Question About French, Lemon Florence Postmark 1910 .

Does anyone know the postmark: French, Lemon & C in Florence, and the meaning of the number inside (19961)?

First I thought it was a senders company postmark, but the return address is in Bellingham Wash.

Maybe some sort of forward agent?

I found this using Google.



Hope it helps.

Robert

As French, Lemon & Co were in the forwarding business, the internal numbers may have been Miss Pratt's account number. Purely a guess. Another nice cover!

Thanks Trainwreck, I wasn't able to find anything on the web.
I just kept finding receips for french Lemon tarts.
So if I am right, it's a company that wanted to compete against american express, and forwarding letters was part of his business. Guess didn't work well, since I never heard about it.
And yes littleriverphil, I believe that the number in the middle may be the number of letters forwarded.

PS:Wonder why this subject was removed from US postal history forum, and placed in the World covers, .

Give me a tarte au citron over covers any day!

Possibly because it was sent to Florence Italy. Universal Postal Union foreign rate was 5 cents at that time, that other cent may have been French, Lemon & Co's fee.

5 cent foreign letter rate overpaid by a cent, which the USPOD was happy to keep. How the forwarder got paid is entirely a private matter between the forwarder and the recipient.