As this #stampoftheday odyssey continues, I’ve learned that there are different types of days. Yesterday, I wrote about how it’s sometimes challenging to find anything to write about. Other times, the process of writing these posts reveals wonderful strange pieces of information. Who knew, for example, that the “Lion” in Lions Club International stands for “Liberty, Intelligence, and Our Nations’ Safety?”

And sometimes, the stamp of the day is just really cool (at least it’s cool if, like me, you’re becoming a stamp nerd). Because today’s #stampoftheday is none other than the very first American stamp, a 5-cent stamp picturing Benjamin Franklin.

While the stamp was officially issued on July 1, 1847, the earliest known use of this stamp (at least according to Wikipedia) was July 7, 1847. Franklin was pictured because (among his many other accomplishments) he was the nation’s first Postmaster General. (Franklin had been one of the architects of the postal system developed before and during the American Revolution as an alternative to the Crown Post.)

But what did it mean to be postmaster general when there weren’t any stamps? Before the introduction of stamps, the recipient of mail-not the sender-generally paid the cost of postage, giving the fee directly to the postman on delivery. The task of collecting money for letter after letter greatly slowed the postman on his route. Moreover, the addressee would at times refuse a piece of mail, which then had to be taken back to the Post Office (post office budgets always allowed for an appreciable volume of unpaid-for mail). Only occasionally did a sender pay delivery costs in advance, an arrangement that usually required a personal visit to the Post Office. To be sure, postmasters allowed some citizens to run charge accounts for their delivered and prepaid mail, but bookkeeping on these constituted another inefficiency.

Postage stamps revolutionized this process, leading to universal prepayment; but a precondition for their issue by a nation was the establishment of standardized rates for delivery throughout the country. If postal fees were to remain (as they were in many lands) a patchwork of many different jurisdictional rates, the use of stamps would only produce limited gains in efficiency, for postal clerks would still have to spend time calculating the rates on many letters: only then would senders know how much postage to put on them.

As I noted in an earlier post, in 1840 Great Britain was the first to address this problem by creating a standard postage rate and the first stamps. The U.S., however was slow to follow suit (though a private entity began providing postal-like services in 1842). In 1845, Congress established national postal rates but still didn’t authorize the production and distribution of stamps (leaving that task to individual postmasters around the country).

Finally, in March 1847, Congress authorized the production of stamps. The first two stamps were a five-cent stamp featuring Franklin and a 10-cent stamp featuring George Washington. The 5-cent stamp paid for a letter weighing less than 1/2 ounce and traveling up to 300 miles, the 10-cent stamp for deliveries to locations greater than 300 miles. The use of stamps was optional: letters could still be sent (at the same rates) requiring payment of postage on delivery. Nevertheless, many Americans took up using stamps; about 3,700,000 of the 5¢ and about 865,000 of the 10¢ were sold (which means they aren’t so rare that a serious but not wealthy collector like my father could acquire one).

The post office became more efficient so in 1851, Congress dropped the first-class rate 3 cents and applied it to letters carried up to 3,000 miles. This rate, which remained in effect until 1885, only applied to stamped mail; a letter sent without a stamp still cost the recipient five cents. Since the 1847 stamps didn’t apply to any of the new postal rates they were declared invalid and the public was allowed to trade them in for new ones.

The picture with this post is the page in my father’s albums with a letter than has the Franklin stamp. I have to say, it was really cool to hold that piece of history in my hands. If, someday we can again have folks over to our homes, I’d be more than happy to show it to some of you. Until then, you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.