New Discovery Published In U.S. Philatelic Classics Society Journal!

Patriotic Envelopes addressed to President Abraham Lincoln found in holding of John Hay Memorabilia at Brown University.

November 03, 2009... Over 144 years since President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and in the year of Lincoln’s 200th birthday, the United States Philatelic Classics Society proudly announces the discovery of forty-nine multicolor Civil War patriotic envelopes (covers) address to President Lincoln. These remarkable patriotic covers were found among the John Hay papers at Brown University. Covers addressed to Lincoln as President are known, but none bearing dramatic multicolor patriotic themed designs were previously known to exist. The preprinted colored patriotic themed covers used throughout the Civil War are among the most iconic postal history objects of the period.

Lincoln’s private secretary John Nicolay hired John Hay (with Lincoln’s permission) as his assistant following Lincoln’s election as President. Daily relations with the President over more than four years gave Hay an abiding sense of Lincoln’s greatness. Shortly after the beginning of Lincoln’s first term in office, for reasons we will never know, Hay collected a group of patriotic envelopes addressed to the President. In the ordinary course of business, such envelopes would have been discarded. But evidently Hay saw something of the history of these objects and saved them, along with other Lincoln letters and manuscripts that were eventually bequeathed to his heirs. The patriotic envelopes were part of a large holding of John Hay memorabilia that was presented to Brown by members of his family in 1958.

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About the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society

The U.S. Philatelic Classics Society is the only organization that studies in depth the stamps and postal history of the United States from the Colonial era to 1900. Our members include both collectors and students. Many have written articles that have been published in our award winning quarterly magazine, The Chronicle of the U.S. Classic Postal Issues, and in other publications. Information about the USPCS, membership, its publications, and articles of interest to collectors and students of the classic period of U.S. philately, can found at the society's website at www.uspcs.org. Copies of back issues of the Chronicle and previously published books are also available from the society's bookstore, accessible from the society's website, or directly at http://www.uspcs.org/store.html.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Wade E. Saadi
President, USPCS
wade@pencom.com

or

Alexander Haimann
Publicist, USPCS
alex@mysticrarestamps.com