#9 - Help Understanding Mobile, AL Cancels

A friend of mine who posts on this site saw your question about Mobile cancels and passed it on to me. He suggested I join and reply, so here I am. I've been collecting Mobile for a long time and have catalogued over 350 dated examples before 1860, over 200 of which I own. The largest percentage are stampless.

You have received some great replies already so I don't know what I can add at this point, but I'll try.

A brief History of the Mobile CDS
There are at least 11 different Mobile CDS before 1860. The first were used during the late territorial period and into the early statehood period, about 1827, and were black. After that, red and blue began to also be used. It is believed that blue designated unpaid and red designated prepaid postage. As noted by others here, Mobile apparently did not like to have to apply the bar grid cancel to a stamped letter. They reverted back to using their CDS as town cancel and killer about the time the 1851 series of stamps came out.
They also stopped using blue ink and began using black ink for their CDS on domestic mail, with red being used occasionally for stampless and for most foreign mail. The latest use of red on domestic mail I have seen is 9/27/1852, on a stampless. After that, all Mobile cancels I've seen are black for domestic (and some foreign mail) and red for foreign mail.

The predominant Mobile CDS used on stamps between 1851 and 1858 are:

Prior to 1854;31mm;Ala.below


1854-1858;31mm;ALA.(small LA)below;12/16/1855


1856-1857;31mm;ALA.(small LA) after Mobile;12/28/1856


1850-1853, A very similar cancel;33mm; Ala. after Mobile and with a rate numeral below the date
11/6/1853


From the photos in your post, I'd say the first and third ones are foreign usages but without seeing a rate number or the "Ala." "ALA.", what year range is guess work. But, because the letters of MOBILE are relatively close together, they look to me like the smaller 1856-1857 cancels.

I hope this adds some information for you. Mobile is great topic, lots of color and variety in the cancels and lots of good stories.

Welcome and thank you for your input.
Don

Txstamp

Mobile was dealing with a large volume of mail because of all the mail being sent there dailey by steamer from New Orleans. They had a designated wharf dock for the New Orleans mail boat.

Mail to and from New Orleans via the great eastern mail route was somewhat unreliable. The New Orleans newspaper, The Daily Picayune regularly had editorials about this. As a result, many in New Orleans put their mail for the eastern cities on the steamer to Mobile because it was believed that it get into the great eastern mail route sooner and was more reliable.

Frequently the Mobile post office would only have 15 to 30 minutes to process the New Orleans way mail before the mandated time to close the mails. In March of 1852 Mobile Postmaster Beers sent New Orleans Postmaster Musson a letter telling him that with the new mail closing schedule he would only have 15 minutes to process the 300 to 400 pieces, and increasing, of New Orlean mail arriving by steamer each day and that unless the boats are early, the mail will have to be held over till the next day.

A respectable percentage of the Mobile cancelled mail I have and have seen was actually written in New Orleans.

The additional 1 cent postage for the way mail is probably also why there are a lot of the 1851 series 1 cents stamps cancelled Mobile. That and the large volume of current market prices circulars mailed out.

Hopefully this is not too far off topic.

Piratebones - Thanks so much for all of the additional information.

piratebones - Welcome!

Your posts are very informative. Thanks a lot.

I am familiar with the terrific Chronicle article on (mistakenly prepaid) Way mail at New Orleans & Mobile, which also covered the issue of New Orleans to Mobile Way mail somewhat.

I didn't mention that fact about both of the 1847 covers that I posted, but, both are certainly Way letters at Mobile - from NO.

The 10-cent cover is marked Way, and is datelined New Orleans. It is clearly a Way letter, and was sent as you state.

The 5-cent cover has no contents, but the Dayton correspondence with this handwriting, originated in New Orleans. So I'm sure the 5c cover falls in the category of being an "un-marked" Way letter.

Your post, which adds this useful information:




Certainly explains why most Mobile Way letters from New Orleans are unmarked.

I was actually pretty thrilled to get the 10c cover which is actually marked, since that seems harder to find.
The 10c cover actually has even more going for it than immediately meets the eye, but I'll stop here for now.

txstamp --- I was reviewing some images that I had posted earlier, and I ran across this thread. I may have given you the impression that I owned the stamps whose images I posted. With the exception of the 3rd stamp (the one with a partial imprint), they sit in someone else's lucky collection, and I just pulled the images from the PSE database as good examples of Mobile cancels. At the time I first posted, I didn't own the 3rd stamp either, but after admiring it for a few months, I did finally purchase it from Alan Cohen. I thought it was a little pricey at the time, and I procrastinated so long that I'm thankful now that it didn't get away from me.
Since then, I purchased one more Mobile cancel, although the PF cert mistakenly calls it a, red "NEW ORLEANS" town cancel.

That's funny, they saw the "LEA" without noticing that there was a large space between the LE and the A. Good catch.

What a great thread that I can't believe I missed all this time. Some lovely examples shown.

Here is a recently acquired pair of Type II's.

stallzer - very pretty 1c A relief pair. It's probably worth trying to plate, but I just dont have the energy to plate A reliefs right now.

Here's a 12-cent imperforate (#17) with two strikes of the paint-red Mobile cancel, and a black cancel as well. Despite all the cancels, Washington's face shows through well.

Both Classic Coins and stalizer - Those are striking examples of the paint red Mobile cancel. I think they appeal to almost everyone. Thanks for posting them.

Mobile, AL - 1c, Scott #6, 100R4, Ty Ia



I posted a close-up of the stamp here:
https://goscf.com/t/59061&whichpage=17#709730

Bumping this with another Mobile cover. Mobile generated some great covers.

This balloon style Mobile cancel, I don't think has yet been posted in this thread.
This one may be limited to foreign mail, since this is a cover from Mobile to Calcutta, India, on May 11, 1858.



This cover is franked with: 10c Green Imperforate, Ty II/III (14,15) - Block of 6, Positions 21-22/31-32/41-42L1, Top and Bottom stamps Ty III, middle stamps Ty II.

Position 31L1 is the strongest double transfer on Plate 1.

Additionally there is a single Ty III (33), perforated for a total of a 70c franking.

This cover was sent at the 1/4oz rate British Mail via Marseilles which was 39c. So it was overpaid by 31 cents.

There are very very few Imperforate 1851-57 issue stamps known used on cover to India. So far, I've only found 4 covers that actually made it to India (three are ex-Mayer with 5c #12s) and single 3c #11 whose cover was marked "not paid" and returned, I think from Britain.

Been a while since I stopped by here and I see txstamp posted an awesome Mobile cover. That 1858 cancel is one of Mobile's least seen. They seem to have only used it for a short time before switching to the year under date version in late 1858. I have one (only one) and it's on an 1858 domestic cover.

July 1, 1858



Year under date October 15, 1858


Great find

pirate - thanks for the input. Very interesting.