The print in the cover image is titled "Potts Tavern" and was painted in 1984 by artist Gloria McMahen. 

The following is an excerpt from the article. Read the full article online here.

About half a dozen years ago, my wife and I were visiting Tucson, Arizona, while my wife attended the annual gem show there. Checking the American Philatelic Society website for any retail stamp stores, I discovered the Postal History Foundation was located in Tucson. Foundation volunteers warmly greeted me at the door and gave me a tour of their amazing facility and philatelic library. I decided to join the foundation, and have kept up my membership since then.

Paul Nelson, my tour guide through the foundation, invited me to attend the annual banquet of the local stamp collecting club that was happening in just a day or two. I accepted the invitation and found a seat across from a retired couple at the restaurant. The evening was pleasant and the couple across the table invited me to their home for lunch the following day. 

John Birkinbine and his wife warmly greeted me at their home, and John and I retired to his stamp room. I brought along one of the volumes of my collection of early U.S. stamps and postal history. As John slowly examined my collection, he eventually got to the pages of the 10-cent stamps and covers of 1857-1859. John looked up, smiled and said, “Oh, you have a Butterfield cover,” which is shown (Figure 1).

Figure 1. A cover postmarked November 29, 1860 in Massachusetts with a 10-cent green Washington (Scott 35, Type V of 1859) and eventually carried on the Butterfield Overland Mail to California.

This cover was carried “overland” on the Butterfield Overland Mail. The original letter was removed, but the cover still contains a handwritten note by Roscoe Wheeler’s child, which says “Contained letter from Mother to Papa dated Nov. 20, 1860 written just before leaving Pigeon Cove for California.”

John went on to explain that the word “overland” in the upper left, along with the postmark and date, all clearly indicated that the cover had been carried by Butterfield’s Overland Mail Co. stagecoach.

This was a surprise to me. I had purchased the cover – with a 10-cent green Washington of 1859 – in 2013 for less than $100 from Rainer Gerlach, of Sooner Stamps in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I thought the word in the upper left was a return address of sorts. I had previously misread the handwriting to be “Ooiserland,” and repeated searches for that city on the internet were a dead end.

John continued examining the cover and the note inside and unraveled mysteries that my cover revealed. 

According to John, it is highly likely that the addressee, Roscoe Wheeler, moved to Benicia, California as part of the gold rush. My cover was mailed November 20, 1860, from Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts, and hand canceled the following day at the Gloucester, Massachusetts Post Office. John said the cover arrived in St. Louis by rail at 8 a.m. on November 22, a Thursday. The cover continued traveling by rail to Tipton, Missouri, where it was transferred to Butterfield’s Overland Mail Co. stagecoach to continue its journey west.

John pulled out a schedule for the Butterfield Stage from the 1860s and told me the date and time my cover had traveled through each town and swing station across country from St. Louis to San Francisco (see stagecoach itinerary below).

Stagecoach Itinerary
Tipton, Missouri, departing at 6 pm for a 10 hour trip covering 160 miles
to Springfield, Missouri, departing at 7:45 am for a 37 3/4 hour trip covering 143 miles
to Fayetteville, Arkansas, departing at 10:15 am for a 26 1/2 hour trip covering 100 miles
to Fort Smith, Arkansas, departing at 3:30 am for a 17 1/2 hour trip covering 65 miles
to Sherman, Texas, departing at 12:30 am for a 45 hour trip covering 205 miles
to Fort Belknap, Texas, departing at 9:00 am for a 32 1/2 hour trip covering 146 1/2 miles
to Fort Chadbourne, Texas, departing at 3:15 pm for a 30 1/4 hour trip covering 136 miles
to Pecos River Crossing, Texas, departing at 3:45 am for 36 1/2 hour trip covering 165 miles
to El Paso, Texas, departing at 11:00 am for a 55 1/4 hour trip covering 248 1/2 miles
to Soldier’s Farewell, Texas, departing at 8:30pm for a 33 1/2 hour trip covering 150 miles
to Tucson, Arizona, departing at 1:30 pm for a 41 hour trip covering 184 1/2 miles
to Gila River, Arizona, departing at 9:00 pm for a 31 1/2 hour trip covering 141 miles
to Fort Yuma, California, departing at 3:00 am for a 30 hour trip covering 135 miles
to Los Angeles, California, departing at 8:30 am for a 53 1/2 hour trip covering 254 miles
to Fort Tejou, California, departing at 7:30 am for a 23 hour trip covering 96 miles
to Visalia, California, departing at 11:30 am for a 28 hour trip covering 127 miles
to Firebaugh’s Ferry, California, departing at 5:30 am for an 18 hour trip covering 82 miles
to San Francisco, California, arriving on December 16, 1860.
After arriving in San Francisco on December 16, it was carried a short distance north by ship to Benicia, California where it awaited for Mr. Roscoe Wheeler to call for his mail at the post office.

I was fascinated that afternoon when John revealed to me that the Butterfield stage passed about 500 feet from my current home as it traveled west. I was hooked. Since that afternoon I have been searching for Butterfield postal history. 

On my quest for anything Butterfield, I traveled to Midland, Texas, to visit the Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library. The staff brought me numerous books and a large file folder of Butterfield material. In the material I found the only contemporary photograph of a Butterfield Overland Stage known to exist (Figure 2).

Figure 2. This is the only actual image of a Butterfield stage. According to historian Gerald Anhert, all other images are of stages from other mail lines or western movie props. The driver here is David McLaughlin. (The original of this daguerreotype photo is at the Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library of Midland, Texas).

Butterfield used two types of stage, the Concord stagecoach and a lighter Celerity wagon, as shown in the photo, which was taken in 1861 near the Texas-New Mexico border at the Cottonwood Stage Station. 

On another Butterfield quest, I traveled just 30 miles from my home to visit the Atkins Public Library. I inquired at the desk if they had any information on Butterfield’s Overland Mail Co. stage line that passed through their community more than 500 times between 1858 and 1861. (That number of trips is based on an average of two trips in each direction per week.) The desk clerk replied that they had never heard of the Butterfield. A patron standing at the counter, Gaynell Hays-Steaggs, turned and said, “Oh, yes, and the swing station of the Butterfield is still standing on S.E. 4th street just east of the Austin School Crossing Road intersection.”

In my quest for all things Butterfield, I have driven the route across the state, stopping at every county museum, historical marker, and library I could find. I wish I had a dollar for the number of times my inquiries only resulted in blank stares. On this unique occasion, I received a positive response, not from the librarian but rather a patron who just happened to be standing next to be at the counter. What fortuitous luck! 

After expressing my appreciation, within five minutes I was parked in front of the original swing station still standing on a dirt road that was once the Old Military Road from Memphis to Fort Smith (Figure 3). 

Figure 3. This is the Hurricane Butterfield Swing Station on S.E. 4th Street, just east of Union Grove/Austin School road in Atkins, Arkansas. 

The Hurricane Butterfield Swing Station sits on S.E. 4th Street, just east of Union Grove/Austin School road in Atkins, Arkansas. The larger gambrel roof red barn behind the swing station was built some years after the Butterfield stage stopped running.

Bradley Harris reports that his grandmother lives just 200 yards west of this red building, and she grew up hearing the story and knowing that this was indeed the swing station of the Butterfield Overland Stage from 1858 to 1861. This was confirmed as the original stage station by Dena Gray, whose father, Dean Freeman, owns the property and lives in a home across the street.  The house and barn were previously owned by Freeman’s father-in-law, Neal Cornell Gibson. Gibson’s nephew, Lucky Gibson, reports that there is a cemetery in the woods just northeast of the barn. A historical headstone-shaped marker is located to the west of this location near the 4th Street and Highway 105 intersection.

On another Butterfield quest, I traveled just 40 miles from my home to visit the Potts Butterfield Home Station (Figure 4). Forty-five years ago after completing graduate school, I lived just a block away from the Potts House, but at the time I had no knowledge of the Butterfield Overland Mail. Today, the Potts station is 38 miles from my home.

Figure 4. The Potts Butterfield Home Station was built by Kirkbride Potts in 1858 in Galla Creek, Arkansas. Potts was the station agent as well as the official postmaster for Galla Creek. The building today houses the Faulkner County Museum. (Photo of estate by Margaret Motley, chair Pope County Museum; photo of sign courtesy of Potts Inn Museum.)

I learned a lot by visiting as the Potts Home Station has a paid tour guide on duty at all times. I discovered that at this home station not only would the team of horses be changed and the axles greased, but the travelers had an opportunity to have a meal. Passengers could even rest for a night or two in hopes of an empty seat on the next stage later in the week. 

Meals cost the passengers from 40 cents to a dollar. At isolated stations, fare might be wormy biscuits and grease-laden meat of unknown source. At more civilized stations, such as the Potts home, passengers came to expect a hearty meal of hot cakes, corn bread, biscuits, pork, fish or wild game, beans, bread, butter, sweet milk and coffee.

We don’t have a unique report for conditions at Potts Station. However, A.C. Greene, in his book, 900 Miles on the Butterfield Trail, wrote that typically, “at the stage Home Station you would find a stationmaster in charge, a handful of hostlers to care for the animals, and perhaps a rough eating house or restaurant. The buildings would be of logs, whipsawed lumber, sod or adobe, depending on the location. There’d probably be a tin basin on a bench beside the door where you could wash up, aided by some soft soap in a side dish - soap that would curl the hide off a hippo. A roller towel that had seen better days, and a more or less toothless comb, detained by a rawhide string, would help you complete your toilette. Inside there’d be a big fireplace, acid sputtering tallow candles ... your meal would be the inevitable hog and hominy or beef and beans of the frontier.”

Why did John Butterfield get the contract?

Let’s take a moment now to see how this historic mail route began (Map 1). 

Although several bids were received for Mail Contract No. 12578, John Butterfield, a transportation pioneer in the mid-19th century, was chosen. 

Among the bidders, Butterfield was already a transportation pioneer of the mid-19th century. Butterfield had previously started numerous stagelines based in his hometown of Utica, New York.

 “At the height of stagecoaching [Butterfield] had forty lines running from Utica as headquarters to Ogdensburg and Sacketts Harbor on the North, and South to the Pennsylvania line, and through Chemung and Susquehanna valleys,” said a report in an 1894 edition of the Oswego [N.Y.] Weekly Palladium.

Butterfield soon expanded his transportation empire, the newspaper went on to report.

“He became interested in packet boats on the [Erie] canal, and in steamboats on Lake Ontario, in the construction of plank roads leading to Utica and was the originator of its street railroads. He more than any other secured the building of the Black River and Southern railroads. When the practical uses of the electrical telegraph were demonstrated he joined Faxton, Wells, Livingston and others in establishing the New York, Albany and Buffalo Telegraph Company, and urged the extension of other lines and companies. … He was a pioneer in the transportation business, and aided in developing it from the crude methods of the stagecoach to those of the fast trains of our own time.” 

On September 16, 1857, Mail Contract No. 12578 to carry mail from St. Louis and Memphis to San Francisco for $600,000 per annum was awarded to Butterfield’s Overland Mail Company. This was the longest mail contract ever awarded in the United States. The Overland Mail was a stockholding company whose main stockholders were Butterfield, president; William B. Dinsmore, of New York City; William G. Fargo, of Pompey, New York; James V.P. Gardner, of Utica, New York; Marquis L. Kenyon, of Rome, New York; Alexander Holland, of New York City; and Hamilton Spencer, of Bloomington, Illinois.

Butterfield not only founded the Overland Mail Co., but started many companies, including American Express, (Figure 5) which is still in operation today. 

Figure 5. This 1851 original waybill is from Wells, Butterfield & Co.’s American Express Company. The waybill reveals that Butterfield’s American Express stagecoaches made daily trips to Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Auburn, Geneva, Rochester, Batavia, Buffalo and intermediate railroad stations. 

Why did the southern Butterfield Overland Stage end in March 1861?

The Act of Congress of March 2, 1861, the Post Office Appropriation Bill, ended the southern Overland Mail Route. The last Butterfield Overland stagecoach left St. Louis on March 18, 1861, collected several additional bags at Tucson, and arrived at San Francisco on April 6, 1861. The primary reason for ending the southern route was the beginning of the Civil War. 

The Overland still moved the mail westward

The Post Office Appropriation Bill also provided that the original six-year contract be continued for the balance of the term and increased from $600,000 to $1 million per year on the central route, beginning July 1, 1861. The new route would have daily mail stagecoaches Tuesday to Sunday, and a Pony Express semiweekly of 10 days for eight months and 12 days for the four winter months.This bill also provided that the Pony Express would discontinue upon completion of the transcontinental telegraph.

On March 16, 1861, the Overland Mail Co. sub-contracted the Pony Express route from St. Joseph to Sacramento (the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Co. had already been operating the Pony Express since April 3, 1860); and the stagecoach route from Atchison, Kansas to Salt Lake City to the COC & PP Ex. Co. to receive the sum of $475,000 per year. The Overland Mail Co. would operate from Salt Lake City to Placerville as the new western terminus for the $525,000 balance of the $1 million annual sum. The Pioneer State Co. already had a contract to carry the mail from Placerville to Sacramento.

By this time, board member John Butterfield had been replaced as board president by William Dinsmore. However, the Overland Mail Co. was still frequently referred to as “The Butterfield.” An example of this is found in the June 11, 1861, Sacramento Daily Union, which refers to “the Butterfield new route” and “the Butterfield Company.”

Map 2 shows the lower southern route of Butterfield’s Overland Mail (in green), and also the northern route Butterfield began using in spring of 1861, avoiding all of the southern states. 

A rare surviving lettersheet that took the northern route in 1863 (Figure 20) from San Francisco to Cognac, France is shown. This piece was mailed October 5 from the San Francisco Post Office, and received a double circle postmark. It was carried by the Overland Mail Co. to Atchison, Kansas or Saint Joseph, Missouri, where it was transferred from stagecoach to a train. 

Figure 20.  This lettersheet with multiple postal markings traveled by stage – the Overland northern route – train and ship in 1863. It left San Francisco on Oct. 5, 1863 and arrived on Nov. 12, 1863 in Cognac, France, where it was delivered to Arbourn-Marette & Co.

This cover arrived in New York, and received a second postmark on the front, “New York, Oct. 27.” Departing New York port by steamship, it arrived in France at the port of Calais, receiving on the front a red double-circle postmark on November 11, 1863. In Paris, it received two double circled postmarks on the reverse side dated “Nov. 11, 1863.” From Paris is was transported to Cognac, where it received its final double postmark on the reverse on November 12, 1863.

A westbound cover from Michigan to the Nevada Territory (Figure 21) also took the northern route during the Civil War. This cover was mailed June 6, 1863, by C&A Ives Co. from Detroit and sent to Butler Ives at Carson City, Nevada Territory.

Figure 21. This cover sent June 16, 1863 from Detroit, Michigan to Nevada Territory carried 10 cents in postage with a 1-cent and three 3-cent stamps. The recipient, Butler Ives, was hired two years earlier by the Nevada Territorial Surveyor General 

Ives was hired by the Nevada Territorial Surveyor General on July 15, 1861, to engage in surveying the disputed boundary between the Nevada Territory and California.

The final item shown (Figure 22) is one of the last surviving Butterfield covers. It was mailed May 3, 1864, about 100 days before the Overland Mail Co. contract ended in September 1864. On March 3, 1863, the postal rate was dropped to 3 cents for a half-ounce letter. Postmarked in San Francisco, this cover was carried northeast by the Pioneer State Stage Line to Placerville, where it was transferred to Butterfield’s Overland Mail Co. It was carried to Atchison, Kansas to meet the train for St. Joseph. The cover most likely traveled by steamboat on the Mississippi River from St. Joseph to Memphis. 

Figure 22. One of the last Butterfield covers, this item was mailed May 3, 1864, about 100 days before the Overland Mail Co. contract ended.

At the time C.W. Christy received this letter, he was superintendent and relief agent of Soldier’s Lodge. In the 1864 issue of The Sanitary Reporter, Christy reported that the Soldier’s Lodge in Memphis serviced 1,420 soldiers, served 4,802 meals, and furnished 1,324 nights lodging for soldiers. 

When the first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 it followed much of the original stagecoach route. The train passengers traveled on an almost parallel route to the trail, yet they were able to travel cheaper and faster than the old stagecoach lines.

This ended a brief but fascinating season of postal history.

Resources

Butterfield’s Overland Mail Co. Stagecoach Trail Across Arkansas 1858-1861 (2021), by Bob Crossman.

Butterfield’s Overland Mail Co. as Reported in Arkansas Newspapers of 1858-1861 (2022), by Bob Crossman.

Butterfield’s Overland Mail Co. Use of Steamboats Across Arkansas 1858-1861 (2022), by Bob Crossman.

Mails of the Westward Expansion, 1803 to 1861 (2015), by Steven C. Walske and Richard C. Frajola, Western Cover Society.

 “Butterfield Stables Sold,” Oswego Weekly Palladium, Oswego, NY, June 13, 1894, p. 1.

Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, Midland, Texas.

Margaret Motley, Chair, Pope County Historical Foundation-Potts House Museum, Pottsville, Arkansas.

900 Miles on the Butterfield Trail (2006), by A.C. Greene, University of North Texas Press, Denton, Texas.

San Francisco Bulletin, June 13, 1859.

Encyclopedia of Arkansas, https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/.

Arkansas in the Gold Rush (1986), by Priscilla McArthur, UNKNO, pp. 188-189.

The Observer Dispatch, Utica, New York,  March 1, 1981, page 2B.

San Francisco Evening Bulletin, from our Special Overland Correspondent, Fort Smith, Arkansas, November 25, 1858. Reprinted in The First Overland Mail: Butterfield Trail, Vol. 2, by Walter B. Lang; page 43.

Travels and Adventures of Raphael Pumpelly, by Raphael Pumpelly, New York Henry Holt and Company, 1920. Page 113.

New York Harald, Sunday, Oct. 24, 1858. “Our Special Overland Correspondence, near Fort Belknap, Texas," Sept. 22, 1858.

A Compendium of The Overland Mail Company on the South Route 1858-1861 (1985) by G.C. Tompkins. G.T. Co., El Paso, Texas. Page 140.

The Author

Twenty years ago, Bob Crossman's wife said, "You need a hobby.  It's not healthy to work 24 hours a day."  So he rescued his grandfather's, fathers, and his own Boy Scout stamp collections from the garage. Over the years on business trips, Bob has frequented retail stamp stores and stamp shows across the country, concentrating on classic U.S., Arkansas postal history, Butterfield Mail stage and Arkansas revenue stamps.

Much of the text here comes from previous articles and three books he has written about the Butterfield Overland Mail's operations in his home state of Arkansas. He is a member of several philatelic organizations including the American Philatelic Society, State Revenue Society, the Postal History Foundation of Tucson and U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, along with the Arkansas Historical Association. Dr. Crossman may be contacted at bcrossman@arumc.org or at 8 Sternwheel Drive, Conway, AR 72034.