[POSTAL HISTORY] Cosmopolitan Postage Stamp Album c1890s-?

Item Details

Worldwide Stamp Album, ca. 1890–1895, with added material.  Cosmopolitan Postage Stamp Album (London & New York: The Philatelic Publishing Co.). Brown cloth, worn, many leaves & stamps loose, obvious gap. A substantial late-Victorian worldwide collection anchored by 19th-century U.S. issues (1850s–1890s)—including a 90¢ Bank Note, Civil War revenues, postal stationery cut squares, and strong cancel variety—together with Great Britain, German States, China, Hong Kong, and Japan (early Coiling Dragons and Junk types). United States, 1851 One-Cent Franklin (Scott #7) imperforate strip of 3 tied to paper fragment by circular cancels. Etc.  Unsophisticated & unresearched. 

Sold AS FOUND.

Of particular note:  1890-1 Hartford Post Office vernacular sample-cancel sheets, by Postmaster John C. Kinney, record “Held for Postage,” “Misdirected,” and other handstamps (verso of 1890 calendar leaves). Mixed condition but complete and unsophisticated—an evocative period artifact of 19th-century American philately with genuine postal-history interest.

Biographical note:

Major John C. Kinney (1839–1891)
A Yale graduate (Class of 1861) and distinguished Civil War veteran, Kinney served as signal officer on Admiral Farragut’s flagship Hartford during the Battle of Mobile Bay, rising from private through successive promotions for gallant service. After the war he turned to journalism, working for the New York Tribune, the Waterbury American, and later joining the Hartford Courant, where he became a respected political writer.

In public service, he was U.S. Marshal for Connecticut (1882–86) and was appointed Postmaster of Hartford in 1890, a role in which his official postal records survive. Kinney was also active in veterans’ and patriotic organizations including the Loyal Legion, Sons of the Revolution, and the Army and Navy Club, where he served as secretary.

He died in 1891 of pneumonia following influenza.