By David Smith
A precancel is a stamp that has been cancelled under proper authority with a device designed solely for that purpose before being affixed to mail. Precancels are used by big volume mailers. Their purpose is to speed up sending the mail once it reaches the post office. When Vick seed company of Rochester switched to precancels in the late 1800s, it eliminated the need for 11 mail clerks to cancel each days mailing of seed catalogues, seeds, letters, etc. The firm was mailing 20 tons of mail in a normal day. Today seed catalogues would have a mailers permit showing postage was paid, and business letters would have a postage meter or permit.
Figure 1
Figure 1 from one of those mailings illustrates a key point about precancels. The cancel is not tied to the cover. Many early precancel covers have been ruined when some unknowing collector carefully tied the precancel to the cover to enhance his collection.
Figure 2 illustrates two additional points:
- On regular issues the stamp is from the point of origin. On postage dues the stamp is affixed at the final destination, in this case Buffalo. The precancel used in Rochester by Vick and others was long misidentifed as being a Galesburg, IL precancel because the first cover found was mailed from there and had precancelled postage due stamps on the cover.
- When a single line precancel is removed from its cover it becomes impossible to tell which city it came from. Close to a hundred cities used one ruled pen line as their means of precancelling sheets of postage dues.
Figure 2
These postmarks are called silent precancels because the cancellation did not name the town of its origin. Most 19th century precancels were silent. Nearly all 20th century precancels through 1978 contained the name of the town where the stamp was cancelled. From 1979 on most precancels went back to the silent precancel format. Some local silent precancels have been used until quite recently when a regular precancelling device was unavailable.
Figure 3
Precancelling was done in the United States even before there were stamps. The earliest printed precancellation on a stampless cover dates to 1831 in Arkansas. An 1854 cover from the Croton Flour Mills in Croton, NY is another example (Figure 3).
Local stamps were also precancelled. New York City used the Hale local (Figure 4). The first U.S. postage stamps to be precancelled were Scott No. 1 and 2, which were given a control cancel by the Wheeling, VA postmaster. The red grid was applied once to every four stamps, precisely at the center of each block in the sheet (Figure 4 right). When they were used, they were cancelled again. Once the stamp is removed from a cover it is impossible to identify its source. The New York City pearl used on 1879 and 1884 postage due stamps is the most common silent precancel and is found in nearly every dealers stock of Bank Note postage dues (Figure 5). Chicago, IL used a similar pearl with “C(PO)” in the design.
Early precancels were normally a line or a series of lines placed on the stamp. Some were printed, most were hand applied. Pen, pencil, crayon, cork, brush, and daub were the most commonly used. When the Treasury Department imposed a tax on all photographs sold in the United States from August 1, 1864 to August 1, 1866, requiring application of a revenue stamp, photographers were to cancel the stamps by writing their initials and the date. Many larger studios, however, used pen precancels (Figure 6). However some postmasters allowed other patterns and methods. Portland NY printed the initials of the Postmaster, E. P. Harris, on the stamp after it was affixed to the cover (Figure 7 left). The “E.” appears on the cover. The Glen Allen, VA star was similarly printed. Binghamton used a star punch (Figure 7 right). Others, like Rochester, used a series of lines that could be mistaken for a standard post cancel.
Definitive stamps were supposed to be used, but some postmasters allowed commemoratives (Figure 8). During this time an interesting practice was used by some mailers. They would bundle a group of advertisements to a particular town. The top letter would contain money for postage. The receiving postmaster would put postage stamps on the letters and deliver the envelopes to his customers. There was a special rate for this mailing. Some postmasters precancelled the stamps before affixing them to this drop rate mail. A cover with two crossed pen lines was mailed at Moreau Station, NY (Figure 9). About 1890 postmasters began requiring that the name of the city be placed on the precancel. The first city to regularly require this was Burlington, VT (Figure 10 left). Many of its stamps have a cancel so blurred that one can not make out the city (Figure 10 right). Inevitably it became necessary to standardize precancels so that any postal clerk would recognize one if he saw it. In the next article I will discuss 20th century precancels with the town name on the stamp.