The following article concerns the debut of the telegraph in the great state of Michigan, and author Cary E. Johnson's study of stampless telegram envelopes and the important news they carried. The article was submitted by APS Chapter & Affiliate Peninsular State Philatelic Society as an Article of Distinction for 2023 and appeared in the Spring 2023 edition of the society's journal, The Peninsular Philatelist.
To read other Articles of Distinction, click here.
A bit of a departure from the usual postmark topics, but there is a connection as we shall see later. I often see these stampless telegraph envelopes without postmarks in dealers’ boxes and paid little attention until I found telegrams inside that often told an ominous story. So let us begin in the beginning. Communications by mail were getting faster every day as railroad lines were built across the country and Michigan, but there was an inherent need for an even faster message system. Samuel Morse’s invention of the telegraph filled that void via the building of a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., in 1844.
This communication device was of great interest in Detroit, and in the fall of 1846, J.J. Speed, Jr. made a contract with the owners of the Morse telegraph patent, to build the Speed Line from Buffalo, N.Y., to Milwaukee, WI., connecting all the “principal” towns in between. The Erie & Michigan Telegraph Co. came to Michigan in 1846-47 to secure paid subscriptions from interested communities. The same Pay to Play procedure was incorporated as the railroads used for building and selecting the routes for their lines. Act 4 had been passed in Lansing in 1847, which allowed the telegraph companies to build their lines along any public roads and across any of the waters and bridges in the State. Detroit was chosen as the headquarters for the Michigan operations.
M.R. Wood was responsible for construction in Michigan, to build the telegraph line from Detroit to Chicago. The Erie & Michigan Co. used 30 poles per mile which were 20-30 feet high with a single iron wire strung along the poles, which weighed 330 lbs. per mile. The line came into Detroit via Toledo, Monroe, Trenton, and Plymouth (see 1853 map above, although town locations are a bit distorted). The next section was built from Detroit to Ypsilanti and was first operated on November 29, 1847. The westward line followed the main line of the Michigan Central R.R., reaching Ann Arbor in December, 1847; Jackson in January, 1848; Albion, Marshall, and Battle Creek by February, 1848; Kalamazoo in March, 1848; and Niles, South Bend, Michigan City, and Chicago in April, 1848. The telegraph offices in the subscribed service cities were in private buildings and the cost of sending a message was based on distance and number of words. For example, the Detroit to Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti charge was 15¢ for the first 15 words and 1¢ for each additional word; whereas Detroit to Niles/South Bend was 30¢ for the first 15 words and 1¢ per word thereafter. The 1856 telegram shown above was sent from Michigan City, IN, to Ann Arbor (see map) on the Speed Line indicating the death of the sender’s wife and asking the recipient to inform the sender’s friends. The telegram envelope is missing but it would have indicated the recipient’s name and charge if any. The telegraph companies generally had carriers/messengers to deliver the telegrams directly to either the recipient, if a known location from the town directory (no extra charge), or to the post office for forwarding to the town of or nearest to the recipient’s home with a postage added fee. All I remember about seeing a telegram being keyed in Morse Code by the operator was on the old TV western, Gunsmoke, and the only code I remember is probably the same as you: …---… (SOS).
Competition soon began and the Lake Erie Telegraph Co. wanted to benefit from this new source of revenue. It was one of the companies operated by the Atlantic, Lake, and Mississippi Telegraph Co., and built a line east from Detroit to Buffalo to connect with the network of the home company in the eastern United States, and was completed on March 1, 1848. The operating system was called the O’Reilly Line. The 1857 telegram from New York to Detroit shown here, indicating travel arrival, shows the consolidation of the O’Reilly and Speed Lines by the Western Union Telegraph Co. in April of 1856. This consolidation was essential to allow the individual lines to survive and to improve the cities and towns accessible by telegraph services. It also prevented duplicate private telegraph lines and poles all along Michigan’s public highways.
A third competitor to the Speed Line (also known as the Snow Line) began operations in 1849, known as the Southern Michigan Telegraph Co. It built its line along the route of the Michigan Southern R.R. (see map) from Toledo to Monroe in September 1849; to Adrian in October; Hudson, Hillsdale, Jonesville, and Coldwater in November; and Sturgis, Constantine, Goshen, Elkhart, Mishawaka, South Bend, LaPorte, Michigan City, Valparaiso, and Chicago in 1850. A feeder line was built to connect the main line at Adrian through Tecumseh, Clinton, Saline, Ypsilanti, and Plymouth to Detroit, which provided a full complement of service cities to compete with the Speed Line. This line was also Section No. 6 of the Atlantic, Lake, and Mississippi Telegraph Co. A telegram envelope (only known example) from this company with the company name handstamped in the UL corner is shown below, dated 1850, from Trenton. MI, on the Erie & Michigan Division to Constantine, MI, on the Southern Michigan Line, “Sarah is at point of death. Come if you can immediately.”
Michigan railroads also entered telegraph operations to send messages between depots to keep track of train movements as well as many other communication necessities. The Michigan Southern R.R. telegraph began operations in 1854 followed by the Michigan Central R.R. in 1856. These telegraph offices were also of benefit to the general public since they were manned in all the depots along the railroad route around the clock rather than only during normal business hours in major cities.
The 1858 telegram below was sent from Grass Lake to Kalamazoo to alert the recipient at Godfrey House to hold on and that the expected railroad passenger was in transit in Chelsea.
Our last example brings us back to a postal history connection with telegraph covers. This December 9, 1861, telegram from Avon, New York, was sent by the O’Reilly Line, now part of the Western Union consolidated lines, through Detroit and on to McPhersonville (Fraser) on the extension of the telegraph line that ran to Port Huron by 1853 (see map). The designated recipient was in Utica, Michigan, about 8.5 miles away, which was not on this telegraph system. The receiving clerk added a 3¢ postage stamp to the envelope and sent it immediately to the post office for probably only a few hours delay for arrival of the dire 5-word message at the Utica Post Office, “Father failing. Come home immediately.” It would be interesting to know if a Utica postal employee made a “special delivery” to Miss Wright!
Volume III of the American Stampless Cover Catalogue lists examples of covers from many of the early telegraph companies. Telegraph covers are another interesting area of communication history and when you see one in a dealer box, be sure to look inside and hope the telegram remains to tell a story of why the message was sent and from where it originated. My references for this article included: History of Detroit and Wayne County by Silas Farmer and a great article by LeRoy Barnett in the July/August 2017 issue of Michigan History magazine. If you do not subscribe to this publication, you are missing out on an excellent collection of articles on all aspects of Michigan history. Highly recommended!
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