From Wiki:
"In England, overseers of the poor administered poor relief such as money, food and clothing as part of the Poor Law system. The position was created by the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1597.
Overseers of the poor were often reluctant appointees who were unpaid, working under the supervision of a justice of the peace. The law required two overseers to be elected every Easter, and churchwardens or landowners were often selected.
The new system of poor relief reinforced a sense of social hierarchy and provided a way of controlling the 'lower orders'. Overseers of the poor were replaced in the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, and replaced with boards of guardians, although overseers remained in some places as a method of collecting the poor rate."
I wonder if this is from the same group mentioned on Wiki (Overseers of the poor)?
I know exactly what you mean, sometimes the compilation of the components that make up the cover just kind of "hit ya", sometimes for no apparent reason.
Here is a cover that I hemmed and hawed over, cuz I thought the price was too high. Then, a very similar (but less interesting) example from the same sender to the same addressee sold for like, $70, so I changed my mind and bought it this week:
Cottonville, Iowa is a DPO. Well, more like a ghost town about 10 miles from where I was born and raised, in Jackson county. I always knew there was a sizable population of people with a German heritage up that way...There are a lot of Ehlers still living in that area.
This one interests me for a bunch more reasons than that.
- I think "Via Bremen" means that it was carried on the steamship Bremen, of the Norddeutscher Lloyd line.
- I'm thinking that red cancellation is a ship cancel, dated 23 3 72.
- The two stamps are of two different colors (Carmine and Brown Carmine, I think)
- It pays double the steamship rate to Germany from 1871.
- There's a round CHICAGO PAID cancel in red on the back, dated MAR 7.
- There's a round AUSG. No: 1 receiver cancel on the back, showing a partial date 2_.
- Finally, there's a mysterious manuscript "Nro 107." on the back.
I like the 19th century out of country covers also ! Johnny if you like boat mail..the United Fruit Company had a lot of ships from the Central American countries..the mail would be from different countries and different ships. I have 3 from Guatemala which i collect. You could find them for a couple of bucks each. phil
This one just came yesterday. What it spoke to me was, "Put me next to my sister!":
See the cover I posted in this thread, above, back in April. Obviously same sender, same addressee, 12 years between them. I've now seen three of these covers, all offered by different sellers. I really wonder what the sender was up to, because they look like they are in some kind of series.
Bellevue is not a DPO, and is located 10 miles to the East of Cottonville, which was DPOed in 1900. It really looks to me like the CDS on this cover is January 1.
Sidebar: Bellevue (pop. 2200) is one of the principal towns in Jackson County, Iowa. I was born and raised in Maquoketa (pop. 5900), the county seat of Jackson County, located 20 miles southwest of Bellevue. There was a long-standing and bitter rivalry for the county seat between these two towns. The memory of this animosity certainly persists to this day, if not the actual animosity itself.
Anyway, very curious...
Can anyone decipher the lower-left word on the front of the cover? First few letters look like "Groß" to me ("large").
-Paul
PS, the only thing remaining from old Cottonville is the cemetery, here: 42.236353, -90.604517. Next time I'm in Iowa, I'll have to take a walk through to see if I can find a connection with these covers!
  1 Member likes this post. Login to Like.
Please Note: Postings that were loaded from the old Discussion Board cannot be edited.