About ten years ago, during a stamp auction, I bid $1,200 on an envelope,
pictured below. I failed to win the lot. But the story did not end there.
Lot I.
Letter to B. A. Webber, Superintendent in Ashton, RI. from a letter writer at the Dodgeville Mill in Dodgeville, MA and franked in Dodgeville on the first day of issue with a plate number and partial inscription pair of Scott 372. This is the lot I failed to win (grr).
The postage stamps on the envelope were commissioned for a pecuniary
festival held in New York
meant to boost commerce in the city and commemorate two objects
engraved on each stamp. One was Robert Fulton’s Clermont paddle boat
traveling
between Albany and New York, which was the first viable commercial
steam-powered
line in America (5). The other was the sailboat commanded by a certain
European explorer who discovered the river upon
which the Clermont would steam many years later, Henry Hudson.
Serviced in 1909, the envelope today has a catalog value of $950, not because it's old, has a rare stamp, or is addressed in a fancy calligraphic hand long before keyboarding stole our basic skill of writing in longhand. It's because the postmark shows it was cancelled on the day the stamp was issued, July 25.
Moreover, it was made a decade before collecting such “first day covers” began to be promoted by the Washington D.C. bureau in charge of making stamps in order to sell more of them, which would subsequently establish a new form of collecting, induce stamp dealers to service them for a fee, and make them more common. So this first day cover was rare.
Its rarity was enhanced by details without which I would not have been interested in bidding. Whoever serviced this envelope put more postage than was necessary on it, two stamps instead of the first class postal rate that one 2c stamp represented. The reason to me was obvious. It was so that the stamps could include enough edge paper, called selvage, to include two bits of information about the stamps: the number of the flat plate used to hand-press images of 100 stamps at a time onto full sheets, and the name of the federal agency responsible, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. These were add-on values not represented in the catalog value. Since I collect no other form of postal history, this was indeed a prize.
Bidding began online, after which the fate of the lots would be decided live at the gallery. I had opened online with the minimum, $500, with a reserve up to $1,200, which was $250 over catalog value. No one else posted a bid. I remember well the day action went live and in person as well as online. I was not familiar with live auction bidding, which was why I put down enough to go well past catalog value. I wanted that envelope and hoped the bidding would stop well below that. There was hesitation when $1,200 was reached. And then someone in the gallery bid $1,300. I desperately tried to make my computer override it, but failed. The gavel slammed down. My wife had been watching over my shoulder, but saying, “Well, at least you saved a bunch of cash” did not assuage my disappointment.
There is often absolution after failure. In this case, of course, the failure was not critical, and I happily went on collecting. Years later kindly absolution came by means of enhanced skills in collecting procedures, chances with similar lots, lessons in history that resulted from scientific research, and an opportunity for storytelling. Since I was a high school science teacher, let’s continue the story using a scientific method.
HYPOTHESIS
Stamp collectors working in the early twentieth century textile industry aided each other in initiating a novel kind of philatelic item, to wit, “first day covers”.
GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING
Textile mills in an area of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, emptied by the Blackstone River, which becomes the Providence River that flows past Providence, RI into the bays emptying into the Atlantic past Newport, RI
DATA
Lot II.
Lot III.
Letter to B. A. Webber, Superintendent in Ashton, RI, from the same letter writer of the Lot I envelope and franked in Attleboro, RI with a plate number single of Scott 372 two days prior to the official first day of issue. This lot is for sale on eBay for a firm price that is appreciably more expensive, $2,000.
RESULTS
Bertrand A. Webber worked his way up the ladder in the textile industry. He perhaps started his career in Maine in 1888, per a textile trade paper entry, “B. A. Webber of Chicopee, MA is now at Auburn, ME”. (1) He become superintendent of the Lonsdale Company of Ashton, RI, which is located on the Blackstone River north of Providence. Webber would remain in this position until his death sometime in the spring of 1922, according to the June 6, 2022 entry, “...filling the vacancy caused by the recent death of Bertrand A. Webber.” (2)
William E. Sykes, the addressee of my cover, Lot II, also worked his way up the ladder. Eleven years after these letters were written in 1909, a textile trade paper dated November 4, 2020 states, “William E Sykes of Pontiac has been made agent and superintendent of the Arctic and Centreville textile mills” (3) in the heavily industrialized mill towns south of Providence in the Warwick area.
In a 2004 nomination form to place the Centreville mill in the Dept. of Interior National Register of Historic Places is the following.
“The Centreville Mill is, located at 3 Bridal Avenue in the village of Centreville, a mixed industrial, commercial, and residential area in southern West Warwick, Rhode Island. The 12.7-acre mill parcel is located largely on the east bank of the South Branch of the Pawtuxet River, a heavily industrialized waterway that supplied power and process water to numerous industrial enterprises along its route from its head waters in the Flat River Reservoir in Coventry, Rhode Island to its confluence with the North Branch at the village of Riverpoint, and to Pontiac Mills in Warwick.” (4, with my bold italics)
CONCLUSION
We can surmise that William E. Sykes of Pontiac in Warwick, south of Providence might be the one who worked in the Dodgeville mill northeast and across the state line in Dodgeville, MA. If so, someone he knew in his home region serviced the Lot II cover, my cover, which got sent to him the first day of issue. On the same day in Dodgeville and also in Attleboro nearby, it was perhaps Sykes who ran around to local post offices servicing the Lot I and Lot III covers and sending them to Webber, a higher up at the mills up river north of Providence.
Perhaps Sykes intended to ingratiate himself to this superintendent he admired enough to want to become one himself by using a very flowery calligraphy for the addressee. Sure enough, Sykes moved back to the area of Warwick and West Warwick in 1920 to head mills there.
In any event, these were serious collectors, able to recognize the value of servicing specimens that would be called first day covers during the early days of the Fourth Bureau, beginning in 1920 with the administration of Warren Harding. Moreover, they were sophisticated, bothering to include selvage and plate number. Lot III, addressed to Webber by the same hand as Lot I, was even posted two days before the official date of release, which indicated a remarkable incentive in procuring (by twisting the arm of a local postmaster) and enacting a highly collectible and inspiring “pre-first day” first day cover.
One more conclusion: Rewards are rarely obtained in first instances. Persevering patiently over time can often lead to rewards later, usually in forms not easily predicted.
Sources:
1. Wade’s Fibre and Fabric: A Record of American Textile Industries (a practical paper for the cotton and woolen trades) Vol. VII No. 182 August 25, 1888
2. ibid. Vol. 70 No. 1908 June 6, 2022
3. American Wool and Cotton Reporter Vol. XXXIV No. 45 November 4, 2020 page 57 (3847)
4. Centreville Mill National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
5. https://www.nps.gov/safr/blogs/did-the-age-of-sail-end-part-1-sail-gives-way-to-steam.htm
