USA stampless carrier letters

If anyone is interested, here's the folded letter opened to show a notation made by the recipient of the sender, Isaac Jeanes of Philadelphia. Isaac Jeanes & Co. was a mercantile house in Philadelphia.


And here's the letter itself


And here's a picture of Mr Silas Peirce, the recipient of the letter. According to Wiki, he was an American grocer and politician who founded the wholesale grocer Silas Peirce & Co, in Boston, Mass. in April, 1815. The grocery firm of Silas Peirce & Co., Ltd. lasted 111 years.

And just for fun, here's the album page I just created. It also has a little more info about the Railroad routes

I have to follow up on this one regarding the first cover in this post, the one with the carrier mark to Mr. Childs. I had also posted it on SCF. It was pointed out by a very knowledgable member that there should be a stamp on the cover, and that it was probably on the back, but had fallen off. The thought was that it may have passed through the postal system with proper payment. I looked over the cover, front and back with the naked eye (mine, of course) and a handy loupe. Nothing on the back, but I did notice on the front of the envelope, in the upper right corner under the cancel was a lighter squarish area. I'll bet you can see it on the scan now, can't you?



Under the loupe you can definitely see a lighter area, like gum residue, and the outline on the left and right sides of perforations. I did some adjusting of that area of the image in Photoshop and came up with this...



Definite indication of perforations AND a grill!
I pondered whether the cancel was faked, but there is no other indication of an earlier cancel around the edge of the stamp outline.
The same brilliant gentleman came back with this reply (and if he's reading this, I hope he doesn't mind my sharing),
"The postmark has not been faked. A 2c 1869 issue stamp fell off between when it was posted and when it was processed. Evidently there was evidence that the cover had been prepaid (maybe a loose stamp at the bottom of a collection box) and it was processed as completely prepaid."

It pays to ask, and it certainly pays to have access to such expertise! I guess that's why we are all here.

He states in his first posting that this is a common Carrier cancelation from Philadelphia used from the mid 1860s to early 1870s. Since it was probably an 1869 2¢ pictorial, then that helps me to narrow this cover down from about 1869-1875.