Turtle Lake Oval Postmark

Hi! I'm Italian, I collect postal history of cities with turtle in their name.
I have acquired on ebay this nice cover, with oval postmark never see before.
You can help me to identify the state of this postmark?
I know 8 Turtle Lake post offices...



thank you
Miriam, Italy

I do not know where you are getting your "list" of post offices, but I would recommend this page on Jim Forte's site:
https://www.postalhistory.com/Post_...es/index.htm

Clicking on the link at the bottom, gets you to a search page. Entering only "turtle" into the "string search" version of the search gets a list with dates. Specifically, the 3 cent rate went to 2 cents on October 1, 1883. Only Minnesota and Wisconsin had a Turtle Lake before 1883.

I know the site, I have been collecting this theme for 25 years, and I have created my own list with all the cities in the world that are called turtle, in any language!
For the American ones, I used the site you recommended to me.

but, which of these offices used the oval postmark?


THANK YOU!!!

I wait for the original to arrive mje for study it well with lens, from the few spots I see at the bottom of the oval, I thiunk is it the word Minnesota...

It's Wisconsin. The marking is listed and illustrated in the Doane-Thompson "Catalog of U.S. County and Postmaster Postmarks" edited by Gilman. The text at bottom is "Barron Co., Wis."

The reason why I asked the source of your list is that Turtle Lake, Louisiana apparently never had a post office, but was only a place name, or a secondary name.

The oval device is not a government-issued type. Smaller offices had to obtain their own devices in this era, which this is. I am unable to narrow it down between Minnesota or Wisconsin, but I see paperhistory has solved that problem as we were simultaneously typing!

Add: here is the tracing from Billig's Handbook, vol X, page 178:

I love you guys!!!