Mail To And From Famous Folks!

This seemed like topic that might be fun. I picked up both of these seemingly non-descript covers for less than a buck. Nothing special until you look at the sender and/or recipient.

Chauncey Depew was a lawyer for Cornelius Vanderbilt, president of the New York Central Railroad, and, when this letter was mailed, U.S. Senator for New York. Interesting that he apparently remained president of the RR while in office. No conflict of interest there...

Andrew Carnegie ... well, I imagine you may have heard of him. Neither of these envelopes still have their contents, but it seems very likely the Carnegie letter was in reference to the Bangor Free Library ("Llyfrgell Rydd" in Welsh). It was built the previous year in North Wales with funding from Carnegie and still operates today. http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/...wynedd_Wales

Who else has some mail that passed through the hands of other dignitaries or celebrities?

Perry Mason's wife, Ina Burr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry..._(TV_series)

The thing with letters addressed to famous people, especially Hollywood types, Presidents and other very famous people is that the great majority of it was never seen or touched by the persons to whom it was sent. Hollywood actors and actresses get mailbags full of fan mail that at best are seen only by hired secretaries who send out photos or who sign autographs on behalf of the celebrity. Presidents and other very famous people get mail bags full of mail as well and most of them have paid staff or secretaries who do the same thing on their behalf. To me the covers that are nest by people who the famous people likely know and are willing to open and read such letters are the ones that I find most interesting. For example, a letter from a Hollywood person's family or an equally famous Hollywood type who is a personal friend would be the ones to seek out. Or a letter to a President from a US Senator or a Governor of a state or from their personal family or such would be the ones that I would find most interesting.

Likewise mail that appears to be from a famous person. Again, most all of them have at least one secretary/assistant and many have multiple secretaries/assistants who send out mail on the famous person's stationery. Many of them even sign the famous person's signature. Finding ones that are reasonable to believe were actually sent by the famous person would be the interesting ones to me.

GregAlex:

Interesting covers. I have a few covers to or from well known personalities. I call these association covers, a term borrowed from book collecting. Here are a couple of mine:


Bob Considine was a well-known journalist, commentator, & author from the 1930s until his death. Some will remember him as the author of Thirty Seconds over Tokyo. The cover is addressed to him at INS (International News Service).


This cover is addressed to novelist James Michener. Michener served in the U.S. Navy during WW II and was assigned to help write a history of the Navy in the Pacific during WW II. It was while serving in this capacity that he got the idea for his successful book Tales of the South Pacific. The sender of this letter, F.E. Merrill, was the editor of the Greely, Colorado newspaper and a friend of Michener.

For me, philatelic personalities, collectors and dealers, also qualify as collectable association covers.

Don

This is a letter sent to my Uncle Gerry regarding the death of his son. I believe he was the first Officer killed in the Korean War. The Letter is signed by General Douglas MacArthur.

1924 13 May. Brzeznica to Wincenty Witos, Legislative Assembly, Warsaw, Registered.



From Wiki
Wincenty Witos, 22 January 1874 - 31 October 1945, was a prominent member of the Polish People's Party (PSL) from 1895, and leader of its "Piast" faction from 1913. He was a member of parliament in the Galician Sejm from 1908–1914, and an envoy to Reichsrat in Vienna from 1911 to 1918. Witos was also a leader of Polish Liquidation Committee (Polish: Polska Komisja Likwidacyjna) in 1918, head of the Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe Piast party, and member of parliament in the Polish Sejm from 1919-1920.
He served thrice as the premier of Poland, in 1920-1921, 1923 (Chjeno-Piast), and 1926.

And here's the man

Below is a cover from my collection like those that I have seen written about and advertised as "fan mail." However, from further research I found it was for a Quaker Puffed Wheat promotion.

The sender wasted no time getting that in the mail -- it's postmarked a day before the contest started!

Well, no, reading the ad, I get that the first weekly drawing would be May 1st. So John Albert likely missed the first drawing but made the second. Maybe he was fighting his mother over whether he could take the boxtop off a nearly full box. With enough entries, I could also see where the losing entries from one week would even be dumped after possibly extracting the data (these were mostly kids, after all, and the deal was to get you to buy more cereal for the boxtops); that way, only new mail-ins would qualify for the next week and so on.

What were the prizes? Pretty nice stuff:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1934-Quaker...em3d37694fdb
Note the seller is offering the ad and a beat up box without a prize baseball.

Here's a cover mailed by a rather (in)famous fellow, George Trofimoff, "the most senior officer in U.S. military history to be charged with or convicted of espionage." (Wikipedia)



You can read about him on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Trofimoff

The cover was mailed after his incarceration at the Victorville (CA) Federal Correctional Complex.

Robert

Here are a couple of aerogrammes from my collection, containing fan mail from little Norwegian girls to Doris Day.

Thought I'd poke around using the site's search function and found this older thread to practice uploading and adjusting my scanner. Unfortunately my scanner isn't the best. I don't per se collect covers to/from famous people but when I see them for $1 or $2 I'll pick them up, so maybe I am collecting them. Here are some that I hope may be interesting.

10/18/1845, Cambridgeport, MA George Livermore to his classmate Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Livermore was an antiquarian and book collector and at one time was thought to have the finest private book collection in the US. Dana is best known for having written "Two Years Before the Mast" in 1841.

3/2/1942, Brussels, Belgium to Louis Adam, Prince Czartoryski of Poland. Censored in Cologne. Prince Adam Louis was killed fighting in the Warsaw Uprising in September 1944. There is very faint writing or the impression of writing on the cover. The cover wasn't chemically tested for invisible ink. I don't know if it is the impression of something that was written on paper on top of the cover, the remnants of a prior pencil notation, or a message in invisible ink. It would be interesting to illuminate it with different wavelengths of light to see if anything is readable.

Boston, Texas to Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America CSA, post war when he was a member of Congress. Forwarded from Washington, D.C. to his home in Crawfordsville, Georgia. It's a bit rough to say the least. The seller had another in better condition that I also bought but I think the Boston TX origination of this one is more interesting.

What a great piece of military history. Did you know that Thomas was the first soldier from the Korean war to be buried in Arlington National Cemetary?

These "first to be killed" claims are muddied a bit because not all casualties of the Battle of Osan (started 7/5/1950 with 60 KIA from Task Force Smith) are known (as far as specific events and order of being killed, etc.). Thomas was killed on 7/16/1950.

Anyway, thanks for sharing the letter from Mac. I am wondering if these were boilerplate letters and signed by auto-pen... ?! It kind of looks like an auto-pen signature to me.

Edit: The more I compare with other signed items, the more I am convinced that it is an original signature OR a secretarial/assistant signature. There are many examples with the line below the signature. Fascinating stuff but I'm no document expert...

John

Not too famous, but 3 envelopes with return addresses:

-author David Sedaris
-film director Jules Dassin, return address of Melina Mercouri, the actress married to Dassin
-film actress / singer Deanna Durbin