1898 Revenues: Imperial Soap Company

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Imperial Soap Company

Where is Imperial Soap Company?

As the out of copyright material of libraries and other collections is rapidly digitized by Google, Microsoft and others, there are few individuals or companies of note from the 1898 tax period for which some sort of information or history cannot be found. This web site emerged in early 2009 as digitization was gathering steam, and we've managed to take advantage of the ever increasing amounts of late 19th and early 20th century data to conduct cancel research.

Chappell/Joyce and other have identified the stamp with the rosette cancels below as that of the Imperial Soap Company of Boston. The company's cancels, especially the one below, are hard to miss, and Imperial, by virtue of the types of cancels they were alleged to have used on their stamps, must have been a firm with some size. Yet despite the trove of information available on the web, I can find nothing about the Imperial Soap Company of Boston. Where in history did this company go?

Most of the hits returned by Google for Imperial Soap Company today refer to firms having nothing to do with the 1898 Boston version of the firm, or refer to examples of the stamps you see above and below on various philatelic web sites. So, if anybody knows anything about this firm, I would appreciate an email from you at 1898revenues@gmail.com.

Another issue has to do with the printed "cancels". The cancels labeled type 2 & 3 below do not comply in any way with the rule regarding firm ID and date in the cancel. Type 1 has the information, but just what was the company up to with the rosettes and the waves printed on the examples below?

In the recently mailed out edition of The American Revenuer, Ron Lesher unveils a cancel misidentified by our ancestors in the hobby, including Henry Tolman and Morton Dean Joyce. This site has made similar discoveries of previously errant identifications. Is Tolman's page correct or are their identification issues with these very distinct cancels?

Below: Henry Tolman's Imperial Soap Company collection, containing a straight line handstamp, three printed cancel types and an unlisted printed cancel.

Handstamp:

Imperial Soap Co., Boston.

MAR 13 1899

Printed cancel type 1:

7-5-98

I. S. C.

Printed cancel type 2:

2 red rosettes, unlisted by Chappell/Joyce

Printed cancel type 3:

waves(?)

Unlisted printed cancel - is this an Imperial Soap Company cancel? Tolman mounted this stamp on his Imperial page.

1 comment:

UnknownApril 29, 2020 at 2:57 PM
I have 1/4 page magazine ad referencing Grand Prize Award for the most fascinating perfume known from the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition with double rosette logo and referencing Imperial Crown Floral Queen scent.
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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.