Humboldt County, Cal Covers

Schuyler Rumsey sale 14 ( 2002 ) lot 303 was a balance lot of Humboldt and Mendocino county covers. Although there where more than double (33) Humboldt covers than Mendocino (14) cover in the lot, I bid strongly enough to win the lot, thinking that I would re-sell the Humboldt covers.

By the time I had taken a good look at those 33 cover, I was collecting Humboldt county cover as well. It was the other Redwood lumber producing county, and frankly I really needed to expand my cover collection as Mendocino County's postal history is mostly scarce.

Four of the following covers were in lot 303, two others I picked up in other auctions, all of them have showy colorfull postmarks.
The first is just a cover front from a rather large registered cover from Port Kenyon on Humboldt bay, bearing Sc #s 209 & 210 and Port Kenyon's triple circle Town & County CDS Williams Hum4180. Port Kenyon's postmaster's compensation for 1887 was $111.06. This post mark is 3 months earlier than the earlist Williams record.




About 30 miles up river (Eel River) is the little town of Rio Dell, which apparently had a competive postmaster who bought fancy postmarks, the first of which I found in a Nutmeg auction and is 10 months earlier than the Williams first known date! The date is hard to read on the stamp, but the cover had routing and recieving postmarks on the back, also shown. Compensation for the postmaster in 1885 was $89.58. Alan H. Patera's California Postmaster Compensation reports only odd numbered years. For the year preceding and the year following the compensation was $130.07 and $201.15.The second fancy was in lot 303, and it is 7 months after the earlist known.




Edited to add:
Looks like this cover also took a ride on the San Francisco Scoita RR






A mile South is the Pacific Lumber Company town of Scotia, home of my next two covers, both with the same post mark, one came with lot 303, and again Nutmeg Auctions supplied the other. These two are very close to the earlist known Williams date, the first cover(from lot 303) is two days earlier and the other is one day later. This post office was the busiest of these towns and the postmaster there recieved a whooping $526.38









This last cover is from Upper Mattole, a small town at the confluence of the Eel and the Mattole River. This is the smallest town in this group, the postmaster was paid $50.29 for 1883, the year he/she postmarked this cover. A full 4 years and 11 months earlier than the earlist known Williams date! That is an offset of the San Francisco Rec'd postmark to the left of the address, there is one just like it on the back, almost in the same spot.

It's always interesting when you can place a picture with a cover (or in this case a cover front) as in your first scan, addressed to Burnett G. Haskell of San Francisco:

Approiate that the founder of the Kaweah Colony should be recieving mail from a county of Sequoia forests. Also the colony based its economy on logging.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaweah_Colony

Nice group of covers, but was there really a San Francisco Scotia RR or did you mean that designation informally? Pacific Lumber built its own railway, Humboldt Bay and Eel River Railroad which ran from Scotia to Humboldt Bay via Alton, CA although it may not have been operable to Alton until August 1885, five months after your cover. I don't see sources calling it San Francisco Scotia RR and it probably was too short in mileage to have RPO service.

So the two CDSs probably are SF arrival marks. They appear to be two strikes of the same CDS; perhaps the first (on the right) struck the flap and/or an object in the cover and the clerk then re-struck the mark on the left.

Finally found that Scotia RPO, it was the Eureka & Scotia RR, on the back of a postcard, minus the stamp, so it was in the also mailed group ( damaged covers, missing stamps, etc ), have now added it to the RPO list.

Fascinating covers and history Phil.

Thanks for sharing these.


-MV