nik
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Russian PO in 1915 New York?
While going through my duplicates today I came upon this interesting cancellation on a 3 kopek Alexander III stamp:
"НЬЮ-IОРКЪ Е К А" [New York E K A] (I'm not 100% positive about the "E".) The stamp was
postmarked in April 1915, during WWI when the Russian consulate in NY had a number of military procurement officers working to obtain weapons for the
Russia army from the US. There is a small piece of a purple ink circular handstamp frame on the far right side of the image. There's got to be a
story here. Who knows what it is?
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howard
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There was at this time a postal branch office named New York in Ekaterinoslav gubernia. It started as a postal station in 1878.
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nik
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WOW! Thank you Howard! That does explain the "EKA" very nicely. The possibility of a New York in Russia never occurred to me. But in retrospect - why
not? We have plenty of places called Moscow, Odessa, etc in the US. Why not the reverse?
Here is a bit of info about the place that a google search produced: it was actually the New York Colony located in the Bakhmut area (known among
zemstvo collectors by its two stamps.) It was a German Menonite colony. In 1894 (?) J. G. Niebur, a Germam colonist, created a factory there that
produced plows, row planters, harvester and other metal agricultural implements. According to one source, the factory's yearly output in 1910-11 was
200,000 rubles. The full story about this location is here: http://archive.ec/Casd8 There are two versions of why it was named New York. 1. A local businessman Unger visited New York and came back raving
about it. 2. Niebur married an American woman and in 1891 his birthday gift to his homesick wife was a new name for the place where they were living.
In any case, since 1951 it is called Novgorodskoye. It is located in the troubled Donetsk Oblast.
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IvoSteijn
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And it was still called that in the late 1920s. I've seen a registered letter from that place, still calling itself N"yu-York in 1927. I can't imagine
that lasted much beyond that date...
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howard
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About the name: the 1878 postal statistics lists a postal station with the name New York and an opening date of 4 April, so the wedding gift theory
cannot be true.
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