by Kenneth Perry
20th of February 2010

GEORGE ROGERS CLARK COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1929

The George Rogers Clark was issued to commemorate the one hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the surrender of Fort Sackville near the present city of Vincennes, Ind.

The central design of the stamp shows the surrender of Fort Sackville to George Rogers Clark, reproduced from a photograph of the painting by Fredrick C. Yohn.

The Clark Issue was first placed on sale February 25th, 1929, only at the post office in Vincennes, Ind.


Copied and edited from History.com

"February 25, 1779, Fort Sackville is surrendered, marking the beginning of the end of British domination in America's western frontier.

Eighteen days earlier, George Rogers Clark departed Kaskaskia on the Mississippi River with a force of approximately 170 men, including Kentucky militia and French volunteers. The party traveled over 200 miles of land covered by deep and icy flood water until they reached Fort Sackville at Vincennes ( Indiana ) on February 23, 1779. After brutally killing five captive British-allied Indians within view of the fort, Clark secured the surrender of the British garrison under Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton at 10 a.m. on February 25 Clark managed to make his 170 men seem more like 500 by unfurling flags suitable to a larger number of troops. The able woodsmen filling Clark's ranks were able to fire at a rapid rate that reinforced Hamilton's sense that he was surrounded by a substantial army. Meanwhile, Clark began tunneling under the fort with the intent of exploding the gunpowder stores within it. When an Indian raiding party attempted to return to the fort from the Ohio Valley, Clark's men killed or captured all of them. The public tomahawk executions served upon five of the captives frightened the British as to their fate in Clark's hands. Their subsequent surrender revealed British weakness to the area's Indians, who realized they could no longer rely on the British to protect them from the Patriots."

THOMAS EDISON COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1929

The Edison Issues were released to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the first incandescent electric lamp by Thomas Alva Edison.

The central design of the stamp is an image of the original lamp.

The stamp was first placed on sale June 5th, 1929, at the post office in Menlo Park, N. J.  The stamp was also printed in both flat plate, rotary sheets, and coils.


Copied from: The Great Idea Finder

"Thomas Alva Edison, was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847. He attended school for only three months, in Port Huron, Michigan. When he was 12 years old he began selling newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railway, devoting his spare time mainly to experimentation with printing presses and with electrical and mechanical apparatus. In 1862 he published a weekly, known as the Grand Trunk Herald, printing it in a freight car that also served as his laboratory. For saving the life of a station official's child, he was rewarded by being taught telegraphy. While working as a telegraph operator, he made his first important invention, a telegraphic repeating instrument that enabled messages to be transmitted automatically over a second line without the presence of an operator.

Milestones:
1868 Edison's first invention was a Vote Recorder
1869 Printing Telegraph
1869 Stock Ticker
1872 Automatic Telegraph
1876 Electric Pen
1877 Carbon Telephone Transmitter
1877 Phonograph
1879 Dynamo
1878 Thomas Edison founded the Edison Electric Light Company
1879 Incandescent Electric Lamp
1880 223,898 Thomas Edison 1/27 for Electric Lamp and Manufacturing Process
1881 Electric Motor
1881 238,868 Thomas Edison 3/15 for Manufacture of Carbons for Incandescent Lamps
1881 251,540 Thomas Edison 12/27 for Bamboo Carbons Filament for Incandescent Lamps
1883 he observed the flow of electrons from a heated filament—the so-called "Edison effect"
1886 Talking Doll
1889 Edison Electric Light Company consolidated and renamed Edison General Electric Company.
1890 Edison, Thomson-Houston, and Westinghouse, the "Big 3" of the American lighting industry.
1892 Edison Electric Light Co. and Thomson-Houston Electric Co. created General Electric Co.
1897 Projecting Kinetoscope
1900 Storage Battery

Edison died in West Orange on October 18, 1931."

 JOHN SULLIVAN EXPEDITION COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1929

The Sullivan Expedition was issued to commemorate the one hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the Sullivan Expedition in New York State during the Revolutionary War.

The central design of the stamp shows a half-length portrait of Major General Sullivan in Continental uniform.

This stamp was first placed on sale June 17th, 1929, at many post offices in New York.


Copied from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Sullivan Expedition, also known as the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition, was an American campaign led by Major General John Sullivan and Brigadier General James Clinton against Loyalists ("Tories") and the four nations of the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the American Revolutionary War.

The expedition occurred during the summer of 1779, beginning June 18 when the army marched from Easton, Pennsylvania, to October 3 when it abandoned Fort Sullivan, built at Tioga, to return to New Jersey, and only had one major battle, at Newtown along the Chemung River in western New York, in which about 1,000 Iroquois and Loyalists were decisively defeated by an army of 3,200 Continental soldiers.

Sullivan's army then carried out a scorched earth campaign, methodically destroying at least forty Iroquois villages throughout the Finger Lakes region of western New York, to put an end to Iroquois and Loyalist attacks against American settlements as had occurred the previous year. The devastation created great hardships for the thousands of Iroquois refugees outside Fort Niagara that winter, and many starved or froze to death. The survivors fled to British regions in Canada and the Niagara Falls and Buffalo areas.

Assessing the impact of the campaign on the Iroquois, historian Allan W. Eckert wrote: "Their will was destroyed: the will to carry on, to hold their land or perish in the effort to do so."

BATTLE OF FALLEN TIMBER COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1929

This stamp was issued as a memorial to General Anthony Wayne and to commemorate the one hundred and thirty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which culminated his military campaign against hostile Indian tribes in the Northwest Territories.

The central design of the stamp is a reproduction in white on a dark background of the memorial group on the monument erected on the site of the battlefield, containing the figure of General Wayne in the center with an Indian on the left and a frontiersman on the right.

The Battle of Fallen Timbers was first placed on sale September 14th 1929, the date of the unveiling of the monument, at the post offices in Maumeem, Perrysburg, Toledo, & Waterville, Ohio and Erie, Pa.


Copied from: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Battle of Fallen Timbers (August 20, 1794) was the final battle of the Northwest Indian War, a struggle between American Indian tribes affiliated with the Western Confederacy and the United States for control of the Northwest Territory (an area bounded on the south by the Ohio River, on the west by the Mississippi River, and on the northeast by the Great Lakes). The battle, which was a decisive victory for the United States, ended major hostilities in the region until Tecumseh's War and the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811."

OHIO RIVER CANALIZATION COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
 ISSUE OF 1929

This stamp commemorates the completion of the Ohio River canalization project between Cairo, Ill and Pittsburgh, Pa.

The central design represents an Ohio River lock with surrounding scenery.

The Ohio River canalization stamp was first placed on sale October 19th, 1929 at the post offices at Cairo, Ill, Evansville, Ind, Louisville, Ky, Cincinnati, Oh, Homestead, Pa, Pittsburgh, Pa, and Wheeling, Va.


Excerpt from:  Army Corps of Engineers.com

"In 1929, President Herbert Hoover dedicated the completion of the Ohio River canalization. After half a century of effort, the waterway now had a 9-foot navigable depth through its entire 981 miles extending from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi River. There were 50 dams, creating 50 level navigable pools. Each dam was equipped with a lock that measured 110 feet wide and 600 feet long.

The program for the ceremony read, in part: "The Ohio River has been completely canalized and periodical interruptions to navigation because of low water are of the past . . . . The canalization of the Ohio River is the greatest achievement of its kind in the world.

Smaller connecting links, where other forms of transportation are impractical, are more intensively utilized, but with the exception of the Panama and the Suez canals, no other natural or artificial watercourse possesses its potentiality.

Even as he expressed pride at the "apparent completion" of the river project, Hoover foresaw that advancing technology and population increase would soon create a need for further development.

Hoover was correct. For not 10 years later the Pittsburgh District, Army Corps of Engineers, began studying the replacement of Locks and Dams 7 through 14 on the Ohio and in 1941, then-District Engineer Ludson Worsham recommended building three high-lift dams with double locks at New Cumberland, Pike Island and Opossum Creek (later named Hannibal Locks and Dam)."

GRAF ZEPPELIN AIR MAIL STAMPS
1930

This special series of air mail stamps was issued for the use on mail matter carried on the first Europe-Pan American round-trip flight of the Graf Zeppelin in May 1930.

The central design of the sixty-five cent stamp is a representation of the Graf Zeppelin in flight across the Atlantic in an eastward direction.

In the $1.30 design the air ship is shown sailing westward between partial outlines of the eastern and western continents.

The design of the $2.60 stamp shows the Graf Zeppelin emerging from the clouds, passing a globe representing the earth and traveling toward the west.

The Graf Zeppelin issues were first placed on sale at the post office in Washington D. C. and the Philatelic Agency on April 19th, 1930.

NOTE: The Zeppelin stamps were withdrawn from sale in all post offices on June 7th, 1930 except the Philatelic Agency which ceased on June 30th, 1930.


Copied and edited from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Zeppelin mail was mail carried on zeppelins, the German airships that saw civilian use from 1908 to 1939. Almost every zeppelin flight carried mail, sometimes in large quantities; the covers usually received special postmarks, and a number of nations issued postage stamps specifically intended for use on mail carried by the zeppelins.

Certainly the most successful zeppelin ever built, LZ-127 was christened "Graf Zeppelin" by the daughter of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin on July 8, 1928, which would have been the late count's 90th birthday.

By the time of Graf Zeppelin's last flight, nine years later, the ship had flown over a million miles, on 590 flights, carrying thousands of passengers and hundreds of thousands of pounds of freight and mail, with safety and speed.  Graf Zeppelin circled the globe and was famous throughout the world, and inspired an international zeppelin fever in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In 1929, Graf Zeppelin made perhaps its most famous flight; a round-the-world voyage covering 21,2500 miles in legs from Lakehurst to Friedrichshafen, Friedrichshafen to Tokyo, Tokyo to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Lakehurst, and then Lakehurt to Friedrichshafen again.  It was the first passenger-carrying flight around the world, and received massive coverage in the world's press.

The flight was partly sponsored by American newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, who paid for about half the cost of the flight in return for exclusive media rights in the United States and Britain.

Hearst had insisted that the flight begin and end in America, while the Germans naturally thought the Round-the-World flight of a German ship should begin and end in Germany.  As a compromise, there were two official flights; the "American" flight began and ended at Lakehurst, while the "German" flight began and ended at Friedrichshafen.

Graf Zeppelin left Friedrichshafen on July 27, 1929 and crossed the Atlantic to Lakehurst, New Jersey, and the "American" flight began on August 7, 1929 with an eastbound crossing back to Germany.

The Round-the-World flight carried 60 men and one woman, Hearst newspaper reporter Lady Grace Hay-Drummond-Hay, whose presence and reporting greatly increased the public's interest in the journey.

The longest leg of the journey was the 11,247 km, 101 hour 49 minute flight from Friedrichshafen to Tokyo, which crossed thousands of miles of emptiness over Siberia.  A planned flight over Moscow had to be canceled due to adverse winds, prompting an official complaint from the government of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, which felt slighted by the change in plan.  The passage over Russia's Stanovoy mountain range in eastern Siberia brought Graf Zeppelin to an altitude of 6,000 feet.  The ship landed to a tumultuous welcome and massive press coverage in Japan, where a crowd estimated at 250,000 people greeted the ship's arrival and Emperor Hirohito entertained Eckener and guests at tea.

The next leg of the flight crossed the Pacific ocean en-route to Los Angeles; Eckener deliberately timed his flight down the American coast to make a dramatic entrance through San Francisco's Golden Gate with the sun setting behind the ship.  According to F.W. "Willy" von Meister (later New York representative of the Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei), Eckener explained:  "When for the first time in world history an airship flies across the Pacific, should it not arrive at sunset over the Golden Gate?"

After slowly cruising down the California coast to land in daylight the next morning, Graf Zeppelin made a difficult landing at Los Angeles on August 26th, through a temperature inversion which made it difficult to bring the ship down, requiring the valving of large quantities of hydrogen.  The lost hydrogen could not be replaced at Los Angeles, and the takeoff, with the ship unusually heavy, was even more challenging; Graf Zeppelin only narrowly missed hitting power lines at the edge of the field.

After a difficult summertime passage over the deserts of Arizona and Texas, Graf Zeppelin flew east across America.  The ship was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the people of Chicago, and ended its record breaking flight with a landing at Lakehurst the morning of August 29, 1929.  The Lakehurst to Lakehurst voyage had taken just 12 days and 11 minutes of flying time, and brought worldwide attention and fame to Graf Zeppelin and its commander, Hugo Eckener."

MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1930

This stamp commemorates the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  The stamp was first placed on sale April 8th, 1930 at Boston and Salem, Mass.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The Massachusetts Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Company, for the institution that founded it) was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, centered around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The area is now in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 United States of America."


The central design of the stamp is a colonial seal with a figure of an Indian holding a bow and arrow.

CHARLESTON SOUTH CAROLINA COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1930

The design depicts the figure of a colonial governor and a friendly Indian standing on the beach with two ships anchored in the bay.

This stamp was issued to commemorate the two hundredth and sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the Province of Carolina, as well as the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the original settlement near the site of the present city of Charleston, S. C.

The Charleston stamp was first placed on sale April 10th, 1930 at Charleston, S. C.

BATTLE OF BRADDOCK COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1930

This special two cent stamp commemorates the one hundredth and seventy-fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Braddock.

In the design is a statue of Colonel George Washington.

This stamp was placed on sale July 9th, 1930 in Braddock, Pa.

Copied from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Braddock expedition, also called Braddock's campaign or, more commonly, Braddock's Defeat, was a failed British military expedition which attempted to capture the French Fort Duquesne (modern-day downtown Pittsburgh) in the summer of 1755 during the French and Indian War. It was defeated at the Battle of the Monongahela on July 9, and the survivors retreated. The expedition takes its name from General Edward Braddock, who led the British forces and died in the effort. Braddock's defeat was a major setback for the British in the early stages of the war with France and one of the most disastrous defeats for the British in the eighteenth century.

GENERAL VON STEUBEN COMMEMORATIVE STAMP
1930

The Von Steuben stamp was issued to commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of General Von Steuben and in recognition of the exceptional services rendered the Colonial cause during the Revolutionary War in drilling and organizing the army.

The theme of the issue is from a bust of General Von Steuben.

The stamp was first issued September 17th, 1930 at New York, N. Y.

Copied and edited from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin von Steuben, also referred to as the Baron von Steuben, (September 17, 1730 – November 28, 1794) Prussian aristocrat and military officer who served as inspector general and Major general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. He is credited with teaching the Continental Army the essentials of military drill and discipline, helping to guide it to victory. He wrote the Revolutionary War Drill Manual, the book that became the standard United States drill manual until the War of 1812, and served as General George Washington's chief of staff in the final years of the war."

End of Part 3