Posts by Denis

    An undated envelope, circa 1798, was sent from Stanislo, (Stanislau, Ukraine), via Lemberg (Lviv) to Prague. From there via Kollin to Voderady in the Trnava region of west Slovakia. The cursive handstruck Gereinigt has not been previously recorded : provenance uncertain. The sender’s directions beyond Lemberg to Corschau, (now Kosice, Slovakia), Buda and Vienna were prompted by the need to avoid an outbreak of plague in 1798 in Volhynia, (now part of Ukraine, but under Russian governance from 1795). Town handstamps were not needed from 1789 to 1798, as a normal letter travelled anywhere in the Empire for 8 kreuzer, of which 4 was noted in crayon on the front and paid on arrival. A crayon 27 on the reverse was once thought to be a date, until it was realised that all the few known examples of this period are 27. It is more likely that it was a bulk charge for a bundle of letters, all for the same address. The addressee, Baron Joseph de Kotz, described as Imperial Chamberlain, was the father, (or perhaps uncle), of the celebrated Imperial Chamberlain, Zacharias Wenceslaus Erasmus, Baron Kotz von Dobr, born in March, 1773.


    Denis Vandervelde



    P.S. comments invited