The Territorial Post Offices of Wisconsin
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‘ ‘, I \‘ I’ I ,—qflL.t’ ( (•r \ .x —.— ‘j itor 7” / ( bV a OZ3)I’Ud cq1LOr( 1sLo1,ivzn1und /CL’3D09 ANOIS1H1VISOd NISOSlV 9S! ‘n[’—ig’i ‘9(?9O3Q .h.JOiAi?j Ut ?.i3ii1 &ui,rn/u/, 4 f’!14 ‘°P - t4l’6t AvW-9c1’iA1ur sMaYW,LsOd aN sico iiLji C NisMoSiX\ -? S3Db6IOlSOd lYfliO,Lftfl13JYL NDE3(/ Page Foreword 1 The Covers of Wisconsin Territory 2 - 5 List of Territorial Post Offices of Wisconsin 6 - 11 Old Covers 12 - Postmarks 18 - 22 Maps: Wisconsin area of Michigan Territory 19 Wisconsin Territory - its original 1856 extent and subsequent reductions 20 Wisconsin Territory l858_l818 21 List of recorded Wisconsin Territorial covers 25 - 58 ( 1rht 1063 \\ir’Ui11fl 1}r-tJI Ii(,r\ ‘fti’tV I o }EW 0 RD This handbook is published by Wisconsin Postal Hist ory Society not only to widen the philatelic world’s overall familiarity with Wisconsin’s postal history, but more particularly to fill two needs that direct ly affect both the collecting and study of Wisconsin Territorial Covers. 1. To give collectors and dealers precise statistic al facts as to what is rare or scarce or plentiful. 2. To bring word of other covers that are not listed here but which can in future be added,thereby making the W.P.H.S. lists more complete and authoritative. Please send information about such covers to Arthur Van Vlissingen, Box 912, Lake Forest, Illinois. During the four years while this handbook’s list was being compiled, the editors had ample opportunity to observe these needs. Covers of which dozens are in philatelic hands were often found priced higher than eq.ually attractive covers of which only one or three are known. And from time to time the list lengthened as word came of a substantial number of covers held by somebody whose interest in Wisconsin Territorial items had hitherto been unknown to the editors, des pite their own long addiction to that specialty. Digging in original source material has brought into this handbook a considerable bulk of totally new in formation. But also this book puts to use the best of previously published facts. The editors grateful ly acknowledge permission of authors and publishers to borrow data and illustrations from: The First 100 Years of U. S. Territorial Postmarks, Carroll Chase and Richard McP. Cabeen, The American Philatelist, Jan.-Feb. 191114; U. S. Territorial Post mark Catalog, E. N. Sampson, 1950; Territorial Cover Collecting, U. S. Cancellation Club News, 1961. So many collectors and dealers have assisted by sup plying information and suggestions that it becomes necessary to thank them collectively instead of nam ing them individually, as the editors would. prefer were space available for the complete roster. ‘I EDITORS •Harold E. Richow •Ray Van Handel, Sr. •Arthur Van Vlissingen 1 THE COVERS OF WISCONS IN TERRITORY 18 36-l88 Everything else being equal, a stampless mail speed across continents and oceans cover will probably carry more official finds it hard. to believe there ever was postal markings than a stamped cove, if any considerable traffic on the streams only because such notations were used in and Great Lakes of the Middle West prior place of a stamp. Accordingly there is to settlement of these regions. The fact likely to be more postal history to be is that by 1700 the French explorers and deciphered from the markings on a stamp- missionaries had paddled their birchbark less cover. craft across all of that region north of the Ohio River. They traveled by canoe, This is particularly true of Territorial they shipped pelts and maple sugar east covers, those mailed in a United States ward, trade goods and supplies westward, territory prior to its admission to the in sturdy bark boats 50 feet long and 10 Union as a state. From most territories feet wide, propelled by the paddles of a admitted to statehood prior to the Civil dozen squat, swarthy halfbreeds who were War, these covers are not plentiful. A willing to work from daybreak to dark on territory in those years was typically a diet of lard and parched corn. set up by Congress in a sparsely settled wilderness, and this area was generally More than 250 years ago Frenchmen estab granted statehood before it contained a lished a network of missions and trading population sufficient to produce a great posts where practically every large Mid volume of mail or of postal markings. dle Western city stands today.Missionar ies and traders require communications. Wisconsin is one of several territories So important were these that in those that yielded few enough covers to be in years French soldiers were fighting Fox teresting to those collectors who relish Indians to enforce free passage between the search itself,and that still yielded the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes enough to be rewarding. In the strict by the pivotal portage connecting Great sense its territorial postal history be Lakes and Mississippi River system where gan when Wisconsin Territory was formed the city of Portage, Wisconsin stands. from Michigan Territory on July , 1836, and ended 12 years later when the State Letters traveled in both directions -- of Wisconsin was admitted to the Union outside the mails, because no mail serv as a full member on May 29, l8i8. ice officially existed -- by any trust worthy red man or white man who was go Any such legalistic definition rules out ing that way. Orders and reports, pers many of the most interesting and signif onal missives and commercial document icant covers available to the Wisconsin were regularly transmitted between Que Territory collector or postal historian. bec and such remote points as the sites of present-day Duluth and Milwaukee, as Mail moved with reasonable regularity in well as down the Great River to Frances this region more than 150 years before Louisiana. From Quebec and New Orleans the first post office was established on some of these letters went by royal mail ts pocket, to fam December 6, 1821 at Green Bay, then in or in the ship captain Michigan Territory. And the last Wiscon ilies, friends, and superiors across the sin Territory town mark was not discard broad Atlantic Ocean. ed by many a post office in the original boundaries of the Wisconsin Territory of Even as late as th l830s, it is likely 1836 until long after it had been placed that more Middle Western commercial mail in some other political jurisdiction by was conveyed outside the nails than in an Act of Congress. government pouches. Indians and couriers de bois went faster, and more frequently. Modern man with his living geared to the Also, postage rates were high, and canoe raridity and ease with which he and his nail was free. One need only look over 2 the old letters in some such archive as to Green Bay as a matter of course, and the Wisconsin State Historical Society. from that office was prorerly readdres - Nine-tenths of them carry on the face an sed and remailed to the Hon. Henry Dodge endorsement such as, “By Indian’ or “Par in his temporary capital at Belmont,near Jean Lablanc.” the opposite corner of today’s state. After the War of Revolution and the Ord When Chicago’s post office was opened in inance of 1787 which set up the “Terri 1852, a weekly mail route was undertaken tory Northwest of the River Ohio,” the to Green Bay -- by water when possible, postal routes of the young United States otherwise horseback, afoot, or on snow of America reached out a step at a time shoes. After four stops in Illinois the into this Northwest Territory. Mail for northbound courier officially served the the farthest frontier went to these new settlements at Pike(Kenosha), Root River post offices. Thence it somehow found (Racine), Oak Creek (South Milwaukee), its way to the hardy individuals living Milwaukee, (Port)Washington, and Sheboy beyond their postal jurisdiction ‘out not gan in Wisconsin. beyond their informal reach. But also this once-a-week postman was a Excellent examples are two letters to an means by which letters could be dropped Army officer stationed at Fort Dearborn, off at a log cabin on Manitoowoc Rapids sent in 1822 and 1823. The earlier is or the Fox for ultimate delivery to some addressed from Boston to “Chicago, Lake still more remote interior point. Event Michigan. “ Each carries the oval post ually the addressee would get it, when mark of Detroit, Mic,T. used as a trans ever someone passed who could forward it it mark. Detroit was then the farthest along on its way. outreach of U. S. Post Office Department toward the tiny military outpost at the Similarly the frontier post offices serv foot of lake Michigan. ed as way stations for outgoing letters. Mail might travel from Green Bay to the But the War Department took up where the post office at Mackinac Island in a fur post office left off. Each letter car brigade’s mackinaw boat because senders ries a red manuscript endorsement, “via knew it thus would probably arrive at an Fort Wayne.” In those days it really was eastern destination sooner than if they I a fort; it reported to the commandant at awaited the next official mail despatch Detroit. Military couriers traveled back from Green Bay’s post office. Such let and forth with orders and, incidentally, ters exist in a few collections. mail. A similar runner service reached from Fort Wayne to Fort Dearborn. So in From the beginning of France’s penetra I due time both letters were delivered to tion, fur had been the sole significant the officer in the log blockhouse at the commercial activity in all Wisconsin,ex mouth of the clear-flowing tiny Chicago cept in the small area at the southwest River, although the first Chicago post corner where today this state meets Iowa office would not be established for an and Illinois.