1898 Revenues: Bills of Lading with Printed Cancels: Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad

Monday, February 20, 2012

Bills of Lading with Printed Cancels: Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad

Waybill for freight from the firm E. E. Bruce & Company transported on the Freemont, Elkhorn & Missori Valley Railroad. The waybill includes a one cent documentary tax stamp with a printed cancel from the FE&MVRR.

The E. E. Bruce Company made its founder, Edward Bruce, a very wealthy man. His prosperity as a businessman in Omaha, Nebraska, gave him a position of leadership in the community. One of the most famous events commemorated in American philately, that honoring the Trans-Mississippi exhibition held in Omaha from June to November 1898, was in part managed by Mr. Bruce. Bruce was the exhibits manager for the 4,062 exhibits, for a fair that covered 108 city blocks.

Country Club Bourbon

sold by E. E. Bruce of Omaha, Nebraska

While by title a druggist, Mr. Bruce made most of his fortune through the distribution and sale of alcohol. E. E. Bruce sold wine, whiskey, and brandy, among other spirits, and had a substantial sale network that spread west all the way to the Pacific. Bruce sourced his whiskey in likely places like Kentucky, then packaged and shipped it west.

Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad printed cancel with 1900 year date.

The Fremont Elkhorn was a part of the Chicago & Northwestern system.

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Unusual Ink on the 1898 Series Dollar Values

THESE STAMPS ARE BOTH SCOTT R191! From fugitive ink to color changelings with unknown origins. These are both copies of R191. Can only exposure to light produce the color changes you see in stamp on the right? Or possibly a soak in bleach or other chemical? I doubt it. These stamps have so many examples of changelings that there must be something else happening. The ink used on this dark green series of stamps was different than that known on any other BEP printed stamps, never mind the varnish square. It is likely the BEP was experimenting with ink on this issue. Inks are discussed further if you click on the stamps.

Collecting Cancels

Welcome to 1898 Revenues, a website that features the stamps used to pay the Spanish-American war taxes imposed by the US Government starting in July, 1898. But while this site features those stamps in general, a focus is on their cancels, and on the firms that applied them. Unlike US postage stamps, which were canceled by the US Post Office and now Postal Service, revenue stamps were ordered to be canceled by their users in such a way that the identity of the user and the date was included in the cancel. This makes the collecting possibilities nearly endless, so that a single variety of stamp, for example, the 2 cent battleship stamp intended to pay documentary taxes, had potentially millions of different users, and therefore as many different cancels. Please browse the site and discover the collecting possibilities, made so much more accessible now through online sales. Cancels on these stamps have become much more interesting and accessible with the massive amounts of archival and historical data available on line. Rather than hours spent in libraries or with heavy volumes to identify cancels, search engines allow for cancel sleuthing at home.

Battleship Proprietary Printed Cancels: Updating the Joyce/Chappell Lists

In the 1950s, Morton Dean Joyce updated a list of printed cancels on the battleship proprietaries compiled by Clarence Chappell. Joyce's is a very long list consisting of more than one hundred companies and thousands of cancel dates. In the years since Joyce completed his list, many new cancel dates have been demonstrated to exist, and an update of the 1950s list is needed.

This site is attempting that update. Using the Joyce/Chappell lists and the former collection of Henry Tolman (ARA #25) as a base, a gradual effort will be made to post updated lists to the best of my knowledge, making a call for those that can contribute new dates and new images of those cancels.

Following in this column are quick links to excel files of these lists by company. Also are links to the posts that I have made on this blog regarding these companies and their cancels.