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Note: a link to Wikipedia's article on Polish Philatelic History can be found here.

This page is organized as follows:

1. Posts in pre-partition Poland (and elsewhere)
2. Przedbórz Post under the Russians
3. WWI Przedbórz local delivery stamps and the people behind them.

• Poland was an early adopter of regular postal routes. King Sigismund Augustus (Zygmunt II Augustus) had started a postal route between Warsaw and Krakow and Venice about 1558, primarily to handle his wife's estate. He allowed private parties to use the service between the various courier stations along the way.5, 10, 16
  • According to Kamienski [1980], King Boleslaw Chrobry, ca. 1000 C.E., issued the first postal decree, requiring (or authorizing?) the cities to forward mail previously handled by forced labor. 11

    While there is some dispute about whether this really happened as early as 1000 C.E., there is ample evidence that the idea of a postal service is very old. For example,

    • Wikipedia's article on mail lists a number of early postal systems, with dates going back as far as 2400 B.C.E.
    • The Jewish Shulchan Aruch has an entire chapter (Orach Chaim 247) about giving mail on Friday to non-Jews for delivery, and part of the discussion (the first topic, Orach Chaim 247:1) hinges on whether there is a postal official in town. Since the Shulchan Aruch was composed by Rav Yosef Caro in the mid-1500's, the concept of an official postal service must have been well established.18

  • Cwiakala and Wagrowski [1972b] credit the King with introducing (at least to Poland) fixed rates for prepaid mail, and, I believe, a standard postal schedule.
  • The Postal system then, as now in most of the world, relied on government subsidies: the King paid a fixed sum to keep the system in operation; he and the rest of government could send mail free; the general public paid a fixed fee which the postal service kept.
  • Lana [1992] describes the system as follows: The mail left Krakow or Vienna on Sunday, and was expected to arrive at the other end in ten days. (On today's roads that would be about 106 km or 66 miles per day [per Google Maps], which sounds hard enough to me; it would have been much harder 450 years ago.)
    
    When money was carried, there would be two riders: an unarmed postal courier carrying mail only, and a armed sheriff's posse-type person who carried the money and provided the defense. Lana doesn't tell us how often armed defense was needed.
• In 1562, Thurn and Taxis, Europe's premier postal carriers, were chartered to operate a (or take over the) postal service from Krakow to Vienna, and presumably onto Rome and Venice. (Vienna was the main political and cultural center of "Eastern" Europe at the time.)9, 12

  Lana [1992] says the route started in Wilno (Vilnius or Vilna), so it would be something like Wilno-Warsaw-Krakow-Vienna-Rome-Venice.

• In 1583, King Stefan Batory assigned the contract to Sebastian Montelupi of Florence, with free mail privileges for certain religious orders (per Kamienski [1980], pg. 381-5,-6.)

  Bojanowicz [2008b] says this occurred in 1569.

• Przedbórz was on an important east-west road, but it was not on an important route for east-west communications to/from Warsaw or Krakow, so it's unlikely to have had much in the way of regular postal service early on. Per Zaprzal [1956, pp. 30-31], there were 22 mail routes by 1772, one of which went from Konsk through Przedbórz. (You can try to deduce the 22 paths by studying the article.) 14

• When Przedbórz became part of the Russian partition in 1815, the Russian postal system was imposed.
  • There were two systems: a standardized Russian State System (whatever it was) operated in most of Russia, but
  • In some areas ("zemstvos") local authorities could set up their own local delivery systems, some of which used stamps (also called "zemstvos") but apparently this did not occur in Russian Poland.

    Some of the largest cities within the State Postal system (not the zemstvo system) also set up their own local postal systems, as described in Prigara [1981].

  • Additional explanations of the Russian post can be found in Werbizky [2010] as well as Bazilevich [1987] and Prigara [1981]. Both the latter are available from Rossica (The Rossica Society of Russian Philately) at what I consider a reasonable price. Warning: apparently the electronic version of these books doesn't have page numbers or an index, which makes things hard to find. 15
• By the time of WWI, the major functioning of the postal system hadn't changed much. Free local delivery was probably unknown except perhaps in Warsaw and maybe Krakow and some other large cities.
  
  
  • Keep in mind that free local delivery wasn't introduced in the U.S. until 1863 [per USPS 1980], and Rural Free Delivery, not until 1896. By 1915 only 1,756 cities in the U.S. had free delivery, and it appears that those were towns with population of at least 2,000 people. [Rhoads, 1999, pg. 1076.]
• Przedbórz was the only post office for a few miles around, and probably served 25-30+ nearby settlements, hamlets, and villages. People probably got their mail when they or a neighbor went into town on market day or for some other reason, unless they were on a fee-for-service messenger route. (In those days, people probably relied a lot less on mail than they did in the later 20th century - but on the other hand, if they didn't use mail, they had to send a messenger or an agent.)
  • Petriuk (pg. 67) says that the post office served at least 24 outlying villages. 3
  • The Austrian military administration continued the Przedbórz post office's second-class designation that it had under the Russians. After all, the easiest thing for the Austrians would be to change as little as possible. This meant that it received mail from Konsk, sent mail to Konsk, but did not pick up or deliver mail within the city.

    (In fact, Przedbórz had been part of "Konsk County" [Konskii Uezd or Конский уезд] since 1844, according to John Lechtanski.)6

  ---

  Przedbórz Local Delivery stamps and the people behind them.19
  • As noted above, local postal delivery was entirely or mostly unknown in Poland prior to WWI. However,
    1. As documented by Barefoot [1999], many towns had private local delivery (messenger) services, including Przedbórz, according to Mikulski [1968a, pg. 5].
    2. During the early part of WWI, a number of cities and towns (notably Warsaw, Sosnowiec and Zawiercie) had received permission (usually short-lived 17) to institute a local delivery service paid for with local delivery stamps.
    3. There were also some local delivery services using handstamps as in Czestochowa (15 Aug. 1915 to 1918), Łodz (Fire department, 1916-17), Warsaw after 20 Oct. 1916. 17
  • In Przedbórz there was a local philatelic entrepreneur named Szlomy (Shlomo or Solomon) Abramsohn (or Abramson) who saw a philatelic potential for such local delivery stamps. (By all accounts, Abramsohn was a Przedbórz native.) 21
  • He persuaded Peter Franczak [1875-1929], the local postmaster and a member of the town council, to start a local mail delivery service with stamps, analogous to the short-lived programs in Warsaw, Sosnowiec and Zawiercie. (Franczak had had the same job under the Russian authorities.) Subsequent events make it clear that Franczak was a party to Abramson's philatelic profits. 7
  • Apparently, the first two stamps were issued by Franczak on his own while claiming he had City Council approval.
    • As Roman Hamel puts it (email, 6 Nov. 2011), this first issue (eagle stamps) caused a sensation in philatelic circles (and became an instant “classic”) because the stamps depicted the Polish Eagle with a crown. This was WWI and there were no guarantees that Poland would emerge after the war.

    I'll bet (but don't actually know) that images of the Polish Eagle were even prohibited as representing a subversive influence.
    
    This was the first use of the Polish eagle in the Austrian-occupied zone, and the first complete set issued in Polish philately. One earlier eagle stamp had been issued in the German zone: Warsaw local post #2, the 10 gr of the Warsaw Local Post, in Sept., 1915, along with later surcharges. Much is available on the Warsaw Local Post; see for example: http://www.stampspoland.nl/series/town/warszawa_intro.html, http://www.stampslandia.net84.net/gallery/pol/town_post.htm, http://www.ekpv.nl/verzamelingwarsawtownpost.pdf

    • So the first issue must have been in high demand by Polish philateltists. Abramsohn would not have been able to fill the demand with genuine stamps and probably was the source of some of the most common forgeries, as discussed later.
  • Hamel goes on to say that "the notoriety of these stamps reached the director of [the] Austrian Field Post, who immediately send the assistant director of Lublin Post and Telegraph, Dr Jan Urbanski, to Przedborz. According to the bio, Franczak was reprimanded for his transgression in using the official KuK canceling device for canceling local delivery issues that were not authorized by the government and for personal engagement in issuing of local stamps."

    Kronenberg (scan V7_P54) says that Dr. Urbański was the Austrian Postal Minister's secretary, and prohibited the use of the K.u.K. Etappenpost cancel, so Franczak commissioned a new metal one which was placed in use sometime in the life of the 2nd issue. This is the "Rada Miejska" cancel with the so-called coat of arms.

  • After Urbanski's visit, Franczak went to the City Council, which presumably formally approves the projects and applies to the Austrian military government for permission to issue local delivery stamps (but not with Polish eagles). After receiving permission, four more sets of stamps are issued, each set having three city scenes and a stylized version of the Radom Gubernia coat of arms.

    For more detail, see the more detailed approval chronology, the summary of rates and usage (which includes a chronology of the five issues printed), and the story of the coat of arms.)

    While Franczak claimed the Austrian occupation postal authorities had approved the project, later researchers could find no record thereof in the government archives.

  • Uznanski [1956, 1957] says that
    1. "The ordering, printing, and issuing of the stamps was completely under the control of the Military Field Post Command" (I personally don't think that's correct, although there may have been bribes paid, or other favors, to "look the other way")
    2. and "nowhere else in philately do we find a situation where the Field Post had complete charge of the mail service, and, in addition, issued stamps of a postage due nature for local carrier service." (But what about all the other Poland WWI locals?) (No one else says the Field Post did anything other than permit the project.)
• The stamps were printed by the Adolph Panski lithographic printing works in Piotrkow, now Piotrkow Trybunalski.8 Some commentators have speculated that most or all of the forgeries were also printed there, although Panski denied it.
  • I've become fond of the ideas that:
    • perhaps the forgeries were printed after the postal use had been prohibited, in which case there may not have been a problem printing them at Panski's print shop, perhaps at night or when Panski was "away". ("I'm going out for a very long lunch, don't be printing any forged stamps while I'm gone, y'hear?")
    • or perhaps the First Issue forgeries were printed after the first issue was no longer in use (i.e. after Feb. 25, 1918), and the Second Issue forgeries were printed after March 14, 1918, etc.
  • According to Barefoot, who is probably quoting Petriuk, Abramson also pushed for the introduction of local delivery stamps in Zarki, and later arranged for forgeries to be printed at the Panski works. Petriuk seems to think the local delivery stamps were Franczak's idea, after seeing the efforts in Sosnowiec and Zawiercie; but some others (and I) believe it was really Abramson's idea.
• Forgeries were seen pretty quickly. By November 1918, warnings were printed in the German Philatelic Press (Gebrüder Senf [1918]). While some writers believe the forgeries were initially for postal use, this seems implausible to me. In my opinion, too much points to the philatelic nature of the entire project. For example, it's unclear if any contemporaneous postal use of forgeries has been documented, although one would want to read the 1918-9 articles (in German).
  • I have never seen a forged stamp on a full cover (instead of on piece), but they must exist. If so, they probably have forged cancels.
  • Perhaps there was a much larger demand for stamps instead of covers, so there was little financial incentive to create a substantial volume of forged stamps on cover. (If you have forged stamps on a full cover, please send me a high-resolution scan of the item.)
• The treatment of Przedbórz mail constitutes one of the hobby's greatest examples of philatelic ingenuity, in my opinion.
  • The recipient of a letter with a local delivery stamp could avoid paying for the delivery fee by removing the letter, and returning the envelope to the carrier, who would return it to the post office, for probable later transfer to Abramson. (Perhaps the carrier was paid a bonus for every cover he returned.)

    Kronenberg (scan V7_P65) says the returned covers and wrappers were sold to "stamp dealers and collectors", but I think they mostly went to Abramson and then were resold.

  • Stan Wlodek believed that this "return the item" option was available for envelopes, but perhaps not for post (or postal) cards. He thought that would explain the vast preponderance of Przedbórz covers as compared to postcards. (He believed that postcards were pretty popular at the time.)

    Stan believed that the ability to return the cover without the contents "absolutely proves the philatelic nature of the Przedbórz issues." (Email, 8 July 2005.)

  • Many covers have the Przedbórz local delivery stamp pasted over part of the recipient's name, etc. It took me years to realize that since the stamp was being applied at the point of delivery, the carrier already knew it was being delivered to the proper addressee.

    But how were the items cancelled? The letter carrier must have walked around with a little canceling machine in his pack.20  If so, it would explain the poor cancels frequently seen on Przedbórz local delivery stamps.
    
    He couldn't have cancelled the stamps before he left on his route because he probably didn't know how many he would use. He couldn't have waited until he got back, because some people might have wanted to keep the stamped cover.

  • The "return the cover and don't pay" scheme proves the philatelic nature of the entire enterprise, I think. I have not heard of it being used anywhere else.

    The same addressees often show up on many covers.

    1. One possibility is that certain people simply received more mail than others. (Very likely.)
    2. Or perhaps these people were more likely to remove the contents and return the cover than other people. (Not so likely)
    3. Or perhaps Abramson recruited some of his friends in town to be "designated recipients" for covers that he would eventually acquire for resale. (Sounds very plausible to me.)

• Abramson, like the more famous dealers Scott and Gibbons, needed lots of stamps to fill philatelic demand, and apparently was willing to order forgeries to meet the demand. In 1927, he was accused of distributing Zarki forgeries; earlier another dealer claimed to have obtained forged Przedbórz stamps or covers from Abramson.
• According to Roman Hamel, Franczak had a good reputation right after the War. In September, 1919, Franczak was praised by the Polish Ministry of Post and Telegraph for his work on behalf of postal authorities in transition from Russian Post to Austrian Post and then to Polish Post. In 1920 he was still the Post Director in Przedborz.

  But later he was demoted as the director because of his “illegal profits.” But according to his bio, he continued to work for the post office as an ordinary postal worker.

Read how was mailed delivered under the Russians?, and read about court mail.

Read the great "This is a "philatelic endeavor" debate.