1864 York, PA Fancy Cover

Several years ago I pulled away from majoring on stamps and switched to specializing in York, PA cancels and also in fancy manuscript cancels or handwriting. This cover is my latest acquisition in York, PA covers.

Tioga county itself only has a population today of 3000 let alone stoney forks. I can't imagin there was much mail coming out of stoney forks in the 1860s, lovely cover.

I'm from Pennsylvania and never heard that the population was that low. Nice bit of trivia.

What a wonderful cover - thank you for posting.

It appears that the current population of Tioga PA county is about 41,000.



http://www.google.com/publicdata/ex...&hl=en&dl=en


There is a Putman family listed in the 1850 census for Tioga PA county but I did not see a Putnam


http://www.joycetice.com/censust/1860t222.htm

Don

"Putnam" sounds like the more obvious English surname. Census-takers weren't always consistent with spelling - and nor were their victims!

The cover came with some personal details of the husband Andrew. The following is part of the description of the cover.

"Letter mailed at York, Pa. while outfit was enroute to Cold Harbor, Va. 

Andrew J. Putnam, husband of Cinderella was a Civil War, Pvt., Co A, 187th PA Infantry.  He enlisted 22 Mar 1864, mustered out with company, 3 Aug 1865.  The outfit engaged in the Siege of Petersburg and Second Battle of Weldon Railroad."

GeoffHa comment on spelling may be what happened, seeing that the Putman on the census records also has the given name. Andrew. Since Tioga County borders NY State it would have been a short move from NY where Andrew was born.

The errors in surnames also arise when the original handwritten census records are transcribed and typed etc - the transcriber misreads the census-taker's scrawl.

Spelling of family names can be an enigma. My grandfather spelled the family name differently than my great-grandfather. My great-uncle used still a third spelling. Makes for great fun when trying to track a family tree.

I've got my family tree traced back in the 1600s but am leery of it's accuracy. I think the greatest challenge in determining accurate family tress is the fact that once you go past the recent generation (and DNA testing) you cannot be 100% sure of anyone's biological parents. In years past it was not unheard of for illegitimate children to be raised by others as their own. And while it might be argued that fidelity was a bit more common for past generations we all recognize that 'life happens'. The truth is that almost all families have plenty of secrets lurking in the past.

Don

I have some nice York, PA covers myself. None of them are like this one. Great item!