Political Cover From Missouri

What do we think of this cover? Sent from the attorney general to his wife. I like the bears "cachet"? Not sure if that's the correct term for that. I believe Hockaday was Attorney general of Missouri around 1875!

John Hockaday, probably the same one who became Attorney General in 1875, negotiated an important mail contract in 1858. He agreed to provide weekly mail service between St Joseph, MO, and Salt Lake City. This, part of the so-called "Central Route" for Overland mail, was in direct competition with the well-known Butterfield Overland Mail in the south. This route, under Hockaday, didn't get as much traffic as hoped for, since the great southern route was the one primarily used.

Immediately prior to the above stint, Hockaday had partnered with others to provide contract mail service from Santa Fe to Independence, MO.

Hockaday is intimately tied to the history of the expansion of the US Mail service to the West.

That's pretty awesome history!

It is not a cachet. The correct philatelic term is "corner card". Corner cards are the wording, sometimes with a pictorial feature, in the upper left hand corner of a postal stationery envelope or of an envelope designed to have regular adhesive stamps affixed to it. It is a preprinted return address - sometimes very plain with just the person's, organization's, or business's name, street, town and state, but also they are often made with something more fanciful such as drawings or images that reflect something about the sender worked into it such as this example. There are collectors of corner cards with interesting images worked into them - typically ones with interesting themes of horses, boats, factories, railroads, etc. etc.

Thank you for the clarification, I didn't know what the name for it was and now I do!

A bit more information on this. In the title of your posting you describe this as a political cover which it is not. The corner card shows it is from someone in the Missouri Attorney General's office which makes it having to do with some legal matter. I do not know the date of this cover, but Edith Hockaday shows up in the 1880 census as being 34 years old at that date and living in Fulton, Missouri with her husband, Jonathan. She is listed as being a housewife while her husband is listed as being a lawyer. Apparently she had some kind of legal business with the State at this time.

I only meant political in the sense that it was sent from a political office I found this info on John A. Hockaday. Who was attorney general and married to Edith Hockaday.