US POSTAL HISTORY BLOG

Charles Lindbergh — equal parts flying enthusiast, risk taker, and showman – was determined to make a career in aviation. He enrolled in the Army Air Service Cadet Program in 1924 and earned his wings the following year, graduating at the top of his class in March 1925. In October, he became chief pilot for Robertson Aircraft Corp., the company that won the federal Contract Air Mail route from St. Louis to Chicago in October.

It was love at first flight.

The fact that airmail service was relatively new — and particularly dangerous — appealed to Lindbergh’s daredevil nature. He wrote of the perils of his profession that, “the best way to cope with danger is to keep in contact with it.”

Lindberg loved the challenge of a good competition and was drawn to the Orteig Prize of $25,000 for the first nonstop New York-Paris flight. He was competing with top flyers from around the world, including U.S. Navy Commander Richard Byrd.

In 1927 at age 25, Lindbergh left his competitors in the dust as he crossed the country in 22 hours to arrive in New York on May 12th, before departing again on May 20. He left at 7:54 am from Roosevelt Field on Long Island and arrived at Le Bourget airfield near Paris May 21 at 10:54 pm to a cheering crowd of more than 150,000. Lindbergh’s total flight time was 33 hours, 30 minutes, 29.8 seconds. The pilot had not slept in 55 hours

Lindbergh carried only five covers on his famous 1927 Trans-Atlantic flight and they were for purely promotional purposes. He had declined to take a real mail sack onboard because of concerns about over the effects of extra weight.

Even after the introduction of postage stamps in the U.S., their use was not mandatory for eight more years. One famous consequence of this was that in 1848, Zachary Taylor did not know he had been nominated for President for several weeks after the nomination took place, until someone arrived to tell him in person - he had refused several letters conveying the news, because he did not care to pay the postage due!

This seems incredible in these days of instant world- wide communication, but demonstrates not only the disadvantage of the postage rules in effect at the time, but the different attitude of those times - people valued their privacy. It must be said as well in the famous man’s defense that he had been forced to instruct his postmaster to reject all unpaid mail. Taylor was receiving so much from admirers that the cost of the postage due was more than he could afford to pay! Moreover, he had not sought the nomination, and was not expecting it.

I would say it refers to a branch of collecting such items as envelopes, postcards, and wrappers with postage affixed, sold by post offices around the world. Some people collect by countries, states, cities, post offices, cancellations, events, and the list goes on and on. Cover collecting is a wide open field and an extension of stamp collecting. A “cover” is an envelope that has seen postal service. Many have “cachets,” a rubber stamped or printed impression or label placed on the cover descriptive of the event for which it was mailed.

Airmail postal history collectors will browse for First flights, Catapults, Zeppelins, Crash covers, Transpacific Airmail and all sorts of Commercial International Airmail.

Military postal history collectors will browse for war covers, APO covers, U.S. naval ship covers mailed by sailors, patriotic covers and other areas that pertain to military history.

There are so many areas to collect in there is just no way I can list all of them here. I haven’t even started on town cancellations, DPO’s, machine cancellations, flag cancellations, cities, states and many more collecting interest.