Neither David Thompson or I can find much on the Commercial Stock Company. Likely located in Boston, though there is a Water Street in the financial district of New York. Whatever the case, the cancel is an interesting one, with a time but no date other than the year. Or am I missing something?
For years I've had the Degas painting, Cotton Exchange, posted on this website. The painting was done in my home town of New Orleans, a major cotton center and port. Degas spent parts of 1872 and 1873 in the city. The painting shows men examining cotton samples at a large table, presumably to make decisions regarding large purchases of cotton for industrial buyers, both domestic and overseas. Others in the painting are individually examining cotton samples, reading a newspaper, or engaging in other cotton trade functions.
It is possible that one or more of the men in the painting were conducting business on behalf of Gassner & Company, a Liverpool-based cotton merchant. I'm no expert in the tax laws of 1898, so I am not sure of the exact types of taxes this $1 stamp might have paid. However, Gassner would have been active buyers, warehousers, and shippers of cotton. The process, likely including exchanging pounds for dollars, would have involved taxable events. If the stamp was still on its document, the use of the stamp would be clear. But for now, we have an interesting relic of the cotton trade in New Orleans.
Historical marker in Essexville, Bay County, Michigan:
At the beginning of the 1898 tax period, Seneca D. Brown, Edwin G. Bruns and William Freudenstein were partners in the NYSE brokerage firm Brown, Bruns & Company. Among them, only Edwin Bruns held a seat on the exchange. By 1901, however, Brown, Bruns was no longer listed as a firm. Edwin Bruns would still be listed as holding a seat, but without a firm. Meanwhile that year, Seneca D. Brown would create his own firm, with what appears to be his son, Frederick W. Brown.
The following memorandum of sale shows Brown Bruns still trading as of late 1900.
Incorporated in 1887, the American Sugar Refining Company would become one of the original 12 companies in the Dow Industrials Stock Index when it was created in 1896. By 1907 the firm owned or controlled 98% of sugar refining capacity in the United States. I've yet to learn what American Sugar transactions that might have taken place during the 1898-1902 tax period that might have required the stamp below, though the firm was very active with corporate acquisitions that might have required documentary stamps.
"It wasn't me, it was the one-armed man!" said Harrison Ford's character, Dr. Richard Kimble, in the film The Fugitive. Kimble, falsely convicted for the murder of his wife, escapes a prison bus and leads the police on a 90 minute chase scene while he works to prove it was in fact the one-armed man who did it. R183 isn't nearly as exciting. But the stamp was printed with something called fugitive ink. So it does have something in common with Dr. Kimble. R183 is uncommon, and few collectors have more than one copy if any at all in which to compare stamps and color condition. So for many collectors, the only reason for awareness of the use of fugitive ink on this stamp comes from two entries for R183 in the recent versions of the Scott US Specialized Catalogue: 1) After the entry for the color of the stamp, which is the color lake, is the entry "fugitive ink" in parentheses; and 2) the little note at the bottom of the entry for R183 that says, Warning: The ink on No. R183 will run in water. There is no further elaboration or comment.
Over the years I've managed to accumulate the unused block of four above. I also have a few used copies off-piece with which to examine the fugitive quality of the ink. The conditions of the used stamps exposed to water are all very different. Prompting this post was a stamp recently sent to me by David Thompson -- it is the stamp at the bottom left in the examples below. This stamp is clearly one that has been affected by the combination of water and fugitive ink to make the ink run, much like the stamp on the bottom on the right, which is even lighter in color. The two bottom stamps are no longer lake in color.
The top four stamps represent a progression in just how fugitive the ink can be. The stamp on the upper left, with the "ATCH" cancel (a cancel for the broker William D. Hatch), appears to have never seen any water. The second scan shows the back of all the stamps, in the same sequence as the scan showing the front of the stamps. By looking at its back, it appears that Mr. Hatch's stamp was removed without any water -- gum remains and some of the original document is still attached. So the stamp appears much as the block of four above.
"if the stamp is carefully put face up in a shallow dish not much water gets to the side with the ink and it doesn't run much if at all. If the stamp remains face down for a longer period in water it will run a bit/a lot."
On Sunday, this site highlighted the split in the firm of McIntyre & Marshall during the 1898 tax period. In that case, the partners in the firm created two new firms out of the one. Today is presented the case of Chauncey Brothers, who, because of the death of a brother, the firm was reorganized and renamed.
Look for "Chauncey" cancels among your battleships. You may have one by the brothers or by Daniel's newer firm.
Henry M. North advertisement from an Augusta, Georgia high school yearbook. Buy those whole life policies when you are young!
Unusual circular date stamp, especially from an insurance broker.
A corresponding collector in Minnesota sent me examples of cancellations, possibly printed, by the Duluth, Missabe, & Iron Range Railroad, a railroad organized to transport iron ore and eventually taconite out of the Minnesota iron range to port facilities on Lake Superior at Duluth, Minnesota. I was immediately interested in these, as examples of these cancels don't appear in Richard Fullerton's catalog, and the DM&IRR was not a part of any of the families of railroads known to use printed cancels.
A little research showed that the DM&IRR was organized and so
named in 1937, 35 years after the 1898 tax period expired. On July 1, 1937, the Duluth, Missabe and
Northern Ry (DM&N) and the Spirit Lake Transfer
Railway were merged to form the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range
Railway. There is a reference called
“History of the Missabe” published by the Missabe Railroad Historical Society
that goes into this merger and the creation of the DM&IRR.
To cross check it, I went to a contemporaneous reference, the Poor’s Manual of Railroads (image below) from 1901, that lists all US Class I, II, III railroads. There is no DM&IRR in the manual, but there are the Duluth & Iron Range RR, and the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Ry.
The mischief maker didn’t even bother to create fake cancels for a real, existing railroad during the time of the 1898 tax period. At least we know that the fakes were made after 1937. But that’s about all. Whatever the case, these are an interesting philatelic story. The collector that sent these stamps to me reported that he had seen a stamp with these cancels sold in an auction a few years ago. While he did not win that auction lot, he did buy examples of these cancels from a collection located in Walnut Grove, Minnesota sometime in the last few years. Buyer beware!
Clarence Day Sr. was the head of his eponymous brokerage firm in New York during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, where his son, Clarence Jr also briefly worked (and did so during the 1898 tax period). Clarence Sr. would become the inspiration for one of Broadway's longest running and successful plays, Life with Father, written by Clarence Jr. But before the book was written that would inspire the play, Sr and Jr conspired to buy and sell stocks, of which one of those transactions is represented by the $10 stamp below:
Author and illustrator Clarence Day, best known for his book Life With Father, was born in New York City on November 18, 1874. He graduated from Yale College in 1896, then worked in his father's brokerage house and served briefly in the U. S. Navy. In 1898 he was stricken with rheumatoid arthritis. He traveled for some years in search of a cure, then settled in New York, where he became active in the alumni affairs of Yale College and launched his writing career. Day's essays, book reviews, short stories, verses and cartoons appeared regularly during the 1910s-30s in Harper's Magazine, The New Republic, The Metropolitan Magazine, The New York American, and The New Yorker. His first book, This Simian World, was published in 1920. Day achieved his greatest popularity during the 1930s with the publication of Life With Father, a series of comic memoirs of family life. Clarence Day died of pneumonia on December 28, 1935. (From the description of Clarence Day papers, 1796-1993, (bulk dates 1890-1935). (New York Public Library)).
The play was also made into a film:
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.
Thanks to Frank for sharing this. If there is this one, there must be others. Examine your battleships closely!
Back after a month -- been a bit busy with another project. Lots of material has come in that is worth working through and posting, so we'll see how the next few weeks go. Today's entry is from David Thompson, who has shared a pair of R187s with a cancel from The General Manifold Company:
