S. Garton Churchill family-Lester L. Hoffman stamp collection
Overview
Collection of postage and air mail stamps issued to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Universal Postal Union in 1949. This collection was assembled by S. Garton Churchill and Lester L. Hoffman.
Dates
- Creation: 1949-1952
Language of Materials
Collection materials are in English.
Conditions Governing Access
There are no restrictions on physical access to this material.
This collection is not housed at the Houghton Library but is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Readers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine what material is offsite and retrieval policies and times.
Extent
4 linear feet (25 volumes in 4 boxes)Collection consists of the Universal Postal Union stamps issued by all the countries in the Union, most of them on first-day covers and many in blocks of four. Volumes of the British Empire U.P.U. stamps, the Lester L. Hoffman series of the collection, contain plate and imprint blocks (either 6, 8, 10 or 12 stamps to the block) of all the mint U.P.U. stamps issued by the British Empire and a few covers containing blocks of such stamps. The collection contains many specialities, and the Haiti section contains proofs of stamps never issued.
Also includes clippings, a few photographs, and letters from stamp dealers and others concerning problems with the issuing of these stamps.
The collector has put the stamps and covers into clear sleeves then fixed the sleeves onto pages. Pages have been arranged into loose-leaf volumes.
Biographical / Historical
The Universal Postal Union (Union générale de postes or U.P.U.) was founded in 1874. It became a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1947. U.P.U. stamps were issued in 1949 to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the formation of the U.P.U.
Seymour Garton Churchill was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio in 1900 and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University (B.A. 1922) and Harvard Law School (1926). He spent most of his legal career at the firm of Loeb, Churchill & Lawther in Manhattan. He began playing competitive bridge in 1928 and became one of the great American bridge players and bridge theorists. He wrote Contract bidding tactics at match-point play (1937) and Churchill natural bidding style at contract bridge (1979). He died of pneumonia in Fairview, North Carolina, at age 92 in 1992. His wife was Mary Ellen Peck Churchill (d.1973), and they had two children, James Garton Churchill and Barbara Faurot Churchill Thompson.
In the introduction to the papers in bMS Am 2599, Churchill states that for over twenty years he had been collecting United States commemorative stamps for his two children, through an invalid friend of his, Lester Lee Hoffman of Brooklyn, New York. In 1949, at Hoffman's urging, Churchill began collecting foreign Universal Postal Union stamps issued to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the forming of the U.P.U. Churchill gifted this stamp collection to Houghton in November of 1952.
Arrangement
Organized into two series:
- I. U.P.U. stamps of the world
- II. U.P.U. stamps of the British Empire
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Immediate Source of Acquisition
52-357. Gift of S. Garton Churchill, 11 Broadway, New York, New York; received: 1952 November 8.
General note
This collection is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. See access restrictions below for additional information.
Processing Information
Processed by: Bonnie B. Salt
- Title
- Churchill, S. Garton, collector. S. Garton Churchill family-Lester L. Hoffman stamp collection, 1949-1952: Guide.
- Author
- Houghton Library, Harvard College Library
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- und
- EAD ID
- hou01960
Repository Details
Part of the Houghton Library Repository
Houghton Library is Harvard College's principal repository for rare books and manuscripts, archives, and more. Houghton Library's collections represent the scope of human experience from ancient Egypt to twenty-first century Cambridge. With strengths primarily in North American and European history, literature, and culture, collections range in media from printed books and handwritten manuscripts to maps, drawings and paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film and audio recordings, and digital media, as well as costumes, theater props, and a wide range of other objects. Houghton Library has historically focused on collecting the written record of European and Eurocentric North American culture, yet it holds a large and diverse number of primary sources valuable for research on the languages, culture and history of indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Houghton Library’s Reading Room is free and open to all who wish to use the library’s collections.
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