1898 Documentary Perfin Cancels

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P & Co

+4

30

01

Perfin cancel with initials and date.  This is the most complex and interesting perfin cancel that I have seen on the 1898 revenue stamp series.

Perfins.  For the unitiated, they serve to cancel stamps by punching small holes in the stamp that encode information.  They are often used to precancel stamps.  In a few cases on the 1898 revenue series, period size holes might spell out the initials of a brokerage firm.  Perfins are somewhat scarce on the 1898 series of documentary stamps.  They became a common form of cancel from 1914 on, and entire collections can be built on those perfined stamps.  But today will highlight 1898 perfins.  This post includes 3 unidentified perfins, 7 different NYSE firms, and 2 insurance companies.

Unidentified perfins:

• P & Company (possibly Pearl & Co.)
• FB... (possibly Finley Barrell & Co. or several others)
• AN & Company

New York Stock Exhange firm perfins:

• Price, McCormick & Company
• Ladenburg, Thalmann Company
• Edward Sweet & Company
• DeCoppett & Company
• DeCoppett & Doremus
• Lazard Freres
• P. J. Goodhart & Company

Insurance company perfins:

• New York Life Insurance Company
• Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

For the purpose of this article and in general, perfins do not include punch cancel initials or large punch outs, shaped or not.    These types of cancels will be featured in a comprehensive post in the coming weeks.  This post will also not cover generic perfins like those that spell out Cancelled or Paid, include only numbers, or are shapes.

The upper left stamp and the pair on the right are perfin style generic cancels, not specific to the user.  Cancels in the same class include those that say PAID. The bottom left stamp has simple punch cancels, not perfins.

Letter punch cancel, not a perfin cancel

The first example, and the most complex type of perfin on the 1898s, is that shown at the top of this post.  The cancel remains unidentified but possibly comes from the New York Stock Exchange firm Pearl & Company.  

A similar type of cancel to that above was used by a firm with the initials FB; unfortunately this is only a fragment of the cancel and there may be additional initials we cannot see.  It is clear, however, that firm initials and a date was encoded in the perfin cancel.  

FB??

+1

16

??

Finley Barrell (with a seat on NYSE) out of Chicago is a possibility, but there are other fims that might also be possible, including F. B. Cochran & Co. of New York.

AN & CO

A final unidentified cancel.  This perfin uses an identical ampersand form as that for the firm Edward Sweet & Company below, so it might be a stock exchange firm, or a company based in New York.

The perfin using firms that follow have all been identified.  They all used a simpler form of perfin that included only the initials of the firm and no date.   

Price, McCormick & Company

Ladenburg, Thalman Company

Bill of exchange fragment.  Dollar values are perfined.

Edward Sweet & Company

The old Scott catalog number is penciled on back

DeCoppet & Company

DeCoppet & Doremus

Lazard Freres

Bill of exchange fragment.  Perfins on stamps 10 cents and up.

P. J. Goodhart & Company

The old Scott Catalog number is penciled on back.

New York Life Insurance Company

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

Gilded Age Portraits: Mr. & Mrs. Henry Marquand

Henry Gurdon Marquand by John Singer Sargent, 1897

R188 Block of 4 cancelled by Henry Marquand & Company, 

January 28, 1901

Block retains full original gum

Henry Gurdon Marquand held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange during the Gilded Age, including the years of the 1898 Spanish American War tax period.  He was extremely wealthy and had a passion for fine and expensive art, for which he built a grand Manhattan mansion in which to hang it all.  And like many of New York's wealthiest at the time, he had his portrait and that of his wife painted by the go-to Gilded Age portrait artist of the time, John Singer Sargent.  

Elizabeth Allen Marquand (Mrs. Henry Marquand) 

by John Singer Sargent, 1887

Yesterday I put up Sargent's Benjamin Kissam portrait up on the right side of this site, and I started wondering how many Gilded Age brokers might have had their portraits done in oil, by Sargent or any other accomplished oil portraitist.  The Marquand's were the first couple I could think of, but I'll see how many more I can find.

Meanwhile, the curious issue of Marquand cancelled stamps remains:  every stamp I have ever seen cancelled by Marquand has a light, neatly applied cancel, with the stamp or stamps almost always retaining their original gum.  The R188 block of 4 is one example.  Here are more:

There is not much more to add, except: 

• I'll be looking for on-document uses of these stamps by Marquand & Company, and
• Why would a company cancel high value stamps but not apply them to documents?  Was there something nefarious happening?

New York Stock Brokers: Zimmerman & Forshay

In the membership lists of the New York Stock Exchange from 1898 through 1902, the firm of Zimmerman and Forshay come last, the usual fate of anyone whose name begins with a "Z".  There are few Zs in the lists of firms and members of the NYSE during the 1898 tax period, making cancel identification for Zimmerman and Forshay rather simple.  This is but one of 100s of firms identified as users of the 1898 series revenue stamps.

Over the past few months, David Thompson and I have been working on a comprehensive list of NYSE members that could have used stamps during the 1898 tax period.  There is still much work to do, as each list has 1100 individual members (many fewer firms though) and there are 5 relevant lists to include: 98, 99, 00, 01 and 02.  Conveniently for collectors of 1898 revenues, the membership of the NYSE ran mid-year to mid-year, coinciding with the initial use of the stamps in 1898.  Once the comprehensive list is more complete, we'll publish the document for the use of others.  

Meanwhile, I'll keep posting firms that we've identified along the way, through the use of the NYSE membership lists and King's Views of the New York Stock Exchange.

So far, we've only been able to identify Zimmerman and Forshay by their "Z. & F." cancel.  

Z. & F.

NOV

23

1901

New York Stock Brokers: Lawton, Flint & Co; Lee, Kretschmar & Co; Maxwell & Scoville; McIntyre & Wardwell

Today is a catch-all day for several firms that have no representation in my usual reference books like King's View of the New York Stock Exchange.  I've not found much in the way of column advertising for these firms or any pictures of their members.  So instead we just have four memos plus the insets of their accompanying cancels.  All of these come from the Eames and Moore pile of memos courtesy of David Thompson.  

Lawton, Flint stock memo of sale for 100 shares of Union Pacific Railroad.

Lawton, Flint & Co.,

25 BROAD STREET.

Lee, Livingston stock memo of sale overstamped by the new firm Lee, Kretschmar & Co.  

LEE, KRETSCHMAR & CO.

Maxwell & Scoville stock memo of sale, likely to Eames and Moore for what appears to be US Steel, for what also appears to be $47 1/8 per share.  

Now that the NYSE has gone decimal, I wonder how many investors out there know that we all once traded shares by fractions, sometimes down to the 32nd or even less?  Now with machines trading millions of shares in seconds, the buy sell spread can come down to a thousandth of a cent or less on some trades.  The old manual world of the NYSE clearing house is long gone.

MAXXXXX X SCOVILLE.

APR

22

1901

*

McIntyre & Wardwell stock memo of sale to Eames and Moore for 100 shares of something I'm still guessing at...maybe Wire? for the American Steel and Wire Company?

Mc I & W.

FEB

5

1900

NEW YORK.

New York Stock Brokers: Arnold Leo & Company

 

Arnold Leo & Co sale memo to Eames & Moore for 100 shares of the Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad @ 64 1/4.

ARNOLD LEO, & CO.

APR

11

1901

N.  Y.

New York Stock Brokers: Thomas L. Manson & Company

Column Advert, The Sun, April 21, 1904

Sale memo for 100 shares of Southern Railway 

This memo, like all those posted in the past week, comes from the Eames and Moore pile that David Thompson shared with me a few weeks back.  I've been looking over some of my previously posted memos and I'm finding many memos written to Eames and Moore.  I can't help but think that some stamp dealer on Nassau Street, located very near the Stock Exchange, knew someone in the Eames and Moore firm when they were getting rid of old files and documents since there are so many of these out there.  I also figure they pulled out the good ones with the high dollar values, easily parting with the $1 and $2 taxed memos.  

T. L. M. & CO.

MAR  29  1901

New  York