Greenwood, Mississippi First Flight Cover 1934

I purchased the first flight cover pictured below earlier this month on a whim.



I'm curious why would Greenwood, Mississippi would have first flight air mail?

I know the stamp is C19. Any other info would be appreciated.

-MV

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Why not? I am not at home where I can check but will do so when I can unless someone else does so first.

To celebrate the first Air Mail flight from Greenwood Mississippi...

This is the early days of airmail, so there were many reasons.
- Novelty. We've got our own first flight now!
- Hope. If enough business can be generated from the airport, it becomes a business hub.
- Experimentation by USPOD. The Post Office was willing to send these first flights to many places, just to expand their terminals/lines of flight. Gives them more options.
- Anything to do with flying had captured everyone's imagination. It's not like today, where we don't even pay any mind to the contrails across the sky or the sound of a military jet flying by because we're so used to it. People in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s stopped what they were doing when a plane flew overhead and the kids would run to see where it was going or if it was going to land. Until the late 1920s and 1930s, airports as we think of today didn't exist. An empty field, a deserted road, all worked for the early planes.

Q/ Was this also the Last Flight Cover?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Your first flight cover is listed in the new 7th Edition, Volume 3 of the American Air Mail Catalog as AM8N12. The pilots were Benjamin Catlin and William Fry and the name of the airline that obtained this new contract was Pacific Seaboard Airlines. The following year, in 1935, this airline changed its odd name to Chicago and Southern Airlines in order to make it relevant to this route. This was part of the 1934 reorganization of the Post Office contracts for air mail routes where a part of the old Contract Air Mail Route 33 was combined with a part of the old Contract Air Mail Route 2 to form the new Air Mail Route 8 spanning the Chicago, Illinois to New Orleans, Louisiana line with stops at intervening cities. Greenwood, Mississippi was made into a new stop partway between Memphis, Tennessee and Jackson, Mississippi with daily flight service to provide airmail to people in that area of the state. I am not sure why Greenwood was selected over other towns that were partway between Memphis and Jackson but likely it was a combination of politics and a central location to collect airmail from the surrounding towns and railways. Keep in mind that most every town in the country wanted to become a stop on an airline route since that would help them grow and become more successful economically than towns that were bypassed. Often this worked for these towns, but there are many examples of small towns where it did not really help much if at all.

This particular cover is considered to be quite common in that there were 67 pounds of first flight covers flown on this northward heading flight out of Greenwood. Using a rule of thumb that one pound of first flight covers equals about 40 covers, that would mean there would have been over 2,600 such covers which is a large number for an other wise not overly exciting flight. The catalog value for one in excellent condition with clear readable cancels and nice bright green cachet is $3.00 though often one does not need to pay full catalog for fairly common covers such as this one. Still, it is a nice cover and could be the start of an interesting collection of this covers from this route.

Thanks. I really appreciate all the replies and information, it makes me like the cover even more now. I paid $1.50 total on ebay.

-MV

That is a fair price for both buyer and seller on this cover. I think the history of it is worth so much more, but commercial values rarely reflect how interesting something is from an historical persepctive.