February 29 - Leap Day - Leap Year Cancels

Here is a sampling of February 29 postmarks from 1804 to 2012 (except for 1816 and 1820). What ones do you have? There is a proliferation of philatelic leap year covers beginning by 1924.


1804 – Lancaster, Pennsylvania stampless folded letter rated at 10 cents under the rate schedule of 1799 for 40 to 90 miles addressed to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.



1808 – Rutland, Vermont sfl rated at 12 ½ cents (90-150 miles) addressed to Lanesborough, Connecticut.



1812 – Newburgh, New York sfl rated at 17 cents and prepaid (150-300 miles) addressed to Philadelphia.



1824 (a Sunday) – Hagerstown, Maryland sfl rated at 10 cents (30-80 miles) addressed to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.



1828 – Harrisburg, Pennsylvania sfl rated at 10 cents (30-80 miles) addressed to Reading, Pennsylvania.



1832 – Albany, New York sfl rated at 10 cents (30-80 miles) addressed to Cooperstown, New York.



1836 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sfl rated at 56 ¼ and generously prepaid (3x the 18 ¾ rate for 150-400 miles) addressed to Boston, Massachusetts.



1840 – Taunton, Massachusetts sfl rated at 25 cents (over 400 miles) addressed to Savannah, Georgia.



1844 – Trenton New Jersey sfl rated at 18 ¾ cents prepaid (150-400 miles) addressed to Schenectady, New York.



1848 – Cambridge, Massachusetts sfl rated at 5 cents (under 300 miles) with a Roman numeral V, addressed to East Hebron, Maine.



1852 (a Sunday) – Union, Virginia manuscript postmark.



1856 – New Florence, Pennsylvania handstamp on an embossed ladies cover.



1860 – Cleveland, Ohio year-dated CDS on an underpaid 2x-rate cover.



1864 – Augusta, Maine CDS on cover from the Maine House of Representatives.



1868 – Boston, Massachusetts handstamp on a cover sent by J. A. Emmons & Co.



1872 – Utica, New York handstamp cancel.



1876 – Boston, Massachusetts with a Leavitt machine cancel.



1880 (a Sunday) – Hamilton, Montana Territory manuscript cancel addressed to Bozeman.



1884 – Virginia City, Montana Territory handstamp with fancy star killer.



1888 – Greensburg, Ohio county CDS with a circle of four hearts to cancel the stamp.



1892 – Englewood, Illinois unusual CDS noting physician and postmaster J(oseph) Hall as a "Dr."



1896 – Pensacola, Florida registered postmark on letter to Germany.



1900 – Not a leap year.


1904 – Walkerton, Indiana Rural Free Delivery handstamp.



1908 – Chicago, Illinois Time Marking Company machine cancel with unusual rectangular dial.



1912 – New York, New York, Times Square Station steel duplex handstamp with redundant information in the CDS and the killer. And a nice clock marking for a receiving mark at the brewery.

1916 – Los Angeles, California, Station C., Panama California International Exposition advertising machine cancel.



1920 (a Sunday, and by far the toughest year in the 20th century to find) – El Paso & Los Angeles R.P.O.



1924 – Lake Forest, Illinois postmarks on a mourning cover.



1928 – Santa Barbara, California a very pretty Coca Cola advertising cover.



1932 – Buffalo, New York postmark on a registered return receipt card.



1936 – Washington, DC. free frank for Congressman Allen Treadway of Massachusetts.



1940 – West Palm Beach, Florida souvenir envelope from the Philatelic Truck.



1944 – Camp Cooke, California. Soldier's mail could be sent free, but special services such as special delivery had to be paid.



1948 (a Sunday) – Oakland, California revalued airmail envelope sent to Honolulu, Hawaii.



1952 – Seattle, Washington machine cancel on revalued postal card.



1956 – Washington, DC envelope from the White House used with the White House stamp.



1960 – Anderson Indiana machine cancel on Business Reply Mail charged 4 cents for postage and 2 cents for the BRM fee.



1964 – Glennallen, Alaska Universal Model K machine cancel on airmail cover to New York.



1968 – Cincinnati, Ohio meter on a utility bill mailing.



1972 – Ingalls, Indiana International Model HD-2 machine cancel.



1976 (a Sunday) – U.S. Postal Service 600 sectional center (Chicago, Illinois area) machine cancel on letter from Winnetka, Illinois. A window envelope uprated with the Francis Parkman coil.



1980 – Sykesville, Maryland 4-bar handstamp cancel on cover labeled as second class mailing, although likely this is a standard 2-ounce first class piece (15+13).



1984 – Patricksburg, Indiana 4-bar handstamp cancel on a commercial use of a commemorative stamp.



1988 – Columbia GMF, Missouri flats machine cancel on portion of a large cover with solo use of the Grenville Clark stamp on a 2-ounce letter (22+17).



1992 – Buffalo, New York with unusual "Say no to drugs" slogan within the cancel dial on an oversized card requiring the 29 cent letter rate.



1996 – Sagamore, Pennsylvania unusual 4-bar handstamp wording with "U.S. Postal Service" at the bottom.



2000 – Wilmington, Delaware standard machine cancel from a large office.



2004 (a Sunday) – Charlottesville, Virginia pictorial cancel on philatelic cover noting the 22904 zip code matching the date.



2008 – Bath, Indiana unusual 4-bar handstamp cancel with bi-colored inking.



2012 – Terre Haute, Indiana slogan spray cancel on commercial mailing.

Well-done, John Becker!

Beautiful!

Very impressive sampling!
Many aspects of philately all in one grouping.

Those are beautiful covers! Thanks so much for sharing them. You must have been searching for these for a very long time - I see one every once in a while, but to put together a collection as complete and impressive as yours must have been a labor of many years of searching.

There is another collection of leap year covers in a long illustrated article in this month's American Philatelist Journal written up by Alex Haimann. The oldest one he shows is a stampless folded letter from February 29, 1764 going from Boston to New York.

WoW! You've obviously made these your mission. Well done indeed!

Thanks for all the comments. Yes, Alex has written several articles as have Richard B. Graham and Rob Haeseler over the past 2 decades. The above postings are a quick one-a-year sampling from a 6-frame exhibit which has not been shown since 2008. I selected these to show a wide variety of postal history beyond the theme of having a date in common.

John,
Great selection of leap year cancels! Here is one of my favorites.

Wow! You don't see [ Feb 30 ] postmarks every day!

Those are fantastic. Yea, love the Feb 30th cancel. Though Feb 1912 didn't actually have a '30th'. Nor any Gregorian based calendar.

Would it be a 'joke' or satirical cancel? Is there such a thing?

The Post Office takes accurate dates quite seriously, so this is no doubt a careless clerk just bumping up the day by 1 and not thinking about it being February - leap year or not. Nothing satirical about it. It is also challenging to find other impossible dates such as June 31 and Nov 31.

Since we have gone down the tangent of non-existent dates, here are some February 29's from non-leap years:

1865 from Provincetown, Massachusetts
1907 Fulton, Missouri (probably 1908)
1910 Cooper, West Virginia.
1921 Indianapolis, Indiana
2011 USS Ronald Reagan





Of even later - February 31 from Scandanavia, Wisconsin. The message is dated Feb 24, so not a transposition of 13, although still apparently held a week before mailing.


And for non-February dates, here is June 31 from Champaign, Illinois:


And a November 31 from Terre Haute, Indiana, backstamped December 16 in England, so also unlikely to be 13 transposed:


And finally, July 35, 1910 from both Elkhart, and Richmond, Indiana. In this case, the numbers are on a wheel, so likely the previous day was July 24 and when the clerk rolled the 4 forward to a 5, the tens-digit also rolled forward from a 2 to an impossible 3.

Madagascar, Feb 29 1904:

At first I read it as dated 1901 (which would make it a non-existing date), but the stamp was only issued from 1903.

Port Royal, South Carolina
"v" instead of "y" in Royal
I like this cover because it was sent from Union held territory in South Carolina during the Civil War.

This is a fabulous group of covers. I had not seen this before.

Well done, Mr. Becker!