Questions On Postal History Collecting For A Town (Xenia, Oh)

I've been picking up covers with Xenia, (Greene County) OH postmarks, going back to the 1820s. I've not done anything with them yet, but I have a nice visual history of postmarks and a few advertising covers from the town, and some non-Xenia covers to/from prominent people from there…and a couple covers from the USS Xenia. I know I can collect however I like, but I have a few questions:

1. Does a town-focused postal history collection typically also include covers addressed to the town?
2. Are there any resources for Xenia postmarks or maybe Ohio generally?
3. Do these kind of collections often focus on a whole county? There are several towns and colleges in Greene County I could expand to.

Any other advice for a town/county-focused collection?

If there exist covers with receiving marks from a town, why not include mail addressed to the town with those marks?
Postal history of a town must not imply it is limited to outgoing mail. That is the choice of the collector.

Each collector has to decide a scope for their collection.

Collecting the hometown or current residence is a common choice. To paint the entire picture of a community, it would properly include mail to, from and through the locality, although many collectors focus on origin mail only. Received marks are mostly limited to the 1879-1913 time period, but can be found later on airmail and special delivery mail. And of course there are various auxiliary postal marks, precancels, perfins, meters, etc. One of the challenges of finding mail *to* a locality is that dealers tend to sort by origin city.

Yes, it is common for a collector to expand to the other towns in the county. It tends to come naturally.

For Ohio, there is the Ohio Postal Society, and Gallagher and Patera's elusive "The Post Offices of Ohio", although much of their data is available elsewhere.

Very few cities have had formal postal histories published for them. Much of the postal history literature focuses nationally, either on a time period (Stampless covers, for example) or postmark type (doanes, machines, precancels, etc.), leaving the collector on their own to pick out the data for their town of interest. It often becomes pioneering work.

Colleges: Nearly every county seat had some large employer, whether a college or industry or ? This often leads the local collector to collecting postcard views, which can be very rewarding - and often more interesting to non-collector friends.

I have a casual interest in Ohio machine cancels and would note this Xenia Columbia machine cancel is currently known used only Sept 20-30, 1913, just 11 days between the use of two flag cancel varieites, which may suggest a PO fire or other event causing such rapid changes, and which makes it an uncommon cancel worth seeking (and a nice local view to boot):

John has covered the general information; I'll add some gloss as an experienced Ohio collector and longtime president of the Ohio Postal History Society. (side note: the next issue of American Philatelist will have a "hometown postal history" focus, including my marketplace column).

For Ohio, it is very natural to collect on a county basis. I would say that is the primary methodology for the state. There will be a back issue of the Ohio postal history journal that has an article about Greene County (I just looked back - it was the winter 1979 issue, volume IV, number 4, not one of the more detailed articles).

I don't believe there has been any deep work done on Xenia, at least published. There are several people who collect the town. You'll want to refer to the American Stampless Cover catalog for stampless listings. The 1847 issue was used in Xenia so there will be listings in the 1847 cover census (whether you choose to use the published Alexander book or the online census at the USPCS website). doanecancel.com will turn up doane cancel listings for Ohio (and you can extract data for Greene County). The Richow book for RFD, etc.

I tend to avoid incoming mail unless it has specific markings from my area that are relevant, or unless there is no other way to show an office, a route, or something else that I want to show.

For fun, my 1806 Xenia cover.

Greetings Philazilla and John and all.

Collecting what you enjoy collecting is the name of our game. Sharing your collection with others by exhibiting and writing up an article or more summarizing what you have learned shares your temporary stewardship over the treasures you have collected to future generations. You are on the right track. Keep going!

Personally, I exhibited covers from my home town in eight frames followed up a few years later with a one frame, sixteen page, exhibit highlighting its stampless covers a few years later. The one frame won best one frame in show and went to the national one frame exhibition.

I look forward to seeing your future efforts. Consider digital exhibiting?



Best regards and keep on keeping on. Russ

I just have a small bit to add. From 1879 to about 1930 (I don't know the end date for the program) the US Post Office Department required post offices to cancel incoming mail to show how long it took for the mail to get from sender to addressee. This time period is also characterized by the development of machine cancels, so there may be a variety of machine cancels used to denote when a mail item was received in Xenia. There may also be a variety of other non-machine cancels used to indicate receipt of mail in Xenia. I would think these would add an interesting demension to your Xenia collection.

An example of a special machine cancel made to indicate when mail was received in the post office. This example was made by the American machine cancel company that also made the flag cancels.

For machine use during the era of required backstamping (1879 to mid-1913), Xenia had only an American Postal Machines Company machine, making the familiar "flag cancel", however to date, I am unaware of any reports of Xenia using any "received" mark in place of the flag. Does anyone have one to show?

Noting the previous post about received marks, I have made a new thread to detail their regulatory history at:
https://goscf.com/t/86431

Thank you all - this gives me good information as I continue to collect and learn!

Wasn't Xenia hit by hard by tornadoes in the 70s/80s? Might find some interesting covers dealing with that catastrophe.

Xenia has been hit repeatedly. The famous one was 1974 (which obliterated a significant part of the city, including much of downtown, killing over 30 people). A former colleague of mine was a child in Xenia and watched the tornado from his front porch north of town. There was an F4 tornado in 2000 and there have been others.

I spent several weeks in Xenia trying a case in the county courthouse in 2011. There's a well-known stained glass window in the courthouse, which bowed significantly in the tornado but did not break. It was left the way it was. I noticed when I was there that there were older buildings on the east side of town, but that the north and west sides of downtown were all newer. That's the part that got leveled by the 1974 tornado.

In the 1950s and 60s Xenia was a very fast growing and prosperous town due to its proximity to Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, and probably most importantly, WPAFB. When it got obliterated by the 1974 tornado, insurance companies set up offices in the back of trucks and wrote checks. Residents took the checks and moved to nearby towns (a lot to Fairborn and Beavercreek, also in Greene Co.). The town never recovered.

In the 19th and early 20th century, it was a major railway hub with all the associated industry. . .and mail.

Greene County, Ohio from page 62 of "Leslie's New World Atlas, A Complete Collection of Maps, Gazetteer and Statistics Covering the World as it is Today with Latest Boundaries as Determned by the Peace Conference, 1920 Edtion." Published by Leslie-Judge, New York City, 1920. This is my go-to atlas for anything early 20th century since it plots so many small towns.


In contrast, the 1990 State Highway map, although it shows the triangle of I-70, I-71, I-75, I-675 hghway system surrounding Greene County as well as the Air Force Base..

The (coming) online American Postal Markings Catalog (built off of the American Stampless Cover Catalog) lists 7 markings for Xenia up to 1861. Three are illustrated (currently).
Here's an Advertised marking applied to an inbound letter.

(re the catalog - we're REEEEAAAALLLY close. The workflow is almost done that will allow anyone to submit an image, an unlisted marking, or an update that can be reviewed by an admin and then included. If you promise not to get mad if things break while we're working on them, go to www.worldcovers.org This address may also change in the future).
Chip

That looks like a tremendous project. Thanks for sharing it.