What Story Is This Trying To Tell. If Any?

Any Thoughts?

It is a little bit odd that the strokes of the manuscript cancel are different for each stamp. No pattern that I can see. 2 vertical, 3 vertical, then 2 vertical...horizontally 2, 1, and 1.

Can't make out the notation. 2nd attempt at delivery on Nov. 6?

The scribbling at the upper right is the postmark, which I interpret as Fillmore, Indiana or Missouri.
Osborn, MO is way too small to have had city delivery that early.

Helbock listed Fillmore Ind. as 1861 to date.

According to its 1866 regulations, the Post Office Department furnished cancelers to all the larger post offices: Class I (annual revenue exceeding $1,000) received steel duplex devices, Class II (annual revenue between $500 and $1,000) received iron postmarks, and Class III (annual revenue between $100 and $500) received wooden postmarks. The postmasters at the small fourth class post offices were left to their own devices, so to speak, and had to purchase their date stamps and cancelers out of pocket.
On June 1 1869, there were 27, 106 post offices in U.S. About 95% of those were 4th class offices.

In Helbock's scarcity rating, this townmark will be a 0. Which implies that it is an easy townmark to find.
Yet this cover has a manuscript town cancel and the apparently bored postmaster pen canceled the strip of what looks like Scott 156 at least 12 years after the office opened.
That pen tells us Fillmore was a small, 4th class post office. Finding another could take years.

I don't think it's a Town cancel

It is a town cancel - that's part of the canceling requirements - a town name, etc.

From Bottom Up: Date / Gnor (Governor) / Jn. M....
What struck me first are the stamp cancels, I don't think those are random markings. I'm guessing the stamp is #206?
There's a stamp show in Lexington today, I'll see if anyone there knows anything about it

Here's another cover using Ciphers as cancels:

Indeed the marks are not random, nor are they any secret code. They are following the regulations. Excerpted from the regulations section of the 1866 Postal Laws and Regulations volume:



And skipping forward a few pages:



And closer in date to the original cover in this thread, the canceling and postmarking regulations are quite similar in the 1879 PL&R volume:




Thus the original cover in this thread is a very normal example of canceling and postmarking in this era in a small office without a cancel device. The story is "following the regulations in small-town America".

Yes, that's The Letter of the Law
and we know that they used Letters, Numbers, anything at all
Here is about as Small Town as you can get, and it's a Number! Does anyone know why "64" was used?
As for following TLOTL: there are ways to do things, and ways to do things (wink)

"Thus the original cover in this thread is a very normal example of canceling and postmarking in this era in a small office without a cancel device. The story is "following the regulations in small-town America"."

I would agree with this assessment, but I cannot get an "I" out of what is a "G"

It looks like the "I" and the "n" are two different pen strokes...being so close together that they have the appearance of a script capital "G".

If that is a 64, than likely it represents the year date.

Take a look at Find-A-Grave and you will find a Benjamine M. "Ben" Nicholson (1854-1886) in Fillmore Cemetery in Fillmore, Putnam County, Indiana.

well, there ya go! Thank You!