Doing History One Envelope at a Time
Postal envelopes are often viewed as just wrappers for what’s inside – the really important stuff. Envelopes are often the first thing discarded, though they're sometimes saved by a collector if the stamp is interesting. Only a few survive.
Every envelope tells a story. There’s a date and a place of origin, often discerned from the cancellation, though sometimes otherwise noted on the cover. There’s a living person’s name and an address. In the case of Nova Scotia covers, there are often multiple backstamps indicating the route the letter took from sender to recipient. With online historical and genealogical resources that information is often enough to construct a vignette of a life – sometimes ordinary, sometimes extraordinary. Each life is connected to a family and a community and a moment in time.
The mid-Nineteenth Century was a time of great dynamism and prosperity for Nova Scotia. In the hundred years since the first determined colonization of l’Acadie by England and the end of the Seven Years’ War and of the American Revolution, multiple streams of immigrants had put down roots, had children, built towns, and become entrepreneurs. The province had developed a unique character: part England, part New England; issuing its own postage stamps, changing its currency, debating the pros and cons of Confederation.
Of course, postal covers remaining from this era exhibit a form of preservation bias, the so-called "Wedding Gown Effect". Take a sample of women’s clothing in any museum collection and you will often find it skewed toward fancy dress clothes, like wedding gowns. Similarly, historic postal covers often overrepresent lawyers and merchants (those who had record-keeping reasons to preserve them), or sweethearts and mourners, who had sentimental reasons for doing so. In addition, unusually franked letters have been more often preserved by collectors because of their philatelic value.
In the BlueNotes you will find few philatelic rarities. I simply cannot afford the prices they command. There will be the occasional serendipitous find of a cover referencing an important person or event. But most of these envelopes were sent by ordinary people to ordinary people. And that is, in my mind, what makes them special.
The stories pieced together here are necessarily partial. There's always more to find out from as yet undiscovered sources. Perhaps you know something more. Maybe you're related to a person named here? I welcome your input. Drop me a line. Fill in the details. Thanks.