Show Us Your Oldest Stamped Or Stampless Cover.

My earliest BNA cover sent through the mails (I have earlier ship letters, but without any BNA postage). This is a May 16, 1796 letter from Halifax to New York, carried by the Falmouth Packet Princess Royal. The 4½d rate mark is the currency equivalent of the 4d sterling British packet charge.

Here is a cover dated March 19, 1847, with Canada Scott #A1 Quebec Crown Circle handstamp addressed to West Williamsburg, Canada West (later the province of Ontario) which became Morrisburg in 1851.

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Don't even think about it...haha




WOW SPQR

medoc...extremely nice cover..very nice


Robert

That's a really early cover for sure.

Lot's of nice covers on this thread.

(And watermark makes me wish I had a bigger stamp budget!)

Since no one mentioned it, the 1796 cover shown at the top of this page from SPQR is worthy of note because of the prominent person to whom it is addressed, namely, Nicholas Low, Esq. (1729-1826), of New York City:





Wiki just doesn't seem to do him justice:

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

wt1 - thanks for the background on Nicholas Low - I had not researched him.

This cover is even earlier - August 12, 1782, from British-occupied New York City to Cornwallis, Nova Scotia. I believe that it was carried in the military mails as a favor to the clergy. It is addressed to Rev. Jacob Bailey care of Rev. Joshua Wingate Weeks in Halifax. Both Bailey and Weeks were members of the "Tory Clergy" loyalists that fled the revolution.

Very, very impressive covers SPQR

And as always wt1, impressive information follow ups..

Robert

Here is a recently acquired cover dated August 25, 1846 (on back), from Quebec City to New York. What is interesting is that it has 2 Canada Scott #A1 Quebec Crown Circle handstamps, one for the 11 1/2 d rate to the Canada/US lines, and the other for the 10 cents US rate. Both rates are written in manuscript next to their respective handstamp. Those were the rates in effect when the cover was sent (see Robson Lowe, The Encyclopaedia of British Empire Postage Stamps, Volume V - North America, p.125). At that time, Canada was collecting the American postage for the US. The folded sheet used for the cover is thin watermarked paper that includes the year 1845 in the watermark.

Ok, I didn't show this one here because, at 1850, it's not my oldest. But now I just have to because this stamp less folded letter was ALSO sent to Mr D.S. Kennedy of New York!



Purchased at the recent CSDA (Canadian Stamp Dealers' Association) show in (well just outside of) Toronto, this cover was sent to Mr Kennedy, a prominent NY banker on behalf of a gentleman named T. R. Merritt.

Thomas Rodman Merritt was the son of William Hamilton Merritt, the man who founded the first Welland Canal in 1837, which bypassed the Niagara River and Falls and helped improve trade in the region. Merritt Jr continued in business with his father, and his home still stands on the banks of what was to be the second Welland Canal (there have been four) and today houses a the local art gallery, Rodman Hall.

I was born and raised in St Catharines, and my family were settlers in the area after the American Revolution (Loyalists we were), so this interest in early Niagara covers has been brewing for a while.

This letter was postmarked Dec 10 1850 in St. Catherines (I've noticed that early cancellations were misspelled with the 'er' rather than the 'ar' I was raised to use). It reached its destination in New York via Queenston (cancelled on the back in black on Dec 11), Lewiston NY, seen cancelled on the front in red, then on to the Big Apple (though I guess it wasn't called that at that time). It seems to be business correspondence, though for the amount of paper that is folded here, there is very little writing. Makes me wonder if some money wasn't included, though there is no indication that it was a money letter. The sender, whose name I can't make out, appears to be an agent for the Bank of Montreal (coincidently, my employer, at the moment!) Sums of money are discussed, but it's all a mystery to me at this point.
10d. postage was paid, but PAID has been crossed out, the 4 1/2p added. Postage rates during this period are also a mystery to me.

If the book you site is a good reference for postal rates at the time, it's one I will have to track down for my library!

jamesw - you have the postage backward. The sender paid 4½d currency [4d sterling] at St. Catherines for a distance up to 60 miles to the exchange office. At the corresponding US exchange office [Lewiston] the postmaster lined out the "PAID" marking and rated the letter 10¢ due for a distance over 300 miles from the exchange office to New York.
During this period, letters from BNA to the US had to be paid to the exchange office (often endorsed on the letter paid to the lines) and could optionally be paid to destination, but could not be sent entirely unpaid. Letters from the US to BNA could be sent entirely unpaid or could be paid to the lines, but could not be sent paid to the destination.

The reason for the asymmetry was that as Robson Lowe states "The Canadian post office acted as agent for the U.S. post office and received a discount of 20% on U.S. postage collected but the U.S. post office declined to act as agent for Canada." (p.107).

I have no idea of the date of this postmaster's letter, or even where its from, but it is stampless, unless the red hand stamped FREE would be concidered a stamp.

Don't know if I ever showed these. Not as old as some (1850s), but they have other things in their favor.

First - Pence period:


Then a bit later in the Cents period:

Thanks for the clarification, gents! Thats why I gotta get me a book!

I do wonder why it also appears to read 3, possibly 3 1/2 Paid in the upper left corner? It seems to be the handwriting of the sender - same as on the address.

This would have been internal mail (Upper Canada) for which a uniform rate of 3d currency per 1/2 oz irrespective of distance was in effect as of April 6, 1851 (Robson, p.106).