TSC : In the News
Teeny bit of history at the Tidewater Stamp Show
By CHRIS POLK, The Star Democrat - cpolk@stardem.com
Posted: Tuesday, May 2, 2017
EASTON — Some things not written in history books can be found on those teeny, tiny images on postage stamps.
There's a group of philatelists on the Eastern Shore who stare at those minuscule illustrations like private detectives on a case.
Philatelist is the word for someone who studies stamps, and, while not completely correct, a word used frequently for someone who collects stamps.
The Tidewater Stamp Club, founded in 1982, hosted its 35th annual stamp show on Saturday, April 29, in the Easton fire hall's bingo room.
The club has 25 members, and boasts among its membership some interesting celebrities in the world of philatelics.
Ron Lesher of Miles River Neck said he got hooked on stamp collecting in 1954.
Lesher's passion may have started with postage stamps, but in stamp collecting, postage stamps are only one part of a wide variety of official engraved documents, seals, labels, postmarks and others that are highly collectible.
«He's one of the leading philatelists in the United States in the field of revenue stamps,» said James Gallagher, who also is a collector with the club.
In the United States, revenue stamps go back to Colonial times, and if you learned about the Stamp Act in school, that was all about revenue stamps. Stamps were given in exchange for taxes paid or the transfer of goods.
Part of Lesher's collection was on display during Saturday's show, and of particular interest were revenue stamps related to the age of prohibition in the United States.
Lesher also has written articles and been an associate editor at American Stamp Dealer and Collector magazine.
Another member of the club, Scott English, is the executive director of the American Philatelist Society, headquartered in Bellefonte, Pa. He used to live in Trappe.
Prominent collector Dr. Alain Guillemart is a member of the club, and manages the club's website from his home in France.
Guillemart and his son, Luke Guillemart, both have been collectors with the club, and lived in Cambridge in the past.
The Tidewater Stamp Club serves the Mid-Shore, with members from Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, Queen Anne's and Talbot counties.
It has been affiliated with the American Philatelic Society since 1988.
TSC meets at 7:30 p.m. each month, on the second floor of the Town of Easton building, 14 S. Harrison St., Easton. Parking is available behind the Avalon Theatre.
TSC now also meets at 1 p.m. on the fourth Tuesday of each month, in the basement Maryland Room of the Sun Trust Bank, 30 N. Harrison St., Easton.
For information call 410-310-1224 or 410-822-6471.
Stamp collectors flock to Tidewater show
By CHRIS POLK, The Star Democrat - cpolk@stardem.com
Posted: Sunday, March 8, 2015 7:00 am
EASTON — If you want to travel the world without leaving the comfort of your easy chair and the roaring hearth on a snowy day, collecting stamps may be something to consider.
Stamp collecting shows abound in this, the season of indoor comfort, and the local group Tidewater Stamp Club had its annual show Saturday, March 7, at the Easton fire hall.
Postage stamps are not the only thing “philatelists” collect. There are also collections of postmarks, revenue stamps, seals and more.
Ron Lesher of St. Michaels is one of the area’s foremost collectors of revenue stamps, which are labels used to collect taxes or fees on things like tobacco, alcohol, drugs and medicines, hunting licenses and firearm registration.
The display of Lesher’s collection included stamps for early 20th-century oleomargarine, the precursor to margarine, when it was first developed as a replacement for butter.
You may think stamps are stamps, but in stamp collecting, there is a genre for every taste, and the proof is in the details.
Thomas Meredith showed off a rare collection of Belgium postage stamps from the 1930s.
Retired Dr. Alain Guillemart of Cambridge, originally from France, has an extensive collection of fine French stamps with their intricate etched renderings. He inspired stamp collecting in his son, Luke.
Luke Guillemart took a departure from his father’s taste and began collecting Japanese stamps, after being struck by their colors and designs.
“The Scandinavians and the Dutch are the most artistic,” said Jim Gallagher, a member of the Tidewater Stamp Club.
Stamp collecting can be solitary or done in a group, and is considered to be a great stress-reliever. It’s the type of hobby that can offer a mental challenge, and there is always more to learn, according to the Friends of the Western Philatelic Library. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an avid stamp collector, among others.
There were four dealers at Saturday’s show, offering folks a wide variety of stamp-collecting wares.
Also present was Bruce Kinney from the Sussex County Stamp Club in Delaware, which will have its own show, May 2, at the Milton Fire Department in Delaware.
The Tidewater Stamp Club serves Maryland’s Mid-Shore with members from Kent, Queen Anne’s, Caroline, Talbot and Dorchester counties.
The club has been affiliated with the American Philatelic Society since 1988.
It meets twice a month at 7:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesday upstairs in Easton’s Town Office at 14 S. Harrison St.
For more information, call the Tidewater Stamp Club President Hope Messick at 410-822-6471.
Stamp club holds annual show
Photo by Chris POLK, The Star Democrat
Posted: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 7:31 am
Piles of colorful stamps are for sale from the collection of Jack Jarrell of Newcomb during the Tidewater Stamp Club's annual show Saturday in the Easton Fire Hall. Founded in 1982, the club supports its members' interests in stamp collecting in Kent, Queen Anne's, Talbot, Caroline and Dorchester counties and encourages young people to become stamp collectors. The club meets at 7:30 p.m. every second and fourth Tuesday in the Mayor and Council Building, 14 S. Harrison St. in Easton.
Postal pastime pleasures
Story by DOROTHY LINDSTROM
Community News Editor, The Star Democrat
Published: Sunday, February 20, 2011
EASTON - Just for a moment, try to forget about texts and Tweets and Facebook, even ho-hum e-mail. For a moment, imagine Talbot County with 43 post offices, of mail going by packet steamer across the Chesapeake Bay, and by post rider to inland Eastern Shore villages.
For Hope Messick, president of the Tidewater Stamp Club, it's not hard to imagine this at all. It's in her blood: Her great-grandfather was postmaster in Bethlehem, in Caroline County, during the Civil War era. Her grandfather was a postmaster on the railroad in the Midwest and West. Towns were so tiny, people would get their mail from the postal car at whistle stops. He transferred to Washington, D.C., in the late 1890s to early 1900s.
"The history of the Talbot County postal services goes back to 1775," said Messick, who has done research at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore and reads books on Maryland postal history. "The first post office in Maryland opened in Baltimore in 1774. There is a tie for the second to open - Bladensburg or Talbot Court House."
Easton was known as Talbot Court House, she said, until 1778. Two letters at the Maryland Historical Society are marked "T.C.H." "They are extraordinarily rare," Messick noted.
Today, Messick counts eight post offices in Talbot County. "All those other towns and their post offices have completely disappeared," she said. "We used to have a town named 'Globe' ... I'm not sure where it was, but it had a post office for two years in the 1880s. Another one I found was 'Sherwoodville.' It had a post office for seven days." Her research led to the actual dates: Sept. 9 to Sept. 15, 1863.
Easton used to handle mail from all over Talbot County. Now, while mail that comes into the county goes to Easton, if it doesn't have an actual Easton mailing address it goes to Baltimore before it comes back to be delivered, Messick explained.
Small operations in jeopardy
The U.S. Postal Service increases the price of its Forever stamps and decreases the number of post offices at the same time. The less "snail mail" that goes through a post office, the more dire that post office's future becomes. And if an act of nature occurs, chances are that's the end of the ZIP code altogether. Just ask the folks in Neavitt, who lost their little post office to Hurricane Isabelle, or in Still Pond, where a fire took its toll on the Still Pond Market and adjoining post office and mail has to be picked up in Worton. A grassroots effort has emerged in the Still Pond area to find someone to restore the buildings - and bring back mail service. In the case of the tiny Bethlehem post office, thousands of pieces of mail that come through each Christmas for the special cancel help it remain viable.
It wasn't until the 1930s that buildings were erected as post offices, according to Messick. "Post offices were in a grocery or dry goods store, or in someone's home."
In the case of Easton, the first two post offices were on Washington Street. Eventually, the post office moved to its current location on Dover Street. A regional center on Airpark Drive was the center of controversy recently when the U.S. Postal Service said it would shut it down. That plan, for now, appears to be on hold.
"This closing of post offices was going on long before the economy went bad," she said. "And it's going to get worse with these small ones."
A treasure trove
Currently, Messick is sorting through some 3,000 letters kept by her great-great-grandfather A.J. Willis, discovered in an attic and passed down to her from her father. "We keep slowly going through them and finding strange and interesting things," she said. "It's been a lot of fun."
She said many of the letters were between her great-great-grandfather and his younger brothers, who were in Mexico in 1836. The more valuable letters are kept separate while the less valuable are put in plastic sleeves in ringbinders.
"It's an absolutely fascinating hobby," said Messick, who acknowledges she didn't get "into" collecting and research until her 30s, around the time those old letters were found in the attic.
It's not just the stamps and the cancels that are fascinating on old letters, however. They serve as documentation of a bygone era, or historic events such as letters exchanged during wartime.
"Some of the World War II-era letters - their contents - can be quite valuable as original source material," said Messick.
Easton Post Office plans pictorial postmark for Waterfowl fest
Easton Star-Democrat
Published: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 7:10 AM CST
EASTON - The Easton Post Office will offer a special pictorial postmark sponsored by the Tidewater Stamp Club to commemorate the 38th annual Waterfowl Festival.
The stamp will be offered at the Waterfowl Festival from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Nov. 14 and 15, and from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 16.
As a community service, the U.S Postal Service offers pictorial postmarks to commemorate local events celebrated in communities throughout the nation. Customers have 30 days to obtain the free postmark. Those attending the festival may obtain the postmark at the Waterfowl Festival Station established at Easton High School, 723 Mecklenburg Ave....
Putting a stamp on history
By KATIE SULLIVAN
Community Editor - Easton Star-Democrat
Published: Sunday, March 9, 2008 1:00 AM CST
EASTON - Piecing together a town's history can be like putting together a puzzle. Although there are many ways to do research, including looking through old newspaper articles and pictures, there's also a lot of history to be found in old mail, including envelopes, also called covers, and stamps.
St. Michaels resident Carol McCollough collects oyster advertising covers from all over the country, and internationally if she can find them.
"A lot of these were return addresses and they're very elaborately decorated, not like return envelopes today," McCollough said. "They get to be very elaborate."
Her collection includes covers from many local oyster businesses, including Thos. & Jones & Co. of Cambridge and W.B. McKenzie & Co. of Oxford.
"This is real history, this is something that happened, people's lives were affected," said McCollough. "All these advertising covers are documentation of businesses, people and sometimes they're the only thing we have."
On July 3, 1775, the first post office was established in what was called Talbot Courthouse, now Easton. By 1800, 13 post offices had been established around the Mid-Shore.
"That was good for an area that was as agricultural and as rural as we were," said Hope Messick of Easton. "There was no bridge to connect us to the western shore and the only way you could get here was by boat or go all the way up to the head of the Bay and around. And the roads that we did have were pretty miserable."
Before then, you could give your mail to dispatch riders or stage coaches and they would carry it on. The first official stamp was issued in 1847. Before that time, postmasters determined the price of mail by where it was going and how much it weighed. The price was written in the top right-hand corner and it was pre-paid.
"They didn't even have envelopes at the time," Messick said. "The just folded the paper to make the envelope and used sealing wax to hold it together. Obviously you didn't send anything valuable."
After the government officially issued stamps, they still weren't required until the late 1850s.
"Between what Congress said they had to do and what people did was often a lag time," Messick said. "So they allowed a lot of mail to go through even though it didn't have a stamp on it, just as long as it said it had been paid for."
In one of her collections, Messick has a few letters that were stamp-less, addressed to her great-grandfather A.J. Willis of Caroline County. One of these letters even states on the envelope that the letter was carried by steamboat.
Messick explained that many local post offices didn't have as many rules and regulations as they do nowadays.
"Since a lot of (the postmasters) worked out of a building other than an actual post office, like a general store or even their own homes sometimes, it was pretty hard for post office vendors to keep track," Messick said. "It wasn't a sort of cut-and-dry method of delivery of the mail as it is today. Postmasters could do pretty much what they wanted."
To piece together history on the Eastern Shore, you can look at markings on the envelopes, the stamp and routes that were taken.
Carol Armstrong of Royal Oak has an envelope that was sent from Shannahan & Wrightson Hardware Store in August 1900 to Mr. Shannahan in London. The store was once located across from the courthouse in Easton.
"My great-grandfather started the hardware store with his first cousin," Armstrong said. "I try to retrace (the envelope's) travels, see how it got from Easton to London."
Messick's collection focusing on the postal history of Easton tells a lot about businesses in town. These businesses include Easton National Bank, which was where Bank of America in Easton is today, and Thompson & Kersey Foreign and Domestic Dry Goods, which is now Murdoch's Gardens.
Her family also has more than 2,000 letters from her great-great-uncle, who lived in Texas, to her great-great-grandfather, A.J. Willis of Caroline County.
"It's eye-opening to see what it had been like to live on the frontier," Messick said. "It's a way to document not just people's lives or the event that people describe but what the mail went through."
Messick, Armstrong and McCollough are members of the Tidewater Stamp Club. The group will be holding a show from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, March 15, at the Easton Fire House. The event includes exhibits by members, dealers and the Post Office with a pictorial postmark. There will also be items for children and beginning collectors.
"Postal history encompasses where it's been, where it's going to, what route did it take and what rates were in effect," McCollough said. "Every envelope has a story."
Every Stamp Tells a Story
By JOY LA PRADE
Community Editor - Easton Star-Democrat
Published: Saturday, March 3, 2007 2:00 AM CST
EASTON - Some 1847 postmasters were careful with their scissors, snipping neatly down the middle of the margins that separated one Benjamin Franklin from another.
The postmaster who first handled this stamp, however, was a bit careless. When he scissored the 5-cent bit of paper from its sheet, he also cut off the bottom corner of its neighbor to the right.
The 1847 Benjamin Franklin stamp was the first postage stamp ever issued by the U.S. government, and 160 years later, the one affixed to the first page of Hope Messick's stamp album provides a history lesson in the development of the postal service. When stamps were first printed, postmasters had to cut them apart with scissors, then dab a brush in a paste pot and swipe it across the back of the stamp to stick it on a letter. Many postmasters were careless with their scissors or brush, chopping up sheets of stamps or ruining them with globs of paste; this led to the development about 10 years later of perforated stamps backed with gum adhesive.
The postmasters weren't the only ones causing problems. Some Americans were not happy to have to pay the government to send their mail, so they erased the ink from used stamps and mailed them again. In response, the government began to print stamps with 'grills', small indentations made by a metal tool. This made the paper better absorb ink so it couldn't be erased.
Though millions of stamps have been printed in the United States since Messick?s Benjamin Franklin first rolled out of a press, that single square of paper provides a glimpse into the history of the country and its citizens' relationship with their government.
But stamps don't have to be a century old in order to be interesting or unique.
Every stamp tells a story - that's what makes collecting them so interesting, says Messick, an Easton resident and president of the Tidewater Stamp Club.
"You can learn so much history, geography, culture," she explained. "It?s just amazing."
The Tidewater Stamp Club, based in Easton, will host its 25th anniversary show this Saturday. Though stamps can be valuable, it wasn't the excitement of a treasure hunt that drew the club's 40 or so members into collecting - it was the stories.
Royal Oak resident Carol Armstrong, a founding member of the Tidewater Stamp Club, still remembers the rainy weekend that introduced her to stamp collecting.
She was 10 years old, and since the weather was keeping her inside, her father gave her his old stamp collection. She spent the weekend organizing it, and was hooked. Soon she sent away for her first stamp, a 'Black Jack.' The Black Jack was a 2-cent stamp first issued in 1863, and it featured an engraving of President Andrew Jackson in black ink. The Black Jack was printed to mail magazine and newspaper deliveries, but if there were shortages of stamps at the local post office it was often cut in half to pay lower rates. Armstrong paid $2 for the Black Jack, a significant investment for an elementary school student, but nothing compared to the $1,350 she spent a few months ago for an 1869 Abraham Lincoln stamp, which cost 90 cents when it first printed.
"It was a surprise - I didn't expect to get it," said Armstrong, explaining that she won the stamp from a Delaware auction by bidding just half its estimated value.
Many stamp collectors, or philatelists, a term that refers to someone who studies stamps, choose to collect certain specialty or themed stamps. The story behind a stamp often draws a collector in, and as the collection grows, it tells a story of its own.
This is the case for Carol McCollough of St. Michaels, a marine biologist who has built a collection around Alvin, the deep-sea diving submersible from Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution. She collects Alvin-related 'covers,' a term that refers to an envelope with a stamp and a cancel. A cancel is the ink that covers the postage stamp and prevents it from being used again.
"They do a wonderful job of documenting what Alvin has done," said McCollough.
Though McCollough can buy Alvin covers on eBay, she has created many of her own by preparing an envelope, sending it to the ship for the Alvin crew to sign, and having the postmaster stamp it with a cancel.
Two of her favorite covers were created this way. One was made when Alvin was used to retrieve a hydrogen bomb lost in the Mediterranean in 1966. Another was autographed by Cindy Van Dover, who in 1990 became the first woman to serve as pilot for the submersible. That cover, McCollough said, may be her favorite.
"It was very hard for women to work on the ship and be accepted as dive members," she explained. "To become a pilot was a huge accomplishment."
So far, McCollough has 300 Alvin-related covers. It's a large collection, but there's room to grow - Alvin has made about 4,000 dives.
Stamp and cover collections focus on every subject imaginable. One member of the Tidewater Stamp Club, Messick explained, collects stamps of Princess Diana. There are collectors who specialize in the British royal family, others in cats, still others in lighthouses. There are those who collect covers from the Lusitania, Titanic or Hindenburg. Some people only collect errors.
Messick, a former history teacher, has mostly focused on U.S. stamps since she began collecting more than 20 years ago. She can tell the story behind each stamp in her collection, from the 1847 Benjamin Franklin stamp to several sets showcasing Chinese art.
"It's the history and the story that gets told on the stamp that got me interested," she explained. While she owns several valuable stamps, Messick says their real worth can be valued by those stories, not the cash a dealer might pay.
"Basically a stamp collector is collecting bits and pieces of paper, and it's worth only what the collector thinks," she said.
The Tidewater Stamp Club's 25th anniversary show is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. this Saturday at the Easton Volunteer Fire Department Hall on Creamery Lane.
Giving her stamp of approval
Easton Star-Democrat
Published: Monday, March 12, 2007 2:00 AM CDT
Photo by ERIN FLUHARTY - Future stamp collector Erin MacFarland, 6, smiles as she looks at many different styles of stamps during the Tidewater Stamp Club's 25th Anniversary show Saturday at Easton Fire Department.