Unusual Revenue Used Illegally As Postage Cover

Not entirely sure what the story is here.

Horizontal pair of R196 or R207 used illegally for postage on a December 1914 cover. The cover appears to have originated in McKinney, Texas, althrough there is no return address, addressed to recipient in Mississippi.

I'm not sure how it routed through Mexico though. It was caught by the Mexican (postal?) authorities. The violet handstamp reads:




Which per Google translates to:




I don't know that "Lags" is a proper contextual translation of Rezagos.

The department name in the handstamp matches that of the black and white seal affixed (and unfortunately cut through when the envelope was opened), which overlays the McKinney handstamps, so clearly it occurred after the letter left McKinney.

McKinney is supposedly north of Dallas, so why would it have routed through Mexico to get to Mississippi?

Any thoughts?

Dan,

"Departmento de Rezagos" = Department of Dead Letters.

Jim

Thanks Jim. That makes sense... now how did it end up there?

A century later and the address is no easier to read that it was at the time.

Someone must have said (at the time), "meh", and it went to the dead letter office.

The biggest issue is, do you put this cover in the "revenues used as postage" collection, or the "foreign official seals collection"?

Or, just get another one and put one of each in each collection?



Jim

No, I get it... but a dead letter office in Mexico?

P.S. The where to put it question isn't as big an issue for me as it would be for you.

True, true.

Lol

Jim

Ok, NOW it looks like Miss., but back then, and after a few beers, maybe it was interpreted as "Mex."

Jim

I thought the address might have been read quickly and the letter was sent to Stewart Texas by mistake, but that is near the Louisiana border, not Mexico. Strange.

I agree with James. I think Miss was read as Mex. If you squint and don't try really hard, it could be Mex.

According to Wikipedia, the population of Steward Miss in 1904 was 200, and it remains unincorporated today. I wonder if the lower right manuscript marking refers to rural route no. 1. Googling for rural postal routes mississippi provided a PDF from USPS that did not list Stewart, but did list a few nearby (within 20 miles) towns that did have rural delivery, at least up to 1904 when this listing ended.

So, perhaps it was mean to go to this tiny community that may not have been on too many maps, but was sent to Mexico instead and without a way to contact the sender, it ended up in the DLO there. How it came into your hands is a mystery itself!
John Bowman

I misspelled "Stewart" above.

Dead letter items wind up in collector's hands; I have a few myself.

This cover was dated 1914, in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. I would agree with the early speculations that the US clerk misread the "Miss" as "Mex" and sent it to Mexico City. Things were quite chaotic during this time, and the clerk probably figured it was easier to send it to the Dead Letter Office than to try and figure out where to send it back to the US.

There was apparently a great deal of "dead letter" mail during this period, generally due to different parts of the country being occupied by rebel forces. There was a story in an issue of Mexicana, the journal of MEPSI, about an incident were something like 150,000 covers from the Dead Letter Office in Mexico City were taken to the dump, where they were quickly discovered by collectors and salvaged.

Mike