1860 Cover To Kingsville

Don't usually collect postal history, but made an exception for this one, as it went through a tiny village (Morpeth) just a few km down the road from where I live. As well as having the attractive strip of 5 of the one-cent (#14).

Just received it, and upon review it looks like it had an interesting travel to its destination - hopefully those more knowledgeable in early Canada postal history can correct my suppositions if incorrect.

Left Montreal on Dec 5 PM, 1860 addressed to A M McDonald of Kingsville, Canada West/Upper Canada (Ontario now). Kingsville is down on Lake Erie and is the southernmost town in the country.

Made it to Chatham (over 800 km away!) by Dec 7. I'm assuming by train, but not 100% sure if the Grand Trunk Railway had reached Chatham at that date, or only to London U.C.

Got mistakenly sent to Morpeth to the southeast (35 km) and reached there later the same day. It should gone instead 75 km to the southwest to get to Kingsville.

There was identified as being in the wrong place - by the Postmaster I presume - an Andrew Hayward according to archives - who wrote "Missent to Morpeth" on the front.

Then sent to Rondeau a few kilometres to the south on Lake Erie so it could reach Kingsville by lake. That would have been the only reason to send it to Rondeau as Morpeth was on the main southern "road" (although given its condition, road is perhaps stretching it) at the time. Rondeau is now a provincial park/cottage community but at the time was a fishing village with a PO.

Received at Rondeau at Dec 8. There received a transit stamp, and then made it to Kingsville, I'm guessing by boat. Marine travel along the north shore of Lake Erie in that area was frequent, although early December would have been a dangerous time to be out on the lake. Unfortunately cannot read the date on the Kingsville receiving cancel.

All seems incredibly fast delivery, and also we can see that Canada Post made delivery mistakes even back then :). Although this one was corrected right away by Mr. Hayward!

A beautiful cover gmot with an interesting story, thank you for sharing

I've no knowledge of the development of Canadian railways but surely this information is somewhere on the interwebs?

Wonderful story and cover gmot

Thanks for sharing.

Dianne

Thanks! Yes, the railway thing was bugging me. So yes, found that there was a Great Western Railway line from London-Chatham-Windsor in 1854 (later amalgamated with Grand Trunk). So the mail service would likely have switched train lines at London UC to make it to Chatham.

One of the best covers I have seen in a long time..I am jealous.

Robert

Very nice cover. Thanks for posting.

Great story.

Hi,

Very nice!!!

Hornet