From the U.S. to Farther India & Back Again

“From the U.S. to Farther India & Back Again. A Five-Month Journey of a Baptist Missionary Cover in 1856-1857. The Challenge: Determining the Rates and Routes”

Detective Story, an 1856 cover with 20+ cancellations & manuscript markings, determines the journey from Ohio to Far East India & back again to Boston over a 5 month period. I employed numerous resources to decipher: personal philatelic references; online databases, philatelic auction catalogs; digital manipulation software; and colleagues. I recently located the missing block of 6 of Scott #17 that originated on this cover – working to reunite.

Dr. Charles J. DiComo, President of the Philatelic Society of Lancaster County and the Empire State Postal History Society takes us on a five month journey of a Baptist Missionary cover mailed in August 1856 from Warren, Ohio to Farther India (Hindostan/British India), today’s Arakan, Myanmar. When the letter arrived after a multi-month journey the recipient, Reverend Alfred Satterlee, “was not there”. The cover then made the long trip back to the United States, arriving in Boston a few months later in January 1857. The challenge with this cover is if one could determine the rates and routes. The cover is postmarked with over 20 cancellations and manuscript rate markings from its trip from the U.S. to Great Britain, then Egypt to India to Father India, and then back again to the U.S. The answer as you follow Charles’ diagnosis, is yes. He was able to reveal the cancels and rates and the entire trip, even determining the sailing and steam vessels the cover was carried on. Charles also reveals a tragic aspect to the story of the Reverend Satterlee, his wife, and his child.

Charles is a lifelong philatelist, postal historian & award-winning author. He enjoys researching, restoring, writing, publishing, & presenting on a broad array of philatelic & postal history topics. He is President of the Philatelic Society of Lancaster County (PA); President of the Empire State Postal History Society, Editor-in-Chief of the U.S. Philatelic Classics Society’s The Chairman’s Chatter and Life Member, on the Board of the Pennsylvania Postal History Society, Mid-Atlantic Federation of Postal History Societies and an emeritus member of the Council of Philatelists of the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. A native New Yorker, he currently resides in Lancaster, PA with his wife Kathleen and their two daughters, McKenna and Mia. Charles is a healthcare executive with a distinguished career in the Life Sciences, Diagnostics, and Global Clinical Trials sector.  

Topic: MAFPHS – DiComo Time: Apr 7, 2022 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting

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