Ordering Hats "Via Steamer"

I'm sure most of us have seen 19th century heavily docketed US
covers addressed to the Meussdorffer Brothers Hatters in San Francisco. My first aquaintence with their style of docketing came on my first cover from Punta Arenas, where it helped me discover that Mrs McDaniels needed a new hat in Jan of 1871. Even at that time people were begaining to refer to the town as Point Arenas, a combination of both the older and newer town names, as we cas see in the docketing.





While browsing ebay's Postal History section one day I came across a cover addressed to the San Francisco hatters from New York. I noticed that under all of the docketing that the cover was directed Via Steamer. I added the cover to my watch list and as the end of the auction neared there were still no bids, so I got the cover for openers.

I was still puzzling over why a New York Hat manufacturer would be buying hats from San Francisco when the cover arrived. Turning the cover sideways allowed me to see that the order was for 5 CASES of hats for a total of $1664.00! A lot of money in 1868, that would be $29163.40 today.

I haven't even a glimmer of understanding what docteting is. Pretending to be a doctor?

It is keeping records, usually date-sorted, of open or completed orders or tasks. In this case, it appears that the SF company would receive an order by letter, then turn the cover sideways and make administrative notes about the contents of the order. It forms a shorthand record of what needs to be done so that future clerks don't have to re-read every letter. So notated, the envelopes probably were stored vertically in a box on the clerk's desk so they could rapidly flip through and read the notes upright. Or filed in a drawer and thus serve as a historic record of what the buyer had ordered over time. And this docketing use in part explains why the covers survived; they were business order records.