Only one of them is bright blue-found on a love letter sent in 1847, that was supposed to be burned by its recipient-earning it the name “Blue Boy,” after the famous portrait-of a boy in fancy blue clothes-by English painter Thomas Gainsborough. Seven such stamps are known to exist, but most of them are “buff” or a brownish-yellow color. Of particular interest are such provisional stamps from Alexandria, which was retroceded to the state of Virginia (from the District of Columbia) in these years. Louis provisional stamps display the image of two bears holding the United States coat of arms between them. Postmasters got creative with the designs. Between 1845, when Congress established federally standardized rates for postage and 1847, when the first federal postage stamps were produced, postmasters in counties and cities within the 29 states issued their own provisional stamps. stamp collecting, the Blue Boy is akin to the Mona Lisa. “Blue Boy” stamp (courtesy of Siegel Auction Gallery) The Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough, 1770. ‘Blue Boy’ Alexandria Postmaster’s Provisional Colonial orators, like Patrick Henry, as well as newspapers, seized on the issue of English tyranny taking the form of taxation without representation, building the wave to revolution some 10 years later. Mob violence and intimidation followed, forcing stamp tax collectors to resign their positions and driving away ships carrying stamp papers at seaports. The colonies were incensed at the notion that they could be taxed by anyone outside their elected assemblies. While the money demanded by the act was quite low and the act was repealed the following year, the damage was done. The “stamp” was applied to paper to denote that the tax had been paid. It was levied on American paper used for legal, official or everyday useful documents: ship’s papers, business licenses, calendars, declarations, inventory, etc. The Stamp Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1765, often cited as one of the immediate causes of the American Revolution, was, in fact, a tax. Franklin was fired from that job when, in 1774, it was discovered that he had been opening mail (between English authorities) and feeding the correspondences’ contents to his rebel friends-in what’s become known as the Hutchinson Affair. But long before, the Crown had named him postmaster general of the American colonies in 1753, a post he shared with William Hunter. In 1775, upon his return from England, Franklin was named postmaster general of the independent colonies by the Continental Congress. Naturally, a great deal of correspondence was exchanged before 1847-the United States Post Office Department was established in 1792-but those letters were mostly paid for by the receiver.īenjamin Franklin, who along with George Washington graced the first stamps, has a fascinating history with the post, filled with intrigue. These are examples of the very first U.S. The year 1847 is a huge one for stamps: this was the first year that you could purchase stamps from the United States government and affix them to a piece of mail as a method to prepay for its delivery (the legislation was passed in 1845). 1847 Issue Block of 16 of Ben Franklinġ847 Ben Franklin stamps (courtesy of Siegel Auction Gallery) The Boston Tea Party. “None of the first day’s mail made it,” says Scott Trepel, president of Siegel Auction House. The pilot flew in the wrong direction and crashed in a farmer’s field, ironically next to a property owned by Otto Praeger, the postmaster official in charge of airmail. Post Office Department airmail flight on May 15, 1918, ended in disaster. The Jennies-military biplanes-were modified for government airmail service with extra fuel tanks, a different engine, and a hopper for mail. In 2016, a single Inverted Jenny sold at auction for $1,351,250. The error only appeared on a single sheet of 100 stamps, which has since been broken up, so that mostly single examples of the stamp exist, though there remain two blocks of four. Philately, like many other hobbies, enjoys the self-referential: this was the first plane used to deliver mail.Ī printing error caused the blue vignette-the airplane and the air around it-to be printed upside down, while the red border framing the scene was printed correctly. The plane depicted on the stamp is the JN-4HM, built by the Curtiss company in the middle of World War I (95 percent of U.S. history, the Inverted Jenny is among the most mythical.
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