Stamps are essentially little pieces of paper that persons apply to their written messages to prepay the postage from one location to another. Strictly speaking, stamp collectors accumulate and study stamps. But stamp collectors or philatelists have become much more sophisticated, and more advanced collectors are interested in all matters pertaining to stamps, not only their production and types, but also their usages on different types of mail and the reasons why stamps of different denominations were printed and sold when the stamps of a certain issue were contemporary. This means that collectors have become involved with the postal history of a particular stamp series, not just the physical characteristics of the stamps themselves.

In the United States, stamps were first issued just prior to the mid-Nineteenth Century. But mail had been transported by evolving postal systems from the late-Seventeenth Century in the American colonies and then in the new country created by the American Revolution. Since the country was founded largely as a group of colonists from Great Britain, early letters were transported across the Atlantic Ocean or between towns in the different colonies. A majority of early letters show evidence of transport by ship. Many letters were carried by hand and demonstrate no postal markings, but there are many letters transported by colonial post which in the period just prior to the Revolution bear markings which indicate the site of origin, the amount of postage, and whether the postage was paid. Since there were no envelopes until the 1840’s, all of these early correspondences are folded letters with addresses on the outer surface of the single large sheet of paper. Sealing was done with sealing wax, either sticks or wafers. Some letters were sent by special messengers, some by express, and some free because the writer or recipient was a personage who had the franking privilege. While early postmarks are all handwritten, in the later colonial period many larger towns employed handstamps for the town name and there were special dating handstamps at a few locations. These letters are termed by collectors to be stampless covers. All early mail in the United States was by means of stampless covers.

With the establishment of a new country the United States had its own post office system which was centralized in the seat of government. Agents were hired and paid to perform services. Owners of freight lines and stages bid on contracts to carry the mail on a regular basis over a particular route, stopping at the various towns along the route. Post offices were established in each of these towns to accept and hold letters for delivery. The postal fees were established by Congress and related to the distance a letter was carried, the number of sheets of paper in the letter, and the weight.

As time passed, a single large city such as Boston, Massachusetts utilized many different postal markings. And letters passing through Boston show a divergent array of many different postal usage's, such as letters coming from and going to many different towns and many different countries with all sorts of special postal markings for special postal usage's. In addition to the horse and wagon, steamboats began to transport mail in the early-Eighteenth Century. Trains were becoming an important method of mail transportation beginning in the late 1830’s with the rapidly expanding track systems. And each different train company or route agent had its own postal markings, too!

At the beginning, most mail was sent postage due - the recipient paid the postage when he or she picked up the letter from the receiving post office. Gradually, that practice changed so some mail was prepaid and some was sent due. "PAID" markings were used to denote prepayment. Postal reform gradually occurred with a great reduction in the fees charged on letters. In 1845 the postage fees were reduced to five cents and ten cents for letters carried for less or greater than 400 miles.

Handstamped town postal markings can be grouped into categories based on the geometry of the town and state lettering. These include straight line, arch, oval, and circular formats. While most markings are fairly plain, there are some more exotic markings that have been termed fancy stampless cover markings. These fancy markings also can be categorized by the existence of fancy lettering in the marking, decorative marks within the marking, and ornamental frames around the lettering. In addition to the town marks, there is the rating marking which in the 1845-1851 period was usually handstamped, and some of these are fancy too. And other auxiliary markings include the "PAID" if a letter was prepaid, "FREE" if a letter was franked, or some other markings such as "SHIP", "STEAM", or "WAY".

In addition to postal markings applied by post offices, there are other postal markings used on mail sent outside of the government mails. These are highly collectible and form subspecialties by themselves. Among these are letters handled on board steamboats with markings applied by the clerks of those vessels. And private expresses carried mail to places where there were no post offices such as the California gold camps. Military mail corresponds with the wars fought in the United States. Stampless covers are common from even the Civil War, even though stamps were commonplace then, as the soldiers often had no postage.

The period when postage stamps were developed corresponds with a period of rapid growth in the United States. The West was just opening up and expansion was occurring everywhere. Most mail continued to be sent as stampless covers even though stamps were available. Only in 1851 was there a penalty to send mail unpaid, a five cent postal fee versus three cents for a prepaid letter. But still there was no requirement that postage had to be prepaid with stamps - that did not happen until 1855.

So the period of the 1850’s was a crossover period with an increasing number of letters carried in envelopes and those envelopes bearing postage stamps. Foreign mail was frequently sent as stampless covers even into the 1860’s. It is impossible to understand the postal markings on stamps or on envelopes bearing stamps without a full appreciation of the postal usage's of the day. Thus stampless covers comprise the entire bulk of early American mail with a gradual usage of postage stamps beginning in 1847 but not really dominant until almost ten years later. Postal history of this period requires collecting both stamped and stampless covers to tell any story about usages.

References
1. American Stampless Cover Catalog. Vol. 1, 1997, David G. Phillips, N. Miami, Florida.
2. American Stampless Cover Catalog. Vol. 2, 1987, David G. Phillips, N. Miami, Florida.
3. The Posted Letter in Colonial and Revolutionary America. Alex ter Braake, 1975, American Philatelic Research Library, State College, Pennsylvania.
4. Postal Markings of Boston, Massachusetts to 1890. Maurice Blake and Wilbur Davis, 1949, Severn-Wylie-Jewett, Portland, Maine.
5. The First Hundred Years of United States Territorial Postmarks, 1787-1887. Carroll Chase and Richard Cabeen, 1950, American Philatelic Society, State College, Pennsylvania.
6. Vessel-named Markings on United States Inland and Ocean Waterways, 1810-1890. James W. Milgram, M.D., 1994, Published Collectors Club of Chicago.