Early Years
Since the start of the United States of America, there has been a postal service offered by the government, just like those of almost all governments around the world. To mail a letter, one would hand it to someone at a post office and pay a fee for delivery – perhaps one cent. A notation would be made on the envelop to indicate the fee was paid. This wasn’t a fool proof system. A postal worker could collect the money outside of the post office, write that the fee was paid and slip it into the pile of letters at the post office without handing over the money collected.
For better control, some post offices around the world began printing and selling postage stamps. The first postage stamp was printed in the U.K. and issued in 1840. Other countries followed them over the next few years. The U.S. did so starting in 1847.
The postage stamps in this album are from the U.S., from those early years of postage stamps. Many stamps were printed by the same companies that printed bank notes, since they were already trusted with printing money. These were primarily printed by the American Bank Note Company, which printed the dollar bills.
Note
These album pages were designed and printed by Leuchtturm (i.e., Lighthouse). It was a tedious process, but I’ve managed to transfer my stamps from stockbooks that I used for many years, to these pages. I’ve scanned them and created a database of information on the stamps in alignment with the album pages.
The stamps from the early years, though, are expensive. So I don’t have many of them. The album pages show a gray copy of the ones I’m missing. So you still may find it interesting to look through them. It’s taking me some time, but I’m writing descriptions for each page. The table below is inventory summary for me – I have one of these tables at the start of each album and sub-album – of what I have and what I’m missing. When a page has all of the stamps and I’ve written a description of it, it’s removed from this table.
remaining stamps & stories in sub-album
page |
story |
note |
used |
need |
ordered |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
First Designs (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
2 |
17 |
|
Washington & Franklin (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
5 |
26 |
|
Reprints (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
10 |
||
Thomas Jefferson (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
10 |
29 |
|
Post Civil War (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
6 |
23 |
|
Pictorials (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
5 |
10 |
|
S.S. Adriatic (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
11 |
||
Edwin Stanton (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
1 |
11 |
|
Henry Clay (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
16 |
21 |
|
Zachary Taylor (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
16 |
18 |
|
Ulysses Grant (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
11 |
13 |
|
Columbus (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
5 |
||
Confederate States (Early Years) |
✓ |
✓ |
9 |