Today in Postal History
This stained registry cover was probably used to send stamps
from the
Antigua Post Office in St. Johns.
St. Johns is on the northwest coast of Antigua which is in the
northern Lesser Antilles at the east end of the Caribbean.
The cover has two St. Johns CDS and two oval POST OFFICE
ANTIGUA handstamps.
On of the oval handstamps was initialed by a clerk.
There is also a faint ON HIS MAJESTY'S SERVICE handstamp across the top.
The cover was given a preprinted registry label and send on its way.
It is interesting to note that there is was no blue crayon
cross common to Commonwealth post office registry marks.
The letter proceeded to New York where it arrived on
October 3 and was given two oval registry stamps.
Again it is interesting that the USPO didn't add a registry number.
It arrived at its destination of Penns Grove
(caution slow loader), New Jersey, on October 4.
Penns Grove is on the east side of the Delaware River across from
Wilmington, Delaware.
Before the days of the interstate highway system,
the Penns
Grove Ferry (caution, slow loader) was a principal Delaware River
crossing
for automobile traffic flowing along the east coast on Route 40 from
1927 to 1929.*
The cover is franked with King George V stamps from the
1921-29 series.
There is a 1d bright violet issued in 1923 and a 1/ black on emerald
paper
which is most likely the multiple crown and script CA
watermark issued in 1929.
The former is SG 64 and the latter is SG 76.
*Petrelet (Pete Kimball) makes this interesting surmise
regarding the
addressee:
| On
the Penns Grove cover, I was struck by the "street address", which I
make out to be "26, SINGLES THAOS". I tried to read it a lot of other
ways, and I looked over some maps wondering if it was badly mistyped,
but the bottom line is that there is not, today, in Penns Grove, any
street address that is remotely like that. As far as I could tell.
However, I have a hypothesis. According to the web site pennsgrovehistory.com , at the end of WWI the Delaware Ordnance Depot was built at Penns Grove, and it had attached to it a military-controlled housing complex called (sort of whimsically I think) "Ordmont". This was still in existence through WWII. I wonder if the address on this cover may be some kind of bureaucratic address like "Singles Temporary Housing Army Ordnance Storage" or something similar. Of course this could just be unsupported speculation. BTW, according to the above cited website, Penns Grove was the world caviar capital at the end of the 19th century, when you could catch sturgeon in the Delaware. |
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