All Over Illustrated Court House Covers- Texas And Elsewhere

Over the years, I've accumulated examples of illustrated covers produced and sold by several printing houses in Texas (and elsewhere) directed towards county officials for use in their business. I've even observed one that had a Attorney's corner card, so apparently they were available to anyone who wished to make a purchase.

I've encountered examples for perhaps 25 of the 254 counties so far, but admit I've not made an exhaustive study or census.

I've encountered several basic designs, and here are two.

The first includes the official's name and title in an oval. This pone seems to appear most often in the post 1900 period. The latest use I have seen was 1932.



The second variety places the name and title in a rectangle on a slant. These appeared in the early 1890s, and are not seen often after 1900.



Both designs have the five pointed star and wreath, both elements of the State Seal of Texas, in the center of the design.

I've identified four different firms who produced these. Three were in Texas and were related over time. The fourth was in St. Louis, MO.

I recently showed these to a friend who collects Iowa postal history, and he observed that he had not seen anything like this used in Iowa. This got me wondering if other states has similar envelope designs used for county offices.

Texas uses a different design style for State Government offices, and these I do see form time to time for other states.

I invite anyone with similar covers from other states (or even Texas) to add them to the thread.

Mike

From the Indiana perspective, the general trend I see is they are mostly printed in-state. There are many covers which are not attributed to a printer. Here are a few...

Wm B. Burford, Litho., of Indianapolis is by far the most prolific printer of courthouse covers in Indiana (and bank checks), many of theirs show the various grandly built courthouse buildings from the 1880s.



Indianapolis Journal Company, Printers, of Indianapolis did this one of the now-razed courthouse there:


"Chandler, Indpls" did this one of the Crawford County courthouse in English:


There are also quite a few of this general fill-in-the-blank style, printer not attributed:


Sentinel Printing Co of Indianapolis for Knox County, in a generic style.


And many court houses still use them. These are from 1983-1996.


These may not have been as "all-over" as you were looking for, but that is what is commonly used here.

I have a collection of Ohio courthouse covers but I focus on courthouse illustrations, not on county offices. I have seen some general overall covers with corner cards in an oval wrapped by a belt that I suspect fit the model here - I'll have to see if I can dig one out.

John:
Thanks for posting the neat Indiana covers. Very creative folks there.

John & Matt:
I probably should have included the illustrated covers with court house buildings in my inquiry. I was mostly interested in learning just how other states and their county offices might have created and used envelopes with more than the simple, un-embellished corner card as advertising.

While I have not really attempted to collect them (yet), I have seen some covers from Texas county offices with only the standard, plain vanilla, corner-cards, as well as a few with more elaborate corner cards (fancy fonts) and no illustrations. I don't recall seeing any with images of the court house, but that probably only means I haven't looked long enough.

Mike