Travelers Insurance Agent Cancels: John E. Finnegan of San Francisco

This post includes Travelers Insurance Agent cancels from the Travelers Insurance 1898 mini-album. John E. Finnegan used simple initials to cancel these stamps:

J. E. F.

MAR 1 1899

 

OCT. ?? 1899

J. E. F.

Travelers Agents were occasionally responsible for making insurance payments for notorious accidents:

from The Travelers Record, April 1898

J. Hughes, a Pullman Palace Car Co. employee was hurt in a Union Pacific accident in such a way that he states that his injuries were known to all Pullman employees from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  The February 10, 1897 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle tells the the story in brief:

Eat your heart out, Elon Musk:  

from The Travelers Record, August 1902

I think it likely that Eugene Levy's electric car was an electric street trolley, maybe what we might call a cable car today?

Travelers Insurance Agent Cancels: The H. D. Eichelberger & Company Bisects

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Travelers "mini-album" is the presence of eight examples of one cent bisects, with two R154s and six R163s neatly bisected and tied to insurance document fragments.  Six of the eight examples are shown here:

HDE&Co

9/8/98

manuscript cancel tying stamps to document

H. D. Eichelberger & Co.

STATE AGENTS.

Handstamp cancels.  This and all subsequent examples of the R163 bisects are tied to their documents, which are Travelers accident insurance contracts.

Travelers Insurance Agent Cancels: H. D. Eichelberger & Company of Richmond, Virginia

from the 1897 Virginia Federation of Labor Directory

Stamps from the Travelers mini-album:

H. D. Eichelberger partial cancel with 718 E. Main St. address

H. D. EICHELBERGER & CO.

5

NOV

1899

RICHMOND, VA

H. E. EICHELBERGER & CO.

JAN

28

1899

H. D. EICHELBERGER & CO.

JAN

29

1900

David Thompson sent this scan of an R163 with an Eichelberger CDS; there are no R163s in the Travelers album:

H. D. EICHELBERGER & CO.

MAR

4

1899

RICHMOND, VA.

An H. D. Eichelberger promotional poster associating their firm with a group of men who swore an oath to their country, were nearly all educated at West Point, and then betrayed their country and fellow officers.  Of course an insurance firm in Richmond, Virginia would do this.

Travelers Insurance Agent Cancels: F. E. Ford of St. Paul, Minnesota

This post includes Travelers Insurance Agent cancels from the Travelers Insurance 1898 mini-album.  Today are the cancels of F. E. Ford of St. Paul, MN.

Mr. John K. West of Detroit, Minnesota, received injuries from a collision with a runaway horse.  He filed a claim and received $60 from The Travelers.  He thanked his agent, Mr. F. E. Ford:

from The Travelers Record, November 1902

F. E. Ford cancels:

F. E. FORD, State Agent.

MAR

14

1899

Travelers Insurance Agent Cancels: Homer G. Gilmore of Springfield, Massachusetts

This post includes Travelers Insurance Agent cancels from the Travelers Insurance 1898 mini-album:

Homer G. Gilmore

AUG

10

1898

Springfield, Mass.

Travelers Insurance Agent Cancels: Charles N. Hammon of Chicago

Charles N. Hammon was a Travelers Insurance agent based in Chicago, and frequently wrote accident policies for railroad employees and for travelers on those railroads, as Chicago was one of the world's great railroad hubs.  

He was frequently acknowledged and thanked in the journal The Travelers Record for his services by policy holders after Travelers adjusters paid the claims on the policies he sold them:

Both acknowledgements were published in The Travelers Record.

Travelers Insurance Agent cancels from the Travelers Insurance 1898 mini-album:

CNH

8/16/98

manuscript cancel

C N H

8/16/98

manuscript cancel

C.N.H.

Mar 11/1899

 

C. N. H.

NOV 1 1899

CHICAGO

C. N. H.

SEP 25 1899

CHICAGO

C. N. H.

JUL ? 1899

CHICAGO

Travelers Insurance Agent Cancels: D. B. Bell of Pittsburg, Pa

Travelers Insurance Agent cancels from the Travelers Insurance 1898 mini-album:

D. B. BELL.

AUG 9 1898

Pittsburg, Pa.

D. B. BELL.

SEP 28 1899

Pittsburgh, Pa.

from The Travelers Record, August 1900

Travelers Insurance Company Travel Accident Policy

The month of April is spent on the mini-album of Travelers canceled stamps that was highlighted in the post of April 2.  But today we take a slight detour with an travelers accident policy with a R162 1/2 cent battleship stamp.  The name of the company gives a direct indication of the business that gave the company its start:  insurance for travelers.  

Shameless plagiarism from Wikipedia:

The Travelers Insurance Company was founded in Hartford by James G. Batterson, a stone contractor who became aware for the first time of accident insurance for travelers while traveling in England in 1859 from Leamington to London. His railway ticket included accidental death insurance coverage up to the amount of £1,000, and lesser indemnities for non-fatal injuries. Batterson visited the London and Paris offices of European insurers to learn about the accident insurance business, then went home to Hartford and raised $500,000 in capital to launch a company to provide accident insurance to American travelers.

Travelers obtained its official state charter on June 17, 1863. The company did not issue its first regular insurance policy until April 5, 1864, but informally entered into its first insurance agreement a month earlier. On March 1, 1864, local banker James Bolter jokingly inquired of Batterson how much it would cost to insure him up to $5,000 for accidental death for the journey from the post office to his home. Batterson replied, "Two cents," which Bolter promptly tendered; those coins have been kept by Travelers ever since.

By the 1898 tax period, Travelers had branched into all sorts of accident and life insurance, yet insurance for traveles remained important to their business.  Below is an example of a policy sold to E. D. Sutherland, for three days of travel, primarily on the Michigan Central Railroad, that likely included a round trip that started in Bay City, Michigan.

R162 canceled with a Michigan Central Railroad handstamp

Insurance Company Cancels: The Travelers Insurance Company

 

34th Annual Statement of The Travelers Insurance Company from January 1, 1898.  The company paid nearly $6 million in life and accident claims in 1897.  The company was selling buckets of insurance by 1898, requiring the use of tens of thousands of battleship tax stamps.  This post features just a few of those stamps used and canceled directly by The Travelers.

The Travelers "mini-album" contained two types of Travelers handstamped cancels.  The first type is a circular date stamp of which only a few examples were included in the book.  The second type is a simple initial straight line cancel, for which there are hundreds of examples in two different colors and on all the stamps from R161 to R168.

TRAVELERS INSURANCE CO.

FEB

17

1899

For the initial cancels, the mini-album included two different colors of the cancel, blue and violet.  The R161 examples included only blue cancels.  

T. I. Co.

NOV 23 1899

Blue

Violet