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Hawaii Postal History
and the Grinnells
(Ken Lawrence, August 3, 2006)
Fred
Gregory has asserted during the Frajola board discussion that no mail
was postmarked at
Honolulu
between December 1851 and February 20, 1852
. The paltry sample of datable covers from a time when the Honolulu
post office was sending out about 1,000 letters per month is insufficient to suggest a typical practice, and absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence. So these arguments fail to discredit the
hypothesis that the JAN, FEB, and MAR red cancels on some Grinnell
stamps may have been applied at
Honolulu in 1852. Richard Frajola has advanced a strong argument against this
hypothesis, based largely on the analogy to United States
postal practice of the 1850s, but it falls short of proof in my opinion.
The alternative theory advanced by Jeffrey K. Weiss proposed that the
postmarks and cancels were applied to the Grinnells at Waialua: When
William [Emerson] went to Waialua in November 1851, might Whitney not
have said to him something like: Will, since you have been working
for me and the Post Office for some time, why not take a batch of stamps
and a canceler or two with you, and run an informal office there for a
few months, until you feel better and return to Honolulu? After all,
such informal offices happened in many other places in the world at that
time. Then when William did not return, but left on the voyage, the
device(s) might well have remained in Waialua, forgotten. [Pooleka
O Hawaii 72, page 10] But I'm skeptical that any
Honolulu
postmarks wereused outside Honolulu, and especially at a time when Whitney refused to allow mail to be
processed and dispatched at Lahaina, which was the most logical post
office after
Honolulu, and the next one to be formally established. Even if mail could have
been stamped and canceled (with killers) at Waialua, it should not have
received a
Honolulu
date and rating (Hawaiian or Hawaiian & U.S.) mark there.
On
December 25, 1850, Henry Whitney announced that A mail will be made up once a week for
the above port [San Francisco], which will contain all letters and papers for different parts of the
U.S. except such as are marked to be sent via
Cape Horn
. [M-H page 16] Thus bagging mail was not dated according to ship
departures at that time when the straightline was in use.
Meyer and Harris state that Whitney used the Honolulu straightline
postmark until he secured a circular handstamp, [page 17] which
seems logical to me, and makes it probable that manuscript-canceled
covers in the period between the latest recorded straightline and the
earliest recorded CDS were probably dispatched from another port.
M-H wrote [page 22], No foreign mail was accepted from the other
Islands
. It would perhaps be more correct to state that no such mail left with
official sanction; undoubtedly ships touching at
Hilo
on the large Island
of
Hawaii, Lahaina, and other Hawaiian ports would take the foreign-going mail
unofficially. The actual mail, however, bearing the Hawaiian postmark,
wherever originating in the islands, went through
Honolulu and received the postmark Honolulu
.
Whitneys
October 1, 1851, notice stated, MAILS FOR SAN FRANCISCO are made up and dispatched
about every fortnight. Due notice of the closing of each mail will be
given. Mails are made up at the San Francisco P.O. for this port, on the
5th and 20th of each month, and are due at this port about the 8th and
24th of each month. [page 20]
Yet Fred Gregory wrote that he has recorded 1852 covers dated February
20, 21, and 25, and "March 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 15 (x2), 27 and 31 all
with a
Honolulu
postmark. How can that be? Did mail close twice or more weekly during
those months instead of twice monthly? I think there must be a different
explanation. (Fred has not stated that all these were
San Francisco
bound, but I assume that if any had been endorsed otherwise, such as via
Cape Horn, he would have reported that.)
The difficulty of analysis is that if the Grinnell stamps and cancels
are genuine, no covers of proven Honolulu origin exist that were posted
during most of that early 1852 period prior to February 20.
Frederic
Wheeler rejected the Meyer-Harris assignment of cover dates to
particular ships: The only basis for such assignment is the
coincidental nature of a cancellation date.
(Siegel
auction of the Advertiser collection, lot #2131)
An
example of the Meyer-Harris fallacy can be studied by viewing a
stampless cover in Thurston Twigg-Smiths exhibit (shown above),
postmarked HONOLULU * U.S. Postage Paid * MAY 23. Here is the Twigg-Smiths
caption:
Honolulu, May 23, (1851) to New York
The Honolulu * U.S. Postage Paid marking Meyer-Harris
236.05 was in use from early 1851 to June, 1857 to indicate to the
San Francisco post office that U.S. Postage had been prepaid. It helps
us date covers in that period. Presence of the fourth and fifth period
rate of 8¢ for prepaid mail to
New
York
ties the date down to between
December
21, 1850
and
March
31, 1855
.
The San Francisco July 1 mark further dates it prior to April 1, 1855
when the normal sailing dates became the 5th and 20th. Presence of the
circle 8 mark 6¢ for the
U.S.
and 2¢ for the ship in the orange ink used in San
Francisco
shows the rate markings were applied there. (We think the crayon
markings may have been applied in
Honolulu
,
particularly for unusual ratings. Otherwise, how would
San
Francisco
know how much had been collected in Hawaii?)
Ships sailing data helps pin this letter to 1851. The May 23 postmark
indicates the ship sailed that day or a day or two later. The American
ship Loo Choo cleared
Honolulu
May
24, 1851,
with mail for
San
Francisco
.
Although May, 1851 was a third period sailing, the rate was 6¢ + 2¢
in both cases, and the San Francisco office anyway would have been
guided by the July 1 cancelling date, the start of the fourth period. No
known sailings in 1852, 1853, or 1854 fit that bill. By May, 1855, of
course, the March 31, 1855 rate change would have called for a 12
marking instead of an 8.
Scott Trepels description for that cover as lot 2131 in the
Advertiser sale stated: Although using sailing dates it can be argued
this is a 1851 usage, it is more likely 1852, as in May 1851 Postmaster
Whitney ordered this canceling device from New York through J.W. Gregory
of San Francisco. If Trepel is correct, that was a Sunday closing.
Mail processing was never exactly according to the book, especially in
the 1850s. Hawaiian mail that transited
San
Francisco
normally was postmarked there on the date when the steamer was scheduled
to depart for Panama,
which was the first or 15th/16th on each month in 1852. But numerous
exceptions are recorded when Hawaiian mail transiting San
Francisco
was instead postmarked on the day of arrival or the next day, not on the
date of departure for
Panama.
Examples are Advertiser lots 6, 8, and 9 (the fabulous
Dawson
cover) in the Missionary volume, and some stampless covers in the second
volume. Further study is needed on this aspect also.
(Addendum
August 5, 2006)
After
Honolulu
, post offices were established at Lahaina (1850),
Hilo
(1851), Kawaihae (1852) and Waiohinu (1852, actually the Kau district
office). Customs collectors were required to act as postmasters
without additional compensation, and postmark devices were not issued
until 1860, but some customs seals were used to cancel stamps.
Inter-island mail was free until 1859, but there were no carriers
until 1856. Masters of coastal watercraft were required to pick up and
deliver letters at ports of call along their routes, also without
compensation.
By
custom, a person or family or business in each coastal town and
village became responsible for accepting and dispatching letters, and
postal historians tend to regard these individuals as informal
postmasters and the places as informal post offices. As for stamps, I
doubt that any were officially supplied to locations other than those
announced in the government newspaper The Polynesian, but its
possible that some of the individuals acquired personal supplies of
stamps that they made available to other members of their communities.
Absent contrary evidence, these must have been accounted as private
transactions, so one should not exaggerate the responsibilities of
these so-called postmasters where no post offices had been officially
established.
In
an October 26, 1970, Linns article, Edward J. Burns, president of
the Hawaiian Philatelic Society, wrote, Within another three years
[after 1852], by 1855, four additional post offices were established.
. . . Mauis new office was at Wailuku town while
Oahu
s was also designated by the district name, Waialua, with the
office located in Haleiwa town.
During
these early years, overland mail routes were established on three of
the major islands,
Hawaii
, Maui, and
Oahu
, with carriers paid for the strenuous work of transporting the mails
by mule pack over trails traversing lava flows, mountainsides, gorges,
and streams. Postmaster General Joseph Jackson noted in his report to
the minister of the interior for the 18-month period July 1, 1856 to
December 31, 1857 that $1,340.25 had been paid for mail carrier
services on three islands.
In
Additions to Hawaiian Postal History (1972), the first update and
revision of Meyer-Harris, Burns reported that S.N. Emerson was the
Waialua postmaster 1858-75, but he listed no earlier postmaster. That
appointment is confirmed by the 1859 first distribution of Numerals
stamps to Emerson.
In
Additions volume 2 (1980), Burns listed the Waialua post office
1856-1900, and A manuscript cancel has been noted on a Numeral.
His earliest reported Waialua datestamp is 1882.
If
Waialua had an established post office as early as 1855 or 1856, but
S.N. Emerson was not its postmaster until 1858, its possible that
his father Rev. John Emerson was the first postmaster, as Patrick
Pearson wrote, but I have seen no documentation to support that claim.
Either way, the evidence provides no support for Jeffrey Weisss
theory that young William Emerson performed postal services at Waialua
in 1852, nor that such extraordinary service as postmarking foreign
mail occurred anywhere outside
Honolulu
.
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