New York Stock Brokers: J. Norman Whitehouse of Whitehouse & Company

Whitehouse & Company handstamp and punch cancels

J. Norman Whitehouse's caricature in the 1904 volume, The Stock Exchange in Caricature.

Norman was a seated partner at the NYSE with what appears to be his father J. Henry and his brother, George M., in addition to a third partner, Augustus Marckwald who also held seats.  Whitehouse must have been a very busy firm to afford so many seated partners.  According to the artist and the writer of doggerel in the book, Norman must have been something of a social butterfly and a ladies man, in addition to a polyglot:

Whitehouse & Co has appeared before on this site, the last time in a post featuring companies that used initial punch cancels during the 1898 tax period.  

New York Stock Brokers: Jacob Cahn

 

Industrial Company Cancels: Acme White Lead & Color Works

 

ACME WHITE LEAD & COLOR WORKS

SEP

29

1900

Lead paint.  Lead pipes.  Tetraethyl lead in gasoline.  From the decline of the Roman Empire to filling our lives with a toxic heavy metal, we've fortunately come a long way since the days of Acme White Lead & Color Works.  We don't paint heads or our houses any more with lead paint.

Industrial Company Cancels: Morgan Engineering

 

MORGAN ENGINEERING CO.

SEP

26

1899

Morgan Engineering Company has remained a vibrant and going business for 150 years. Based in Alliance, Ohio, the firm specializes in the production and service of overhead cranes and related large industrial equipment and machinery. A history of the firm and a series of great pictures of some of the firm's accomplishments can be found at the Canton Repository website.

A 19th century overhead traveling crane

A modern version:

Scott Unlisted 1 1/4 Cent Proprietary Vertically Imperforate Between

Acquired in the Robert Siegel 2007 Henry Tolman auction, the RB25 horizontal pair below was not singled out for individual sale; it was part of a larger lot, hinged to a page in a lot of several other proprietary imperforate pairs and blocks.  The pair is homely, with a crease, a pinhole, and a major centering problem.  But it might be unique.  Tolman included it in his collection because there is no rouletting between the stamps.  There is rouletting all around, creating an imperforate, or "imroulette"-between condition that is somewhat rare among the battlship imperf examples.

RB25 imperf between

The Scott US Specialized Catalog does not list an imperf between version of RB25.  Perhaps it is now time since we now have a certified example:

R154 Bisects and the Certification Process

The two document fragments below with R154 bisects were included in the recent American Revenuer article arguing for the inclusion of an R163 bisect in the Scott Catalog.  As with the R163 bisect document fragments, the examples below demonstrate a legitimate and timely use for bisects when insurance companies, requiring half cent stamps to comply with the 1898 tax law, did not all have access to the half cent battleship stamps.

The Travelers Insurance Company agents H. D. Eichelberger & Company applied the R154 bisects to a Travelers accident policy, and then canceled the stamps in manuscript with "HDE&Co", plus a date.  Note that the first fragment is tied by the manuscript cancel, the second fragment's pen cancel does not show up on the background paper, though it is consistent across the stamps.

Late last year I submitted these fragments to the Philatelic Foundation for certificates.  They came back with mixed results.  The first fragment, with a full R154 and a bisected R154 with the pen tying the stamps to the fragment, was judged to be a genuine bisect.  The second fragment, with a full copy of R155, and without evidence of a "tie" by the pen, received a "no opinion" from the Philatelic Foundation.  The two certificates follow:

The experts at the PF seem to have used a single criterion to judge the first bisect as genuine: the presence of the cancel tying the stamp to the document; while using the absence of a tying cancel on the second fragment to justify thet lack of an opinion.  I guess I need to respect the decision, but the PF ignores multiple layers of evidence   The arguments that the second fragment is legitimate are multiple:

• The stamps are applied to a fragment consistent with an accident insurance policy;
• The person that applied the cancel to the first bisect that was judged genuine is the same person that applied the cancel to the second (perhaps a forensic handwriting expert must provide an opinion?);
• The bisect example was provided to the PF within the context of three other "genuine" bisects (two were R163s) according the the PF; the backing fragment is consistent across all of the examples

Experienced collectors know better.  For posterity, the R154 bisect above canceled with the R155 is a genuine bisect and is a scarce collectible.

The American Revenuer, 4th Quarter 2024: Listing an R163 Bisect in the Scott Catalog

Consider this post a part of a campaign to add a new listing the US Scott Specialized Catalog.  Over the past year or so, two different troves of bisects have come to the attention of this philatelist, and with the assistance of Frank Sente, David Thompson and Dan Harding, an article was published this past quarter on those bisects in The American Revenuer, aka "TAR".  Below is a slightly altered version of that aricle.

The Case for a New Scott U. S. Specialized Catalog Listing: The R163 One Cent Battleship Bisect
by John Langlois and Frank Sente

The Issue

The Scott U. S. Specialized Catalog should list an R163 bisect. Ten bisected examples of the 1898 one cent battleship revenue stamp, Scott number R163, are known to the authors to exist on document fragments and are pictured here. While the Scott U. S. Specialized Catalog lists a one cent I.R. overprinted R154 bisect, R154d, there is no listing for an R163 bisect, despite overwhelming evidence of the legitimate existence of these bisects.

The Evidence

The verified examples are made up of stamps tied to document fragments by hand stamped cancels on paper consistent with insurance documents, and were produced by three different sources: the Northern Assurance Company (3 examples), and the insurance agents H. D. Eichelberger of Richmond Virginia (6 examples) and D. Redfield & Son of Ardmore, Indian Territory (1 example).

 

Background

Starting in 2017, the Scott US Specialized Catalog began a new listing under the number R154, the provisionally I. R. overprinted one cent Scott 279 postage stamp; the bisect is assigned Scott Number R154d. Len McMaster and Frank Sente soon published an article on the bisect in the 2017 fourth quarter edition of The American Revenuer, illustrating three different examples of R154d, including two on full documents: a travel accident policy and a plate glass insurance policy, in addition to an insurance document fragment. The conclusion called for collectors to share usage examples of bisected provisionals and battleships, and included a reference to Joseph Einstein’s 1986 TAR report of two one cent battleship bisects on document fragments. This article provides examples of both, including R154d with manuscript cancels produced by the same H. D. Eichelberger & Company that produced hand stamped tied battleship bisects.

The overprinted postage stamps did not include a half cent value, though the new war revenue law taxed insurance premiums (except for life insurance) at one half cent on the dollar. Some insurance companies or their agents may have occasionally been in a position to charge odd dollar premiums early in the tax period when only one cent stamps were available. According to the 1898 War Revenue Law: Except for life insurance, all classes of insurance were taxed by the 1898 War Revenue Law “...upon the amount of premium charged, one-half of one percent on each dollar or fractional part thereof...”, such that any policy with a premium ending in an odd dollar value required a half cent stamp alone or in combination with other stamps to pay the tax obligation. In effect this meant that most uses of the half cent stamps were on lower cost policies, as higher value policies usually had premiums with even dollar amounts.

The Half Cent Battleship Stamps: To enable insurance customers and businesses to not overpay on odd-dollar premiums, the BEP belatedly produced half cent battleship stamps, making an orange version (Scott R161) available by July 11, 1898 according to the Boston Revenue Book, changing the color to gray (Scott R162) “very soon” after the debut of orange. So the half cent documentary stamps were available approximately two and a half weeks after the one and two cent battleships. Data regarding the distribution of the half cent stamps is unavailable, but it is likely that availability of the half cent stamps was uneven early in the tax period in 1898, especially in July and August.

 

Origin and Description of the R163 Bisect Examples

The Eichelberger Bisects: In 2023, a small, nondescript and handmade stamp album was posted for auction on Ebay. The album consisted entirely of 1898 series documentary revenue stamps, all used and canceled by the Travelers Insurance Company or their agents. Among the pages of stamps were the cancels of the insurance agent H. D. Eichelberger & Company of Richmond, Virginia. Most of their cancels were on stamps off-document on several values of the battleship documentary series. But there were eight examples of document fragments, all on pink paper, with enough of the language on the documents remaining to indicate they were once accident insurance contracts or policies.

Two of the fragments included vertical bisects of R154, manuscript canceled in September, 1898, and six fragments included vertical bisects of the one cent battleship, R163, handstamp and manuscript canceled in August, 1898, tying them to the document fragments. The six R163 bisects include a complete R163 plus R163 bisect for a 1 1/2 cent tax payment, two examples of R164 plus a R163 bisect for a 2 1/2 cent tax payment, two R164 plus whole R163 plus R162 bisect for a 3 1/2 cent tax payment, and one example of two R164s plus a R163 bisect for a 4 1/2 cent tax payment. The Eichelberger bisects are in the collection of John Langlois.

The Northern Assurance Company Bisects: Also in 2023, and listed by a completely different seller, several examples of Northern Assurance Company bisects were listed on Ebay. All appear to be solo uses, for premiums that were for one dollar or less. At least five of these were sold, and three original copies are available to the authors for inspection. ARA members Dan Harding and David Thompson own the examples shown in this article.

The D. Redfield & Son Bisect: The D. Redfield bisect was sold in 2012 in a Robert Siegel auction and is in the collection of Frank Sente.

Listing the One Cent Battleship Bisect

As Len McMaster and Frank Sente argued in 2017, insurance companies and agents were required to comply with the new war revenue law but were sometimes without half cent stamps, especially early in the tax period. One option enabling agents to comply was to bisect the current one cent documentary stamps, including the overprinted R154, the now listed R154d. Based on the examples provided, there is clear evidence that agents did the same with R163, the one cent battleship. Time for the Scott US Specialized Catalog to provide a listing for this bisect, perhaps Scott R163c?

References:

Einstein, Joseph S. 1986. R163 Bisect--Rarity or Just Uncommon? The American Revenuer, Vol. 40 No. 10 (November-December), p.201.

McMaster, Len and Frank Sente. 2017. Bisected “I.R.” Provisional Overprints. The American Revenuer, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Fourth Quarter), pp. 115-116.

Toppan, George L., Hiram E. Deats and Alexander Holland. An Historical Reference List of the Revenue Stamps of the United States, aka “The Boston Revenue Book”, The Boston Philatelic Society, 1899.

Advertisement sources:

H. D. Eichelberger advertisement is from the Virginia Federation of Labor Directory, 1897

D. Redfield & Son advertisement is from the Daily Ardmoreite, August 8, 1899

Northern Assurance Company advertisement is from The Weekly Underwriter, April 28, 1906

 

Post Script:

While the article was going to press, The Philatelic Foundation returned positive certificates for several of the featured bisects, reinforcing the argument for a new Scott listing.

Cotton Broker Cancels: Price, McCormick & Company Futures Contract

Price, McCormick originally featured here back in 2012 based on their trading at the New York Stock Exchange, where the firm had members with seats until 1900.  The firm's cancels have also shown up in special posts on perfins, as Price McCormick used a "PM&Co" perfin on some stamps in addition to their usual CDS.  A PM clerck was caught in 1898 in a revenue stamp fraud, where he purchased improperly canceled stamps from other clerks and messengers at 75 cents on the dollar and pocketed the balance.  The New York Times reported that Price McCormick used $200 worth of stamps per day, so he was able to make $300 fairly quickly before the revenue inspectors caught up with him.

Today is featured a Price, McCormick cotton futures contract, made through their membership at the New York Cotton Exchange.

September 6, 1899 contract for the delivery of bales cotton in January, 1900.  Transaction taxed at $1.24, representing a one cent tax for each one hundred dollars of the future delivery contract, which totaled $12,340.

Price McCormick used a double ring CDS on the one dollar stamp and smaller single ring CDS cancels on the battleship stamps.

Cotton Broker Cancels: Forwood & O'Neill of Paris, Texas

 

Forwood & O'Neill,

1899

PARIS, TEXAS.

R. Forwood and Augustine Hughes O'Neill were partners in this firm .

Cotton Broker Cancels: Henry Hentz & Company

 

from Cotton Facts by Alfred B. Shepperson, 1901

H. HENTZ & CO.

OCT

12

1899

N. Y.

H. HENTZ & CO.

DEC

14

1899

N. Y.

Cotton Broker Cancels: Cox and Callender of New York

from Cotton Facts by Alfred B. Shepperson, 1901

COX & CALLENDER

DEC

5

1898

NEW YORK.

Cotton Broker Cancels: Baily & Montgomery of New York

 

from Cotton Facts by Alfred B. Shepperson, 1901

Baily & Montgomery

???

New York

Cotton Broker Cancels: S. Munn, Son & Company of New York

 

S. MUNN SON & CO.

MAY 14 1900

56 BEAVER ST. N. Y.

From New York State's Prominent and Progressive Men; 1900 by Mitchell Charles Harrison:

S. Munn, Son used direct mail marketing: