same personality that was involved in the Bennehoff Run Petroleum Co.:

http://books.google.com/books?id=1n...bber&f=false

See what stories come up when you study your stamps!

Well I'll be darned, thanks!

It appears that Google's wildcard search works just a wee bit differently than normal wildcard searches for partial words. I had tried the following:

benne* petroleum co.

But that returns a completely different set of results from:

benne * petroleum co.

(note the space between "benne" and the asterisk. Normally partial word searches are done using the former, but I guess not in Google's universe.

I should now go back and research more of my unattributed cancels...

Great work guys!

SCF delivers.


(When doesn't it?)

Fantastic work gentlemen,
and I have learned a trick with asterisks, Thanks.

how come no one told me about the asterisks before. Great sleuthing all!

Nice Revenue by the way.

FYI, using the asterisk in searching is know as a Wild Card or wild carding.

Read more here

http://apps.caes.uga.edu/impact/searchhelp.cfm