Franklin Ont. ghost town - stampless cover

I may be stating the obvious here but the Canadian ghost-town Makes perfect sense. There was many many of these ghost-towns created after the decline of the railroads. During their initial burgeoning prosperity the railroads was quite literally an artery and thousands of towns sprung up. Only the ones nearest to either a river or another larger community would survive. There are a few in PA as well, they're around Pittsburgh, Harrisburg and Philadelphia and a couple still exist yet untouched.

The plot thickens, Ontario Broken Circles by W. Bruce Graham and put out by the PHSC lists only 3 known broken circles from Franklin, Ontario.  The earliest strike with 'ONT' appearing at the bottom (rather than C.W.) has a listed earliest known usage of July 26, 1873.  That's just over two years later than your '71 strike.  According to the book, anything prior to '73 should be a double broken circle with C.W. on the bottom.  Either you've got the new earliest known strike or something fishy is going on.  Might be worth contacting the PHSC to see what they think.

PHSC <--The Website

EDIT: Just looking at the listings for Franlin strikes again.  There are two single broken circles listed; one used from July 26, 1873 to August 20, 1909 the second used from August 15, 1910 to March 16, 1931.  The first strike has a diameter of 20.5mm, the later hammer had a diameter of 19mm.  Can you measure the diameter of your strike?  Measuring across the top of the two arcs should align to one of the diameters in the book.  If the diameter is 19mm, it could very well be an up-side-down 1917 date.

BUT pre-payment of postage with an adhesive stamp was compulsory by 1875, so a cover that late should have a postage stamp on it... and would be into the Admiral period.  The 3-cent letter rate was in effect from 1868-1898, so this would more likely point to an 1871 strike.  So still, I am interested in the diameter measurement to see if we can narrow down which hammer was being used.

The book is a handy resource for a postal history collector. Aside from an introduction, a few pages about how to read the table, and a few illustrations it really is just a huge table. It's sorted alphabetically by town/city, but it is just page upon page containing line upon line of the known broken circle postmarks. Each postmark listing contains the county/region of origin, type, proof date, diameter, and early and late known usages. If you are in to collecting town cancels though, it does detail some of the finer points of each known hammer.

Back to the cover... so the 20.5mm measurement is indeed the earlier single broken circle hammer, but the 1871 date still doesn't fit into the known usage range. It's interesting that it is indeed a double strike. I sure hope that doesn't mean it's been tampered with. Regarding the 1871 date; the postal rate, and the 'PAID 3' hand-stamp coincide with the correct period at least. It is possible this is a new earliest usage of that hammer, but the double impression opens a big question about the genuine nature of the strike(s).

Hey realwesty (and anyone else interested)
I received an email back today from Stéphane Cloutier at the Postal History Society of Canada. He very nicely took a look at my scans and (I hope he doesn't mind my sharing), this is his response.

"Dear Sir,

Thank you for contacting the Postal History Society of Canada. You have a very nice strike of the first Franklin ONT broken circle.

As I see it, there was an original strike dated JU 8, and then a second strike over it, this time with the correct JY 8. As you say, inversion of year slugs can sometimes be seen. I believe this postmark to be genuine, and not a "fraud".

Several years ago, Bruce Graham's complete database was uploaded to our website, where it is constantly kept up to date. This is the beauty of online databases: when someone finds a new date, or cancel, we add it immediately for all our members to see right away. Print books are static and can sometimes mislead, especially when dealing with a constantly evolving thing such as this.

That said, our database indicates that the earliest recorded date for this postmark is JU 13, 1871."

He continues about he merits of membership, which I'm seriously considering.
So there you have it. Legit, and just missing the earliest date, by an error. Cool. I'm always amazed and very pleased when these folks respond to inquiries and are so helpful.
Always pays to ask!