M.C.R.R.: Maine Central Railroad or Michigan Central Railroad?

M.C.R.R.

Michigan Central Railroad or Maine Central Railroad?  The two stamps below come from a calendar of stamps that was once in the collection of Henry Tolman.  That calendar is replete with stamps from the midwestern properties of the Vanderbilts, in particular the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway.  There are numerous M. C. R. R. cancels from the Michigan Central, also a Vanderbilt property.  In both cases below the cancels are of a small font, both serif and sans serif.

The Maine Central, which also used M. C. R. R. cancels, used a much larger font, at least in the example of the bill of lading below.  I seek more examples of MCRR cancels if you have different types.  Please contact me or send scans to 1898revenues@gmail.com.  Thanks!

Revenue Exhibits at March Party and a Big 4 Bill of Lading

I'm not certain how the Garfield-Perry Stamp Club's annual exhibition came to be called "March Party" although I've always had a good time whenever I've attended the show.  They do sponsor a nice wine and cheese reception the evening of the show's opening day; perhaps that's the "party".  The club itself is named in honor of James A. Garfield, and Oliver Hazard Perry; for more details go here.

According to list of exhibits, there will be 10 revenue exhibits at March Party totaling 56 frames, although just one exhibit of 1898 revenue material.  Bob Hohertz is showing his Revenue Stamped Paper of the Spanish American War Era exhibit. You too can view much of  the material right here on 1898Revenues as Bob is a major contributor to this site particularly in the area of revenue stamped paper.  Although I've seen his exhibit several times, I'm eager to see it once again as Bob advised in an email some months ago that he was revising the focus away from a "fiscal history" aspect to a more "traditional" presentation.  To learn more about the jargon associated with philatelic exhibits, the basic types of exhibits, and how they are judged take a look at the APS Manual of Philatelic Judging.  

Again, the Garfield Perry March Party Stamp Exhibition runs Friday, March 23 through Sunday, March 25 at the Masonic Auditorium in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

Enough about the show, let's look at another Cleveland related document.

Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, & St. Louis Railway Bill of Lading

Bellefontaine to Dayton

April 4, 1899

 

detail of boxed cancel

The C.C.C. & St. L. Ry. Co.

PASSED

APR  6  1899

BELLEFONTAINE, O.

Simon Lindemoth ships a box of meat and a can of "wired?" lard from Bellefontaine Ohio to H. S. Bergen in Dayton, Ohio.  It didn't matter how much material was shipped, nor how far, nor how many rail line transfers were necessary to complete a shipment, a bill of lading covering a shipment from one domestic destination to another was taxed a flat 1-cent.

I won't go into the history of the C.C.C. & St. L. Railway, better known as the BIG 4 Railroad, as that's been briefly covered in several previous BIG 4 blogs.  I wrote about C.C.C. & St. L. Railway Corporate Bonds, Bob Hohertz showed some Parlor Car tickets, and John featured a cancel of a subsidiary line in one of his cancel of the day blogs.  

Here's another C.C.C. & St. L. Railway cancel on a 1-cent R163 documentary that likely also is from a bill of lading.    



C. C. C. & ST. L. RY. CO.

OCT

2

1901

I'd be remiss if I didn't close with a link to the American Revenue Association website; it's their annual meeting that I'm attending at the Garfield-Perry show prompting these Cleveland-related blogs.

 

  

               

Bills of Lading with Printed Cancels: Chicago & Northwestern Railway

It appears that Mr. E.S. Randall, a one time Mayor of Calamus, Iowa, was sending a load of empty beer barrels and bottles back to a Val Blatz Brewing depot in Ceder Rapids.  By my read, the shipment included:

23 Half Barrels

17 Quarter Barrels

17 Eighth Barrels

9 Cases of Bottles

Blatz was brewed and headquartered in Milwaukee. 

C. & N - W. Ry.

Sept 20

1899

Val Blatz Brewing Company branded arch at the former Blatz building in Milwaukee.  The building has been converted to residential apartments.

Bills of Lading with Printed Cancels: Burlington & Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska

Waybill for transport of goods on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska by Walter G. Clark Company.  The documentary tax was paid by a 1 cent battleship with a B&MRRR printed cancel.  See the closeup below.

Burlington and Missouri River Railroad in Nebraska cancels have been featured before in posts on this site.  The B&MRRR in Nebraska was a component of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincey Railroad.

Cancels:

Printed:

B. & M. R. R. R. 

IN NEB.

Handstamped:

B. & M. R. R. R. In Neb.

Received on

JUL   2   1900

OMAHA STATION

The bill of lading was printed specifically for the firm of Walter G. Clark Company of Omaha, which meant the firm had repeated need for these bills and must have conducted a large share of its business via rail.  The firm traded in sporting goods, and did business in fire arms and ammunition.  The specific purpose of this bill was to document the shipment of "1 box Ld shells" and 1 Box empty shells".  What were the shells?  Ammunition of some sort perhaps, or something far more benign?  A little searching came up with this great shot of a an old Walter G. Clark baseball bat, confirming the firm's broader trade in sporting products, including their manufacture.

The bat is currently on sale at this webite.

Another Congregational Church Bill of Lading

Another Congregational Church bill of lading has surfaced. Like the bill of lading previously shown on 1898Revenues, this one too was issued by the American Express Company in Boston on June 30, 1900. It refers to "Minutes of" rather than "Report of Cong. Church", but both likely were for shipment of copies of the Report of the Second International Council of the Congregational Churches.

American Express Bill of Lading
Boston, Massachusetts
June 30, 1900
scan saved from eBay by Bob Patetta

Bob Patetta, who has provided us with numerous interesting documents, saved this scan from an October 2002 eBay auction. Unfortunately he was not the winning bidder so we don't know the current whereabouts of it, but thanks go to Bob who thoughtfully saved the image for future reference.

4,448 packages are listed, 1,744 of which presumably were turned over to the Post Office for mailing. The remaining 2,704 reports must have been shipped to different addressees as a total of $27.04 in tax was paid, 1-cent per each package to a different destination. The tax was paid by a combination of two $10, one $5, and two $1 Commerce Issues plus two 2-cent Battleship revenues.

These copies were consigned by A. Mudge & Co. More specifically, Alfred A. Mudge & Son Co., a well known Boston printer, although the Press of Samuel Usher is identified as the publisher in the report.

It's a great 1898 document and we'd like to know its current whereabouts. Hopefully, the owner is an 1898Revenues reader!

An Unusual Bill of Lading

Next to bank checks and sight drafts, bills of lading are perhaps the most commonly available documents from the Spanish American War tax era. Like the one pictured in this prior blog, almost all just bear a single 1-cent stamp as the tax on domestic shipments within the United States requiring a bill of lading was a flat one-cent. Size, weight, and the number of items shipped didn't matter; shipments to a single destination, be it a small parcel, a trainload of coal, or a herd of horses, were taxed a flat one-cent.

Sometimes one will encounter a bill of lading for multiple shipments to different locations. They usually will bear individual 1-cent stamps, one for each shipment destination. I've seen a few examples where 2-cent or 5-cent battleship stamps were used to pay the tax on multiple shipment documented on a single bill of lading, but never one like the American Express bill of lading shown below bearing $6.61 in tax including $1 and $5 Commerce Issue stamps!

American Express Company Bill of Lading
Boston, Massachusetts
June 30, 1900
Tim Kohler scan

The bill indicates 797 packages were consigned and it further specified that, "On 136 no revenue required." So in 136 instances packages were sent to destinations that duplicated the destinations of the 661 packages that each were subject to the one-cent tax; i.e. 767 packages were being shipped to 661 separate destinations.

The $6.61 cent tax was paid by the $1 and $5 stamps already mentioned plus two 25-cent, one 10-cent, and one 1-cent battleship revenues. All of the stamps were initialled GWY and date 6/30 by Geo. W. Young, the American Express agent accepting the packages. It's an impressive and uncommon bill of lading and thanks go to Tim Kohler for sharing it. Can anyone else show bills of lading bearing any of the dollar value Commerce Issues?

The document offered a couple of tantalizing clues, and while I can't be absolutely sure, pursuing them via basic Internet searches leads me to the following explanation.

The "Mr. Hazen" listed as the consignor of the packages most likely was the Reverend Henry Allen Hazen of Auburndale, Massachusetts. Rev. Hazen was a well-respected Congegationalist minister in New England, who also was very active in the National Council of Congegrational Churches of the United States. In 1899 he served as Secretary to the Second International Council of Congregational Churches held September 20-29 in Boston's Tremont Temple.

While not the primary editor, as Council Secretary and Publishing Committee member, it most likely was Hazen who sheparded the production of the published report of the International Council's Proceedings. A digitized version of that 566-page volume is available here. And those 797 packages consigned to American Express identified on the bill of lading as, "Report of Cong. Soc." most likely each contained a copy of this volume.

Nine months, the time from when the Council met in September 1899 to June 1900 seems like a long time to produce a report, but the preface contains this apology, "Any apparent delay in its issue is, we believe, fully compensated for by the greater accuracy which, we hope, will be found to have been attained." And the online digitized copy, from the Harvard College Library, is pen dated 20 June, 1900; no doubt hand-delivered on that date.

Reverend Hazen died just five weeks later on August 4, 1900.

Completed in 1898 The Congregational House, 14 Beacon St., Boston must have impressed all the Council delegates, especially those coming from abroad. Today it is home to the Congregational Library and the Congregational Christian Historical Society.

An Export Bill of Lading from St. Louis

According to the War Revenue Law any shipping receipt, bill of lading, or manifest, for the carriage and transportation of any goods was to be taxed. The tax on domestic shipments was one cent, and shipments to any foreign destination were taxed ten cents. Domestic bills of lading are quite common, but examples of export bills of lading are surprisingly rare. More on that later, now let's consider the document at hand.

Louisville & Nashville Railroad Bill of Lading for Luedinghaus-Espenschild Wagon Company

St. Louis, Missouri to Havana, Cuba

September 28,1899

As one can see from the size of the stamp in relation to the form, this is an oversized document. It measures 17" x 13.5" and is replicated here by stitching four scans together, hence the minor misalignment at the bottom center. It details the shipment of 3,110 lbs. of wagon parts, (or perhaps the parts for one wagon) from the Luedinghaus-Espenschild Wagon Company of St. Louis to Havana, Cuba. Cuba, site of the start of the Spanish American War, was an American Suzerainty at this time and a likely target for increased American trade.

By the 1890s the Louisville & Nashville Railroad had become one of the premier Southern routes. Originally formed in the 1850s as a small local rail line from Louisville to Nashville (it took years to actually reach Nashville), the company outmaneuvered its competition and absorbed many of them in the process. In 1880 they gained control of the Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railroad thus gaining entry to the important St. Louis market. They also gained access to the Gulf ports in the 1880s and stretched into Pensacola in 1893 setting the stage for this shipment. Service to Cuba via steamships was announced by the L&N in January 1899, just 9 months prior to this shipment.

J N C
9-28-99
initials of J. N. Chandler, Agent who signed the document

Luedinghaus-Espenschild Wagon @1894

The Luedinghaus-Espenschild Wagon Company can be traced back to the 1850s; in 1853 the Mormons bought 14 wagons from them for their trek West to the great Salt Lake area. The firm lasted into the 1930s by which time they also were producing trucks.

One can easily find taxed domestic bills of lading on eBay and elsewhere; but export bills of lading are exceeding difficult to find. It was years before I obtained this one and in more than 35 years of collecting I've seen less than 10 and most of those are to Canada (we'll blog about those sometime). One would expect bills to foreign destinations to be less prevalent than domestic bills, but why so rare?

The answer lies in Fairbank v. United States wherein the US Supreme Court ruled the 10-cent tax on foreign bills of lading to be unconstitutional; i.e. the tax was equivalent to a tax on the articles included in bills of lading, and therefore a tax on exports, in conflict with the constitutional prohibition against such taxes. The ruling confirms that the 10-cent tax was not on the document itself but the underlying transaction it represented. Subsequently, by Act of June 27, 1902 the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized and directed to refund sums paid for documentary stamps used on export bills of lading. On July 8, 1902 the Commissioner of Internal Revenue issued rules for making such refunds which required the submission of the taxed documents to the Internal Revenue Department along with refund claims. We'll likely never know how many such claims were made but certainly the decision to refund the tax for documents submitted to Internal Revenue has made them exceeding difficult to now find.

A Montpelier & Wells River Railroad Bill of Lading

John and I were discussing the last year of the various Spanish American War taxes, which prompted me to look at the dates on some of my bills of lading since the one-cent tax remained on them for that final year between July 1, 1901 and July 1, 1902. One that was dated in that final year was this bill used by the Montpelier & Wells River Railroad on November 8, 1901.

The railroad consisted of 38.22 miles of single track between Montpelier and Wells River in northern Vermont, plus a 3.38 mile spur to Barre. It became part of the Barre & Chelsea in late 1944. That line was absorbed by the Montpelier & Barre in 1957, which became part of the Washington County Railroad in 1980. At least part of the route has been converted rail-to-trail over the last few years.

The cancel is from the Marshfield office.




A map and schedule from 1901.

Bill of Lading - Illinois Central Railroad

Bills of lading and any other documents, such as manifests or express receipts, evidencing the shipment of goods were taxed a flat one cent according to the War Revenue Law. Neither the weight of, nor the quantity of items shipped mattered. As indicated by the Illinois Central Railroad Freight Contract illustrated below various items all sent to the same destination were considered as a single shipment. Essentially the 1-cent tax was levied on the shipping document, not the contents of the shipment.

The handwriting has faded, but clearly 1 box, 3 bundles, and 3 sacks, or a total of 6 items were shipped from Paducah, Kentucky to Bearden, Arkansas. As per the endosement in the lower left corner the shipment was routed via Memphis where it then had to be transferred to the Cottonbelt Railroad(St. Louis Southwestern Railway) for eventual delivery in Bearden. The transfer to another rail line was not subject to tax; the initial bill of lading, and the 1-cent tax thereon, covered the shipment from its origin in Paducah to its final destination in Bearden.

Illinois Central Railroad Bill of Lading

Paducah, Kentucky, August 23, 1898

RECEIVED BY THE
Illinois Central R. R. Co.
PADUCAH, KY.
IN APPARENT GOOD ORDER
AUG 23 1898
AND SUBJECT TO CONDITIONS NAMED
IN ITS BILL OF LADING.
Per (signed by J.F. Donovan)

Both John and I have blogged about the ICRR before. On July 8 it was the subject of the cancel of the day. On August 3, 2010 I wrote about the tax on an ICRR Parlor Car ticket. We both found the same ICRR route map online to then include in those blogs. Today's map comes from the back of the bill of lading. I had completely forgotten it was pictured there!

Route Map Illinois Central Railroad circa 1898