Submitted by H.R. Harmer.
On January 17, 2023, H.R. Harmer Fine Stamp Auctions will be offering at public auction the eighth of ten installments of the “Erivan” Collection of United and Confederate States Postal History. This collection represents one of the most comprehensive and important holdings of American postage stamps ever assembled, and its appearance at auction marks a watershed moment for the hobby of philately. Highlights from the past few years include an envelope carried by Pony Express to Abraham Lincoln, which sold for $330,000, and the famous “Blue Boy” stamp of Alexandria, Virginia, which realized an impressive $1.18 million.
This upcoming sale includes an 1855 envelope and letter from Steilacoom City, Washington to Wilmington, Ohio.
This is a very early piece of mail from the first post office ever established in Washington territory. “Getting mail out of Washington territory and across the country wasn’t easy and it was very expensive at the time,” H.R. Harmer President and CEO, Charles Epting remarked. “It’s incredibly rare to have mail from Washington this early. I would consider this one of the greatest artifacts of Washington postal history you can find.”
The value of this envelope cannot be measured in merely monetary terms—it is a key piece of Americana and Washington state history. Erivan Haub (1932-2018), a German businessman and philanthropist with a love for American history, spent decades curating a collection of United States stamps and postal history that documents the rise of America in the 19th Century and beyond. Mr. Haub preserved some of the most precious artifacts from America’s past, and this coming January items from his collection will once again have a chance to make history on the auction block.
It would be interesting to know who was the sender, who was the recipient, and what was the subject of the correspondence. Ten cents was an expensive amount of postage back in 1855.
Interesting to note that the stamp was the more expensive (10 cents) of the two earliest regular postage stamps (a 5 cent Franklin being the other) for sale in America. The first sale of such stamps occurred just 8 years earlier (1847).
Thanks for this tidbit of history.
Very interesting early day postal cover. Although the 10c Washington imperforate, type II stamp was issued in 1855, the envelope was mailed in later years. The letter inside the cover would have to be examined to possibly determine the year of mailing since the year is not included in the circular date stamp.
The addressee, Mrs. Louise (Rombach) Denver (1833 – 1914) was from Wilmington, Ohio. She was the spouse of James William Denver (1817 – 1892). They were married at Wilmington in Nov 1856. He was a U.S. Congressman (1855 – 1857), Territorial Governor of Kansas (1857 – 1859) and Union Army Brigadier General during the Civil War. He later practiced law in Washington, D.C. They are both buried at Wilmington.
The city and county of Denver, Colorado is named after James Denver.