Old Album Inspires Hunt For Owner

I acquired this album in a junk box at a recent auction.

Sadly it has been mostly gutted, but I was intrigued to see that it had belonged to someone who'd been at Eton in the early 1880s -- I figured there was a good chance he'd gone on to become a VIP, so I did a bit of sleuthing -- I had his name, H Thackeray (image 3), what looked like his father's name and job -- a Reverend J Thackeray (postcard in image 4). What could I get from this?

A quick bit of googling and I found he went on to become a noted Biblical scholar.








Here's the link that confirms who he and his father were -- his father a cousin of the famous Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair.

Forgot to add the link:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/239525...tab_contents

And here is his wiki entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry...hn_Thackeray

Fascinating. I really enjoyed your write-up. It looks like the album pages are merely columns and rows of empty boxes with a space above where the owner writes in the country name.

Jack Kelley

I really enjoy reading threads like this as it helps to bring the past back to life. I wonder, does he have any descendants who might like to have the album (that is, if you're willing to part with it)?

Very interesting to see this person thru the stamp collection .

Interesting. That raises the question in my mind - are the stamps hinged, or glued down?

I realize I don't know when hinges first appeared on the philatelic scene.

Responses to the various responses:

Jkelley -- I think the very oldest stamp albums were all like this. Printed country pages came later.

Coastwatcher -- more likely a descendant that dumped it in the first place.

txstamp -- the stamps are glued down, but I should think they would float off when soaked.

It looks like a previous owner hacked it up to remove some of the stamps -- there are about a dozen pages left. No really valuable stamps, but quite a few decent ones.
Sadly, most of the higher cat. value stamps are damaged.

The oldest stamp albums did just have pages or spaces dedicated to stamps of a particular issuer, and beginner stamp albums were often like that even into the mid-20th century.

Scott Internationals (the old-school brown kind) and Yvert albums of this vintage (1880s) had illustrated spaces intended for specific stamps, they were among the first to do so.

The oldest album I have is from the 1930s, a hardbound Scott International Junior I picked up a few months ago.

Google Books has a few older albums available. There is a combination catalog/album from 1876, The Lincoln Stamp Album and Catalogue that has just grids on the album pages.

Dale

The antiques have charm, but I like the albums of today better.

Jack Kelley