Italy, Ireland, Switzerland (Pre-Philatelic Postal History)

I will need a good advice about this. I recently bought a large collection of the handwritten letters written in the years 1836/1837 to a bishop who has lived in Ireland (GB in that time), from his son (who later also become a bishop).

Letters are sent from different European countries, but, as much as I can see, mostly from Switzerland and Italian states of that time.

However, the current owner of the house where this family has lived 2 centuries ago, would like to have these letters for his historical archive, and he has recently asked me to re-sell the entire collection to him.

I am now curios, because I really cannot ask him a high price for his historical purposes... are any of these letters could have a significant postal history value??

I am going to let the collection for the low price, for the historical purposes, and I am fine with that. They are going on the right place, surel.

But, I really wouldn't like to let a letter or two which have a postal history value, especially because the buyer is not interested in that aspect of the letters, and probably will be also satisfied to get a xerox or a scan of the letter or two which I will have excluded.

Please, help... or just give me a good hint :) I am a total zero about the knowledge of this specific stuff... and any kind of advice will be more than useful.

All letters have a back sides, of course... a lot of them are Irish receiving postmarks, and I can scan them, too... if that could be useful. 14 scan (27 letters + photo) is just enough to overload this page :)

I can't give an opinion on the philatelic value of these letters, but as an archivist of nearly 40 years I can say that you might consider giving (or selling) the letters to an historical repository. They would almost certainly be better cared for in a library or archive than in a private home.

First, the link to the "house" the bishop lived in seems a little weak to me, unless the people who own the house or live in it are of his family. Some European families build an archive over time and if that is the case, it might be okay to sell them to the home owners.

However, those who are currently interested in the letters may not be able to pass that interest on to their next generation who in turn may neglect or sell the letters again.

It would be helpful to know something about the content of the letters, are they in English, was the bishop, and his son, Catholic or Protestant, since the bishop had a son, he surely was a Protestant. Where did the bishop live, looks like Ephrim? What was the family name?

Without having some answers to these questions it is difficult to make a knowledgeable suggestion as to their disposition. I, again, however, would suggest you consider placing the letters in an historical repository as opposed to a private household, unless the household is the same family as the bishop. How did the householders find out about the letters?

If you sell them to private buyers, I also would suggest not "giving" them away. Ask what they are worth on the market, at least what you paid, plus 20 percent. If you want to give them away, give them to an educational institution, archive, or library and take a tax write off. If the bishop was in the Church of England, the Church has an archive that also would be interested in the letters.

Don

You have two Great Britain entires with "FREE" franks or marks which are very worthwhile investigating. Members of Parliament and others such as Lords and Bishops etc who were entitled to sit in the House of Lords were given certain rights including free postage. Your entire is signed (bottom left) by the sender. Bishops and archbishops signed according to which location they were bishop. Yours is signed by the Bishop of London. Not sure about religious matters but I assume it is the Anglican version of a bishop and not the Catholic one.... seems it was Patrick Burke who was Bishop of Elphin at that time so the letter was addressed to a Catholic biship.



Cannot de-cypher the other one yet...

Thank you for the help, DonSellos and Scotzm.

Donsellos - a person who want to buy these letters from me is the owner of the house where the bishops have lived and died. He has a great work on the family history, and my opinion is that he is more interested in them than any other archive (yes, Europe is a different than USA in those matters).

Author of the most of the letters (I thought that he is the author of ALL letters, but, scotczm has pointed this one which seems to be written by someone else - I will check the contents of that 2 "free" examples later and will share what I will find out).

Scotzm -

This is the author of (almost) all letters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charle...%28bishop%29

and ALL letters are addressed to his father:

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

in that time the Lord Bishop of Elphin.

As you can seen, both of them have not been a Catholics, but the Anglican bishops, of the Church of Ireland.

You can see scans enlarged on this link:

http://s1221.photobucket.com/user/r...ry/letters18

You can enalrge every scan twice, if you click on the small "magnifier" icon on the lower right corner on the every photo, and you can do that again, on the already enlarged photo (a "magnifier" is located on the same place) to get a very high resolution original size.

Knowing nothing of religion these Bishops all seem the same to me

Anyway...the FREE franked entires were written by different people. One was the Bishop of London and the other could be the Bishop of Ripon (perhaps a clue is in the letter?). As I stated earlier they used their location as their signature. Both letters were posted in London in the second post of the day. The first seems to have been given a TWOPENNY POST marking as well as a FREE mark mark.

Thanks Scotzm. I just checked both letters, and they are both interior handwritten by the same person - young Charles Leslie (just as all other letters from the collection) who has been in that time just a 26 years old widower (yep, already) on his long travel.

Possibly he has been hosted by those Bishops, and they gave him their postage permissions to save his money. Sounds like a forbidden use, but, both of those letters are entirely handwritten by him, I am confident with that. At least, both of them starts with: My dearest father etc.

As an Historian and Archaeologist and keeper of the family archives, I have documents dating back more than 600 years, and in Europe my family has documents dating back even further;

My point is, if the person can prove to you that he is a legitimate descendant of the family, then perhaps sell the letters to him.

Unfortunately, many families, when a member passes on, dispose of important documents, without first reading them.

I would offer him scanned copies, not the originals.

You have obtained them legally, and they are part of your collection.
This may sound a bit harsh, but they are probably better looked after in your care than his.

If he really wants them, I am sure that he would be willing to pay a premium.

Remember, regret lasts a very, very long time.

Horamakhet