How I Got Started Collecting Postal History

I like most of us started as a general collector. I would save all of my families mail, carefully soaking the stamps of each envelope and putting the hoards of duplicates in envelopes. The one thing that I always did that my collecting friends did not is I always cut out the postmark which many of us looked at as junk. As time progressed I eventually saved the postmark in 2x4 cuts with the stamp, (How many 10's of thousands 3 cent greens did I really need to soak after all?). When I resumed collecting as an adult I continued with this but saw that many collectors were now saving whole covers, so I followed suit. throughout this all I did not have a single postmark of any kind from my hometown, Fridley, Minnesota and I did not know why. So you can say my lack of knowledge lead me to be a postal history collector. I went to numerous shows, joined clubs and then came the internet. My knowledge grew. I found out that the post office I went to for years was a branch office of Minneapolis. The independent post office for Fridley closed in 1928, 21 years before it became a city. So now my quest deepened. It did exist. I just had to look harder. When I first found a Fridley cancel it was on a postcard from 1910 and in fact he had 11 postcards with Fridley cancels in this dealers dollar box. Of course I bought them all and found a few more but they were all on postcards. More research was needed. Fridley was not much more than a ferry boat crossing point before bridges were erected over the Mighty Mississippi, hence a lot of travelers and postcards. Throughout this search of 30 years or more I picked up all the interesting names and towns I had never heard of from my home state. ...and a collection was born. Today I have well over 2000 Minnesota cities on cover from discontinued post offices and it continues to grow.
I have included one of my prized covers. It is the oldest known Fridley cover with a manuscript cancel of November 8, 1884

Very nice cover.

Don't forget that both the sender and receiver lived in communities that are now discontinued post offices from long ago. According to Jim Forte's Postal History website Fridley, Minnesota had an active post office from 1879-1928 before becoming a "branch office" later on. Also, North Victory, NY only had a post office from 1861-1903.

PJS Thanks for sharing...its always good to know I am not alone.I go to a stamp show and rarely buy a stamp..always head for the first cover dealer !!

PJSstamps how do you store your postal history collection..in cover albums ? phil

Very interesting PJS

I was talking to a couple of friends and a local club member at a show yesterday and I too made mention of the fact that when I go to shows, I never buy stamps. I am always buying covers and postcards. I buy stamps from collections I see or at the local club here or the Barrie Stamp Club auctions.

It wasn't until the late 1960s when I got bit by the postal history bug and I never looked back. My father, as a teenager, used to go to a cottage in Bala park in my distict here. I was born in Toronto but moved here at the age of 14. When my father mentioned Bala Park, I thought he was referring to the town Bala but he stated that there definately was another PO with the name Bala Park because he remembered going to the post office and sending mail and saw the cancellations. Luckily, some of those covers / postcards were still in family hands and they are now in my collection. I am still seeking anything from the area.

Happy collecting

Chimo

Bujutsu

I have 1878 listed as the first year they had an operating post office, but it could be 1879. It was a very confusing time as Fridley changed it's name from Manomin and also changed counties three times over a very short period. I found it odd that this is listed as the oldest cover but have been told that it is not uncommon to have several years of material lost.

philb,
I started with cover albums but I changed to those clear UltraPro 2 pocket pages that go into 3 ring binders several years ago. I save my old cover albums for other collections. Most of them only hold 100 or less covers and I can get 400 or 500 in one of those monster size 3 ring binders on UltraPro pages. I still have some as cuts that I have not found on cover. The territorial stuff is in one binder, Cuts in another, Fridley in another and the rest in several large binders. All my dups are in shoe boxes. I know shoe boxes make some collectors cringe, but cover boxes get pricy and I would rather spend that money on covers.

wt1,
Thanks for pointing that out. It reminds me that we all can look at the same thing from a completely different perspective.

Bujutsu,
Please tell me more about Bala Park. Where was it? What time period? Etc. I can help look for it if I know more.

Hi pjsstamps

Bala Park is located in the Distict of Muskoka in Ontario, Canada.

I have lived here permanently since 1957 and have a keen interest in the cancellations and postcards of all the post offices in this district.

The town on Bala can be googled (make sure you put Bala, Ontario, because you might get Bala in the UK) Bala Park was located only about 8 or 9 miles NW of the town of Bala itself. Thr PO of Bala is still in operation today and opened in 1870. The Bala Park PO opened in 1911 and closed in 1963.

I have included a scan of a postcard that was sent from my dad to his father (my grandfather) in 1914. This is fairly early usage. There is also a cxlose-up of the "Split-Ring" (broken ring to some) cancellation.

Chimo

Bujutsu

wt1 was a post office just absorbed by larger offices as communities grew, or does the government just close them to perhaps move to the nearest city or maybe both? I am really starting to love covers and postmarks and find myself actively looking for discontinued post office covers.

Also- What a great story pjs!

Both. Post Offices have been discontinued and re-established all the time throughout history. In most cases, many were small towns that had post offices while business prospered then the townfolk migrated to other areas and when the population dwindled and there was no longer any need for a post office, it was closed and "merged" with the next nearest town.

While post offices are still discontinued today, primarily due to budget cuts, the majority of the "discontinued" post offices from the late 1800s and early 1900s date back to a time when:

> Speculative mining in certain areas of the country was big and when it was no longer practical to do so, citizens moved onto other areas, leaving the old location a virtual "ghost town", so the post office closed in one area and opened in another as a result.

> Also, with the advent of the railroads, certain towns moved to be closer to them so the post offices moved as well.

> Then during the war years, there were post offices near military bases all over the US and after the bases closed, the post offices were discontinued.

> I know in my own state (Massachusetts) there were towns that were voted to be disbanded back in the 1930s and the areas intentionally flooded to make way for water supplies for the larger cities in the area.

> There were also post offices connected with local resorts or hospitals/sanitariums that closed when the resorts or hospitals closed.

Postmarks from some of these areas can be exceptionally collectible and quite rare to find. On the other hand, you can find some for quite modest prices if you know what to look for.

Very true wt1

My area up here also had a santarium complete with its' own post office facilities. It was known as the "Muskoka Free Hospital For Comsumpives" but locally known simply as the "San". There were different postmarks and special seals created for this facility as well.

Chimo

Bujutsu

At the turn of the century, (20th) and prior to the changes in rural free delivery there were approximately four times the post offices that we have active today. (I don't remember the exact numbers, but one of you most certainly does)You will notice a lot of post offices closed in the first decade of the 1900's with these changes in the mail delivery system. 100 years ago many people still had to pick up their mail at the post office. Another big factor was in our transportation systems. River towns died when the railroads came in and towns on the rail system died when the freeway system was built nationwide. Now they mainly die due to consolidation. We have bulk mail centers and distribution centers, etc and many suburban and even some rural post offices become a branch of a larger post office or just plain closes.

If you're into postmarks and covers from "discontinued post offices", check out Buck-a-Cover. They have a remarkable amount of covers from discontinued post offices that can be had for $1 to $3 on average. In fact, during the 1950s, when some post office closed, there were actually "Last Day of Service" covers prepared and signed by the local Postmaster.

I haven't seen any modern examples of that being done today, but it would prove to be an interesting collectible.