Interesting Cancellation

Is this Manchester California?

Can we see the rest of the card? There are usually clues somewhere that can help.

IOA. = Iowa
Add: and I agree with Partime, when attempting to interpret a piece of postal history, it is often helpful to show both sides of the entire item. (In other words, always try to provide the fullest information possible.)

Add2: Note the killer! The USPS's "Postmaster Finder" website lists WIlliam C. Cawley as Manchester's postmaster from 4/5/1869 to 4/25/1885, although apparently not fully adept at carving in reverse!.

Jim Forte has a website for selling material as well as to help collectors. If you use his post office search you would learn there have been 86 USA post offices with the name Manchester (See: https://www.postalhistory.com/posto...rchtype=word )

Edit to correct spelling, actually bad typing.

Good eye from John Becker finding that what appears to be ICA is actually IOA. It still seems odd, though, that they shorten a 4 letter state of IOWA to 3 letter IOA. Seems a little silly, but I'm betting the guidance at that time was 3 letters for each state.

I also find it interesting that that date stamp of SEP / 17 is slightly tilted clockwise. I would have thought that the canceller had a set/correct location so that months and days could be easily changed.

There are number of state abbreviations in the 1800s, which confuse modern collectors familiar only with today's 2-letter abbrevations. Indiana is "IA" and Massachusetts is "MS" on many stampless covers. Nebraska used both NE and NB as recently as 50-60 years ago, etc.



There are various designs/constructions to these cancel devices, but they are all fairly easy and quick to change the internal time/date slugs. Some of them have a handle which screws-off and the slugs are inserted from behind, then the handle screwed back on. As a pure guess, I suspect the tilt may reflect such a construction and some screw-on front or back part was not tightened all the way, which would have fully alighned the internal time/date slugs with no tilt.

As usual John you're very astute!

The first line on the back message says "7 miles from *Howlere Iowa".

* not sure of town.

A little more information on Manchester California;
Although a post office was opened in Manchester, Cal. on 1 Dec 1871, it closed on 28 Jan 1876, and opened again on 5 Jan 1877 and is still open today.
This section of California was still in contention with Spain, and not fully California until 1877, unsure of the date. It was July 1877 when GGranddad bought the ranch south of the lagoon in Manchester from BLM.
There are no postmarks recorded in the Western Cover Society massive two volume California Town Postmarks 1849 - 1935 by John H. Williams for the first open period (1 Dec 1871 - 28 Jan 1876). First recorded postmark is 10 Dec 1879, 3 years after the office re-opened. A very small office.

edit for punctuation

I think it says "7 miles from Nowhere Iowa"

https://www.manchester-ia.org/