Page 3 - Demo

Parts of a postmark and cancel,from the Post Mark Collectors Club.Example of a Doane%u2019s cancellation.within them. They were used in the early 20thcentury, were produced with rubber handstamps, and were named after a researcher, Edith Doane, who assembled lists of postal markings and studied their history. Those with four killer bars are called, not surprisingly, 4-bar cancels. Many of the covers in this collection contain 4-bar cancels%u2014however, they are later versions, usually made with steel hand-stamps, and do not have numerals in the killer. To collectors, the study of postmarks can get quite detailed. Many of the covers in this album are addressed to Willard McPherson in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Very little is known about him, other than the very basics: he was born about 1904, married a woman named Mary, had two sons, Dalton and Joseph, and he died in 1982. Other covers addressed to McPherson occasionally turn up on eBay and, as with many of the ones in this collection, they often have cachets produced by Aristocrats (Day Lowry), Stephen Anderson, or Cachet Craft (Ken Boll). However, none of the cachets on McPherson covers are related to the Post Office%u2019s closing. A short note found inside a cover with a Templeton, Indiana postmark (next page) is probably similar to requests he mailed to soon-to-be-closed Post Offices all across the country. Some of the Post Offices in this collection are classified as Stations, while others are Branches. While both operate under the administration of a larger Post Office, a Station lies within the same municipality of the main Post Office, and a Branch lies outside it. Those facilities that arelisted as Classified are staffed by government employees hired by the Post Office, while Contract facilities are operated by nonPost Office personnel. Some collectors save postmarks affixed to small pieces of paper (next page), or they cut the postmark from its envelope, while others prefer to save the entire cover, as in this collection. The majority of covers herein were cancelled on the final day the Post Offices were open for business, as listed in The Postal Bulletin. However, for a few, when the official last day was a Sunday, they were cancelled on the day before. Also, a handful of covers are included which were cancelled on the opening day of a Post Office, or the initial day it operated as a different type of facility, or under a new name.