Scott # 9 on cover Post Office Georgetown Sept 21st 1852

Like I said, we are paying you too much.

Lovely cover, in good nick, the paper in those days had real "body"
The script is very similar in fashion to what I was taught, although I looped my "o's"
I still recall using nib and inkwell. (Terror came in the form of a huge smudge on a page)

Notes:
W Corthell was the publisher of a Broadsheet "The Lincoln Miscellany"
This broadsheet survives in the Library.


It is addressed to the Postmaster, from the publisher at Thomaston?  That doesn't make sense.    (This I don't understand)

I take it the fellow is Ithe Postmaster, taking subscriptions on behalf of a publisher (of papers?) .
Two clients no longer wish to receive or pay for their subscription, apart from 15/- (a huge amount) from Le Warner.
The two in particular Priest and Pierce appear to have absconded leaving editions at the PO.

I will stand corrected.
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Post Office Georgetown Me (Maine)  Sept 21st 1852

Sir,
John Le Warner,  one of your subscribers (to the miscellany has taken the paper 15 months, the 18th of this month, and sends your 15/- to pay the same,
he wishes you to send him a receipt & discontinue his paper.

I give you notice Harrison St Priest refuses to take his paper from my office all the reason he gives me is, he don't want it any longer & wont take it out.
and a fellow by the name of Perce (sic)  has been taking the Miscellany, he is now among the missing, has never given me any instructions respecting his paper.

I think it would be to your interest to discontinue both of their papers- and make their bill no longer.....Pardon me I have no disposition to dictate you, I presume you
know your own business.

Confidential
I say to you that Priest and Pierce are poor creatures.
Yours truly
Grafton ( Translators Guess)...(The broad stroke across the top may be the top of two "T"'s   making that    Z. Trafton    or Z Traflon.
PM  (Post Master)

W Corthell Publisher
Thomaston Me

I believe it's Maine, not Nebraska.

Here is the Publisher at Thomaston, Admin   If you wish to chase it up

If you source that Broadsheet, and put it with your cover, you have a valuable piece of Philately there.

www.worldcat.org/title/carriers-address-january-1-1853/oclc/437845379

I love it!

Does anyone else find it odd that a letter sent to the Postmaster of Georgetown, Maine, presumably by a publisher based in Thomaston, Maine has a Boston paid postmark (Boston is about 180 miles from Thomaston)?




Here is a brief history of the Literary Miscellany taken from Google Books. It suggests that Corthell likely didn't have a Boston office during the brief period of the newsletter's existence.

I share Steve's curiosity, of the travel of the cover.

Georgetown is a curiosity in itself, I seem to recall it was low in population, yet had two millionaires there
in early times. (or was that Thomaston?)
Everything else fits, but if someone could explain the route of the cover, it would put my curiosity at rest.

I would really like to see that broadsheet.
The US is very fortunate that so much old history is so well recorded, it must be great fun to
do genealogy over there.

The following was derived from the U.S. Post Office Guide, by Eli Bowen, (New York, Appleton and Company, 1851):

Mail sent from Thomaston would have received a Thomaston postmark.

It seems to me that the most likely scenario involves Corthell mailing the letter while he was on travel to Boston.

Somerset is a County in Maine, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. There are also towns named Somerset in Maryland and Virginia.