Reminding The Addressee To Use Stamps In The 1850-S

Inside the backflap of this cover (folded over) the sender wrote:
"dont forget to put a stamp on your letters".

This was inside the backflap, so it was not a postal marking, but, rather, a private message to the addressee by the sender. This could well have coincided with the mid-1850s when prepayment of mail became compulsory.

Odd. On my iPhone, the picture above is upside down, however, on two separate computers, including the one I uploaded it from, it is properly oriented.

txstamp,
This is a known issue with iPhones and Windows. iPhone can use the volume up button to take a picture. But when you use the volume up button the image will be displayed upside down on Windows machines.

Geeky stuff…
The iPhone adds EXIF tags info in the file format which contains the orientation info for the image. To speed up the processing, the iPhone does not try to change the orientation and instead simply saves it (so it can take the next image immediately). This is fine except this is not an industry standard and other software does not know about the orientation info in the EXIF tag.

The easiest solution is to simply snap picture with the volume buttons facing downward.
Don
APS #094826

Not mid 1850's. The blue Philly postmark means it was posted no later than 1853. Prepayment would not have been compulsory at that time but there was a 2c penalty for not prepaying. The rate would be 5c to the recipient.

Marysville, Cal took this idea a step further by reminding the post office that this letter was paid by stamps By putting the same in their 1857 CDS.

Don - thanks for the tip on pictures. I appreciate it.

Sinclair - agreed, I had a feeling it would be most likely circa the time you mention, and as you state, one still saves 2c out of it.

Marysville - I agree, those cancels are quite neat, and representative of proliferating the use of stamps as well.

So a little off topic, but I also have a "PAID" CDS, this one from Delavan, Wisconsin. However, this one is a much later use -- 1865 is penciled in and the stamp is also from that period. What would be the purpose of including PAID in the handstamp at this time?

The logical answer is that the canceling device had been used since before 1855 when stamps became mandatory. So they were using the device to mark covers before 1855, where senders paid the fee at the PO and didn't affix stamps, and just kept using the device because the town and date were accurate, even if the PAID portion was superfluous. The impression appears quite worn, which is consistent with this.

I checked the Stampless Cover Catalog last night, and Delavan, WI appears to have had a paid cancel dating back to the mid 1840s. I didn't see a listing for such a device that was newer than that.

The Delavan "Paid" marking from the 1840s is a separate rate marking applied adjacent to the CDS. The "3 Paid" handstamp shown above is consistent with the introduction of the 3 cent rate in 1851. The device is listed in the Wisconsin statehood period markings section of the ASCC, known used in 1854.

John - thank you for correcting me. You are of course, correct. I was obviously in the wrong section of the book, I see that now, going back and re-checking. Regardless, the 3-cent rate was a dead give-away of it being post-1851 as you state.