1877 NYC Cover With "C" And "F" Backstamps

Here's another curiosity purloined while sifting through the bargain boxes. It has a nice octagonal cancellation on the back, but also a couple interesting "letter" markings. What were the purpose of these?

Anybody?

I'm not the expert on this but those must be sub- station markings -
Essentially branches of the NY post office that this letter passed through.

NYC early on circa 1857 had at least 6 sub-stations called: A B C D E & F.

They're transit marks identifying Manhattan post office stations through which the cover passed en route to its destination in present Chelsea. The address indicates General Theological Seminary at 20th St & Ninth Avenue; it's still there. To get there from Troy up the Hudson it had to transit several offices within Manhattan. It appears that the cover was moved from station F to C (or reverse) within the 10AM hour on 8 February. Dispatch occurred on 7 February so there was 1-day delivery from upstate NY to lower Manhattan at the time.

The lettered station IDs have been assigned to different locations over the years. This 1863 article identifies one set of designations.

http://www.nytimes.com/1863/09/30/n...-office.html

Also, technically the octagonal mark is a receiving or arrival back stamp, not a cancellation.

Chris

Good info -- thank you!

Strictly speaking, the NY City postal facilities identified as A, B, C, D, E, and F were NOT sub-stations, but were what has today is designated administratively as a classified station or branch.

At different times in the 19th century, these subordinate offices were identified as either stations or branches, but by 1908 the term station was used for those subordinate offices within the delivery area of the main post office, and Branches were designated as those facilities outside the delivery area. Unfortunately, the related postmarks often continued to be used with a "station" designation even when they were administratively a branch. Both stations and branches were operated by USPOD employees.

The term "sub-station" had a very specific meaning as well. A sub-station was a contract postal facility which which was located within a commercial/neighborhood business, and carried out some subset of the normal post office functions. These sub-stations were operated by employees of the business in which they were located, and NOT USPOD employees. Most of these sub-stations were designated by a number, i.e., "Sub-station No 10 (I think New York City had, at the peak, over 200 different ones). The sub-station designation was only used between 1890 and 1902, when the Post Office Department re-designated them to be known as simply stations, but retained the numeric designation, which in turn distinguished these from the regular or classified stations which were either named or had the letter designations.

Today, these types of states are typically identified as a CPU or Contract Postal Unit.

The latest issue of the APS American Philatelist for November 2016 has an article on the history of Sub-stations.