Scott 26 Type III On Cover, Civil War Era?

Just purchased a vert pair of Sc # 26 Type III on cover.
New Bern, NC to Raleigh, NC
There is a blue cancel, but without year stamp. Is there a way to tell the year mailed?
New Bern, NC was occupied by the Union 1862-1865





Also, Washingtons chin, nose and lips appear different on each stamp. The top stamp they appear more pointed with less definition. Is this a normal thing?

This cover can also predate the war as Scott 26 was issued in 1857 and if I recall right, this stamp was made invalid for postage in 1861 thus your cover dates from late 1857 to April 1861.

Nice! Thank you. But still no way to pin point the cancellation year?

There probably is a catalog or other resource for the postmarks, but you'll probably just get a date range that might include a number of years.

North Carolina Postal History Society - http://www.ncpostalhistory.com/wp-c...20151117.pdf - shows that marking was used in blue between 13 October 1850 and 10 May 1862. Your cover was most likely used 1861 or earlier as Union forces occupied New Bern prior to May 1862 and your cover could not be mailed to Raleigh at that time. Additionally starting June of 1861 CSA postage would have been required.

Sweet! Thanks ya'll!

The frustrating thing to me about covers from the 1800s is that a great many of them do not have the year in their postmarks making it possible to only narrow down the general range of years that a particular style of postmark and/or specific stamp was issued. And too often the ones that did have year slugs in the cancels were applied haphazardly by postal workers making the year difficult to read if not the entire postmark being difficult to read. To get exact years one needs to get lucky in finding the original letter inside with a date handwritten on it or some kind of docking marking that the recipient may have applied and neither of these are common. It is good that the sleuthing by the great folks on this forum could help you to the point that it is not war-time but pre-war and can narrow it down to just the four years before the war started. Still, that is a fairly wide time frame.