AUGUST 2023 $6.95
MONTHLY JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PHILATELIC SOCIETY
Oh, Canada!
WWW.STAMPS.ORG
AMERICAN PHILATELIST THE
August 2023
PAGE
STAMPLESS CANADA
Table of Contents
VOLUME 137 • NO. 8 • WHOLE NO. 1,47
PAGE
698
BY ROB LEIGH The population in British North America’s Canadian regions was sparse and spread out in the 19th century. Stampless covers from the era are scarce. Our author offers a guide to interpreting these covers.
706
PAGE
711
CROSSING THE BORDER
THE STORY BEHIND THE PHILATELY
BY RUSSELL D. SAMPSON A pair of Canadian stamps with perforated initials – known popularly in our hobby as perfins – leads to a tale of science, academia and discovery with a sad conclusion.
BY DAVID D’ALESSANDRIS Interpreting early mail to and from the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia before mail treaties of 1851 might perplex a collector. Our author explains the sometimes complex rates and markings.
U.S. STAMPS OF THE 1950S
PAGE 732
MY COLLECTING JOURNEY
PAGE 724
BY CHARLES POSNER Our author continues his long-running series with a look at the Wildlife Conservation Whooping Crane stamp of 1957. Three locales hosted first-day ceremonies.
PAGE
715 A TRIPLE-CURRENCY COVER
BY GARFIELD PORTCH Dissecting the symbols and numbers on a transatlantic cover from 1836 yields a rarely seen item with postage reflecting in three currencies.
PAGE
728 COLLECTING COAST TO COAST
BY WAYNE YOUNGBLOOD A decades-long search finally yields some postal history from the tiny local of Keatskotoos, Nebraska. Thank you, internet.
BY BETHANY HUNTER Bethany Hunter, of the Young Philatelic Leaders Fellowship Class of 2023, tells her collecting story in her first published article on the Author track.
HONORING GRETEL WEIL PAGE 741
BY STEPHEN BREITKOPF The author completes a journey begun in the February 2010 AP..
ON OUR COVER
Designed by Chad Cowder, the cover image is reminiscent of the U.S. Work Projects Administration National Parks posters, produced during the Great Depression. Collectors of new Canadian issues might also note some similarity to the June 2022 “Vintage Travel Posters” issues. Stamps on cover are Canada’s first three issues, courtesy of Siegel Auction Galleries.
752 746 759 718 688 762 692
APRL Notes Books & Catalogs Classified Ads Country's Oldest State Fair Editing Philately Index of Advertisers Letters to the Editor
682 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / AUGUST 2023
754 750 770 774 690 686 685
Other Features
Membership Report My Stamp Story New U.S. Issues New World Issues Obituary - Janet Klug Our Story President’s Column
740 764 744 751 776
Road to Boston 2026 Show Time The Marketplace World Class Worldwide in a Nutshell
The Stamp Marketplace
No Reserve Auction | Every Thursday Evening
hipstamp.com/auctions Join our weekly auctions from just 1¢ and explore over $125,000 in retail of stamps with a focus on US and worldwide - bid on our weekly no reserve auctions ending every Thursday from 7pm ET.
1,200 Sellers
7 Million Stamps
The Botanist and a Common Perfin RUSSELL D. SAMPSON
T
his is an article on philately, postal history and the history of science. It is also a biography, but above all, it is a story. To write proper philately and postal history, one must uncover a cover’s rate, route, and decipher its markings. To do proper history and biography, one must connect people with events by uncovering and citing original sources. But, to write a proper story, one must find the humanity. Figure 1. The cover that originated in Canada is franked with stamps from two countries. First, a 2-cent Edward VII stamp from Canada (Scott 90); and two King Edward VII yellow-green halfpenny Our covers are not just artifacts stamps (Scott 143). The Liverpool handstamps show an early form of postal coding, “W.D.” of postal history, but potential touch- indicating “Western District.” The “9” is the number of the handstamp and may have been used to stones into someone’s life and occa- track the work of the postal employee applying the postmark. sionally … into their demise. Once It is addressed to a Mrs. D.P. Penhallow, c/o Arthur Piers, researched, the unassuming cover in Figure 1 unfolded into a Esq. C.P.R. Steamship Offices, Liverpool, England. The most tale that is both inspiring and macabre. likely route would have been Montreal to Liverpool onboard either the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Empress of Britain of the The philately Canadian Pacific Railway Steamship Lines, or the RMS Corsican of the Allan Lines, which was also owned by the The cover was initially franked in Montreal with a CPR. Both vessels were scheduled to sail from Montreal to Canadian 2-cent King Edward VII to pay the Empire Penny Liverpool on November 18. Their passage should have taken Post rate to England. It was mailed from the Secretary and six to eight days. Bursar’s Office of McGill University. The Montreal machine cancel reads, (after “X-rayed”), Montreal Que Nov 16 6-PM Once in Liverpool, the cover was then redirected to 1910 (Figure 2). Hazlemere [sic], Surrey with the addition of two common 706 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / AUGUST 2023
Figure 2. This “poor-person’s X-ray” from the author was produced by setting an Epson V550 Photo scanner to “Transparency, Negative” mode. Here the scanner’s light source shines through the cover, thus revealing hidden details within and underneath the stamp and the cover. The “wavy-line” killer of the Montreal machine cancel is indicative of an International Rapid Cancelling machine with its “C” indicium, standing for “Collect” – mailed picked up at a mailbox. The length of the wavy-line obliterator is 2.0-inches, indicating that it was produced by an electrically driven “Flier” model.
Great Britian, King Edward VII yellow-green halfpenny stamps. According to the 1910 British Post Office Guide, the addition of the GB penny postage was required since the cover was redirected to someone other than Mrs. Penhallow. The subsequent redirected UK postmark reads: Liverpool W.D. 9 3—PM NO 28 10 – nearly 12 days after its original posting from Montreal. The two halfpenny stamps are perforated with the most common British version of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) perfins, the GB C6120.01M (per Roy Gault). This perfin originates from Liverpool and saw the longest usage of all the British CPR patterns – 60 years – from 1903 to 1963. Stamps with perforated initials (i.e., perfins) were sanctioned by many postal administrations to dissuade unscrupulous employees from pilfering the company postage. Today, they have been made almost completely obsolete by the advent of such things as meter mail and permit mail. The red-inked redirect is to Hindhead, Hazelmere [sic] (misspelled, referring to the town of Haselmere). The small village of Hindhead in Surrey, southeast England, was a famous pastoral sanctuary for intellectuals and attracted such luminaries as Irish physicist John Tyndall and poet Lord Tennyson.
Figure 3. Portrait of David Pearce
Penhallow, from the 1911 McGill University can royalty, as it yearbook. includes no less than three colonial governors or deputy governors: William Brenton, the second governor of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; William Leete, the governor of the colony of New Haven and ninth deputy governor of Connecticut; and Thomas Dudley, the third, seventh, 11th and 14th governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. However, it is her traveling companion that concerns much of the remainder of this story. As was the custom of the day, the wife adopted the full name of the husband when formal addressing was required. Mrs. Penhallow was married to David Pearce Penhallow (1854-1910), a renowned
The story Mrs. D.P. Penhallow’s (née Sarah “Sadie” Almira Dunlap, 1852-1942) was an early member of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA). According to the society’s records, her early American lineage reads like Ameri-
Figure 4. An 1879 image of Mrs. “Sadie” Penhallow (third from left) and her husband D.P. (center), along with other American academics who helped establish the Imperial College of Agriculture in Sapporo, Japan, now Hokkaido University. AUGUST 2023 / AMERICAN PHILATELIST 707
Country's oldest Dollars Dollars to Doughnuts, Doughnuts, state fair the the New York State Fair Fair A philatelic look at the country’s oldest state fair
MY
JEFF STAGE
hometown of Syracuse, New York is not considered a travel destination, but it certainly has its notable benchmarks in business, history, education and personalities of all sorts. The longest-running touchstone for Central New Yorkers is the New York State Fair (Figure 1). The Fair’s history and importance can be traced through philately, much of it on postcards, but also through advertising covers and special postal cancellations. Following, I offer some Fair history and its philately. The Fair’s first sponsor was the New York State Agricultural Society, founded in 1832 by a group of farmers, state
legislators and others to promote agricultural improvement and local fairs. Because Syracuse is near the center of the state – and had transportation links via the Erie Canal, coach roads and railroads – the society designated the then-village of 11,000 to host the nation’s first State Fair over two days in September 1841. Experts say as many as 15,000 visitors – many from the agricultural industries – from all of the state’s 59 counties visited. (Bronx, Nassau and Schuyler counties had not yet been established.) From 1842, the fair rotated among 11 cities, including New York City, Albany and Rochester. By 1849, the second time Syracuse hosted, the fair remained with a focus on agriculture, but was embracing wider offerings, including speakers, a formal ball, demonstrations of new technology and just plain fun. A couple of Erie Canal workers constructed a 50-foot-high big-wheel ride of oak and iron with wooden bucket cars that lifted thrilled fairgoers to a birds-eye view of the site. This was 44 years before Ferris erected his Chicago Wheel at the World’s Columbian Exposition.
Figure 1. A view of the New York State Fair in 1915. Events included agricultural promotion and judging, speeches, races, entertainment and amusements, such as the big wheel.
Figure 2. Patrons line the street awaiting a parade along a lit up Salina Street in downtown Syracuse during the Ka-noo-no Karnival. The postcard is dated 1913. 718 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / AUGUST 2023
The agricultural society felt financial strain from constantly moving the Fair and finally asked the state government to pitch in. The state in 1889 purchased 100 acres just outside the western edge Syracuse and the Fair settled in Syracuse permanently in 1890. Syracuse’s central location in the state again had much to do with the decision. Despite the cost-savings measure of permanently locating the State Fair in Syracuse in 1900, financial strains remained. Organizers worried about failure. As the fairgrounds was not yet properly electrified, the Fair did not host nighttime events. The solution was a group of outsiders – the Mystique Krewe – who not only likely saved the Fair but also created some of the event’s most intriguing philatelic items. In brief, an Onondaga Historical Association article notes that “in 1903, the Fair was a daytime-only event and the predominant mode of transportation was horse and buggy, so it was a major effort to travel all the way to Syracuse just for the Fair. … Spearheaded by the Chamber of Commerce, the community’s leaders determined that evening entertainments might draw people to Syracuse and keep them here to go to the Fair the next day. They proposed three evenings of entertainment for 1904 and the Fair that year, for the first time, turned a profit.” This led to the Mystique Krewe, which fashioned itself after Mardis Gras events in New Orleans, to offer 11 succeeding years (none
Figure 3. A 1910 cover promotes the Ka-noo-no Karnival on the front and back.
Figure 4. The Onondaga Litholite Co. used an advertising card to promote its business of creating stone pillars and other architectural stonework
AUGUST 2023 / AMERICAN PHILATELIST 719
New U.S. Issues BY Jeff Stage
A Quiet Month for New Stamps
T
he month of June was an unusually quiet one for new releases from the U.S. Postal Service with only one new issue of postage stamps, an attractive pane of waterfalls on 12 stamps. There was, however, the release of the annual federal duck stamp, which is a popular collectible, plus I will offer a glimpse at this year’s only expected pre-stamped envelope, which was released in July. Federal duck stamps – officially the migratory bird hunting and conservation stamps – are mandatory for hunters and have raised millions of dollars since 1934 for wetlands conservation. Anyone familiar with duck stamps is quite familiar with the name of the artist whose work appears on the new stamp. Although the self-stick Waterfalls stamps were issued at the rate of 63 cents, the new postage rate went into effect July 9 and those stamps now cost 66 cents ($7.92 for the pane).
Waterfalls
by Nicole Nugent; Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls State Park, New York, photo by John Cancalosi; and Dark Hollow Falls, Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, photo by Luong. Third row: Grotto Falls, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennesee, photo by Joe Miller; Sunbeam Falls, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, photo by Kevin Schafer; LaSalle Canyon Waterfall, Starved Rock State Park, Oglesby, Illinois, photo by David B. Vernon; and Upper Falls, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina, photo by Tim Fitzharris. Luong’s photos appear on three stamps; Keifer’s on two. Framing the stamps is selvage that again features another angle of LaSalle Canyon by Vernon. Ashton Potter (USA) Ltd. of Williamsville, N.Y., printed
Pure water is clear, but when it flows with force, it can bubble and foam into a white, frothy appearance, which can certainly be dramatic. But throw in the trained eyes and talents of award-winning nature photographers who know how to capture colors cast by sunlight or reflections from surroundings such as moss, colored rocks or fall foliage, and you can have stunning images of nature. Such is the case with the Waterfalls pane of 12 First Class domestic Forever stamps formally issued June 13 in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Shown on the stamps are natural waterfalls in all shapes and sizes, from serene cascades to mighty cataracts. Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamps and pane with existing photographs from nine photographers focused on waterfalls found in 12 states. Each stamp features a photograph with the name of the waterfall and state in which it is located beneath it. Images shown and the photographers on the stamps are, by row, from left: First row: Deer Creek Falls, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, photo by Sandra Woods; Nevada Fall, Yosemite National Park, California, photo by Quang-Tuan Luong; Harrison Wright Falls, Ricketts Glen State Park, Pennsylvania, photo by Kenneth Keifer; and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, photo by Keifer. Second row: Waimoku Falls, Haleakalā National Park, Hawaii, photo byLuong; Stewart Falls, Mount Timpanogos Wilderness, Utah, photo The pane of Waterfalls stamps is available from https://aps.buzz/waterfalls23. 770 AMERICAN PHILATELIST / AUGUST 2023
a total of 34,992,000 Waterfalls stamps that were finished into 2,916,000 panes of 12. Ashton Potter printed the stamps using offset lithography. It’s impossible to review all of the photos and photographers in this short space, but I will offer the following about one of them, Quang-Tuan Luong, an innovative, awardwinning photographer born in 1964 of Vietnamese parents in Paris. A previous photo from Luong – that of the Little Missouri River winding through the badlands of North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park – is part of the 2016 stamps celebrating the National Park Service’s Centennial. Luong, who in 2022 received the Ansel Adams Award for Conservation Photography from the Sierra Club, earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 1992 from the University of Paris-Sud in 1992. His thesis was in computer vision. In 2008, he shared the initial Koenderink Prize for fundamental contributions in computer vision with two colleagues. Luong first became interested in photography during mountaineering outings, which included frozen waterfalls and a solo ascent of Denali. “In the mid-1980s, my life was transformed by the wilderness of mountains,” Luong says on the website Terragalleria.com. “As a climber, and then a mountain guide, I was initially interested in photography as a means to communicate to people who weren’t there the wonders I had seen on the high peaks of the Alps.” He took a job at University of California at Berkeley in 1993, learned to use large-format cameras and soon began photographing U.S. national parks. In 2002, he photographed all the then-57 national parks. “As I fell in love with the diversity of the national parks, I set out for a monumental nature photography project that had not been completed by anyone: photographing all of them on large format film,” said the photographer on Terragalleria. “I made my home in the San Francisco Bay area. Years of outdoor adventuring experience proved useful when exploring the backcountry of many parks, occasionally hiking in trail-less terrain with a 70 pounds backpack and paddling kayaks or canoes during extended expeditions.” In 2009, Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan featured Luong as the only living artist in the film, “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” and used his photograph, “Yosemite, Winter Sunset,” for the series’ cover. In 2020, Luong received the Robin W. Winks Award For Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks from the National Parks Conservation Association. To celebrate the National Park Service Centennial in 2016, Luong released his signature book, Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey through America’s National Parks. It won 12 national and international awards. In 2021, Luong published the large-format photo-filled Our National Monuments: America’s Hidden Gems.
Duck Stamp The 2023-2024 federal migratory bird hunting and conservation stamp – known popularly as the duck stamp – has a very familiar name linked to it. That name is, you guessed it, Hautman. For a sixth time, Joseph “Joe” Hautman, of Plymouth, Minnesota, won the annual open art contest that decides the artwork to appear on the stamp. Together with his brothers – Robert and James – the trio has won the contest 15 times; Joe and James now have six wins apiece while Robert has three. A formal ceremony for the stamp was held June 23 at the Bass Pro Shops outdoor store in Memphis, Tennessee. The national junior duck stamp was issued the same day and also feted at the ceremony. Joe Hautman’s acrylic painting of three tundra swans flying over a wetland was chosen during two days of voting last September. Of 187 entries judged in this year’s competition, 54 entries made it to the second round of judging. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administers the contest and each year chooses five species of waterfowl for the contest. Eligible species for the 2023-2024 stamp were the tundra (whistling) swan, mottled duck, American green-winged teal, American wigeon and Barrow’s goldeneye. The contest judges were Sean Murtha, artist; Richard Houk, philatelist and member of the National Duck Stamp Collectors Society; Marshall Johnson, conservation partner; Paul Schmidt, conservation partner; and Christopher Nicolai, waterfowl biologist and conservation partner. The new $25 federal duck stamp, valid for waterfowl hunting from July 1 through June 20, 2024 can be purchased in a souvenir sheet of one or can be separated from a pane of 20. Purchases of federal duck stamps fund habitat conservation and preservation of wetlands across the country and in U.S. territories. Since it was first established in 1934, sales of the Federal Duck Stamp to hunters, bird watchers, outdoor enthusiasts, and collectors have raised more than $1.1 billion to conserve over 6 million acres of habitat for birds and other wildlife and provide countless opportunities for wildlife-oriented recreation on our public lands. This year’s junior duck stamp also was celebrated at the first day ceremony. Artwork of a hooded merganser by Mila Linyue Tong, 15, of Virginia, graces the 2023-2024 junior duck stamp. The Junior Duck Stamp Program began in 1989. The first national Junior Duck Stamp Art Contest was held in 1993. A panel of five judges chose the winning entry, painted in acrylic, from among best-of-show entries. Students from all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and two U.S. territories participated in the Federal Junior Duck Stamp Conservation and Design Program. Purchases of junior duck stamps support conservation education for youth in kindergarten through 12th grade. The stamp costs $5. AUGUST 2023 / AMERICAN PHILATELIST 771