Cover With Contents 1898 / "Congress" Stationary?

That's pretty neat ILS. But considering the cheap paper the writer was using, I wonder if he had a little crimper to emboss his own stationary with. Either one given out to members of congress of something he had made on his own.
Something to research (as if we needed more!)

I have what appears to be the same stationary on an old letter that was in my great-grandparents possession. The letter is not dated, but I estimated the age was 100 years old based on the other paperwork that was with it. This stationary is indeed a mystery... I've written a congressional historian to find out.

See upper left corner of stationary/letter

my letter is also double-paged like that. I suspect it's the same stationary, same era, just need to figure out where it came from????!

Here is the same stamp I found...any help would be appreciated. This is most likely from Texas in the 1880's.
GO to my website to view:

I don't know if this answers the question or just adds more questions to the subject, but here's an excerpt from a book about "Congress" brand paper from around that period:

Here's another embossed Congress sheet:

This is an old post. I have since bought a few more covers with contents that have the same boss on the stationery. I think it was probably just a brand of paper bought at the local mercantile or somesuch. I've seen it used on both domestic letters and at least 1 contract.

edit:
I think wt1 may be on to something.

Hi,

I found a folded, double embossed, blank sheet of stationary with the Congress logo. Has anyone learned anything further about this paper?

Thanks

Kevin

I have at least 30 letters written by my great-grandmother in the years 1887-1889. She lived in Texas. All of them are written on the unlined, folded version of this stationery. Since no one in the family had anything to do with the government, I believe this was just a popular commercial stationery. The explanation above about the Congress Mill seems quite plausible. I do not believe that it should be described as cheap. All of the letters I have are in excellent condition. they are actually much better than some from the 20s & 30s.

Yes, it is just the brand of the paper. The United States Congress does not use paper embossed "CONGRESS" - they use paper marked either House of Representatives or Senate since that is how they are structured. Together they are called the US Congress but no one would use paper marked that way since the differentiation between the House and the Senate is so critical to everyone there.