BE115

CSA #4 Stone 2 (not plated) (irregular margins) tied by the Camp Shenandoah, Va CDS 15 APR (1862). An attempt was made to obliterate the last name of the address for privacy reasons, but the cover is clearly addressed to Mrs. S. C. P. Miller, Lexington, Va. The cover was sent by Capt John Miller of the 2nd Va Rockbridge Artillery to his wife Sally Campbell Preston Miller (McDowell). Clean cover with edge wear and an edge repair at bottom center and sealed backflap tears. Note on the reverse by VanDyk MacBride attesting to the rarity of the postmark. A small post office complete with a postmarking device was established at Camp Shenandoah, Va in Augusta County in the Shenandoah Mountains. There are only a small handful of covers known with this postmark and all are dated between 11 APR 1862 and 16 APR 1862 and all the known covers are army related. Camp Shenandoah served as a temporary army camp at that time. It seems apparent that the post office was established in order to service the army mail as the post office ceased operations by 20 APR 1862 when the army moved on. The Camp Shenandoah, Va postmark is listed as an army field postmark in the 1986 New Dietz catalog but has been deleted from the army listings by the editors of the new CSA catalog with the statement that the post office was opened on personal initiative and did not have official status. Unfortunately, the Camp Shenandoah mark is not illustrated or valued in the new CSA catalog. Whether the Camp Shenendoah post office was official or unofficial is really beside the point. It was definitely a functioning temporary post office serving the army with its own postmark of which there are less than 10 recorded covers and only a few recorded off-cover stamps with this postmark. All the stamps are 5c lithographs -- most are the 5c Blue with a few being the 5c Green.

SOLD $2,000.00