- Home
- Collections
- Search the Collection
- Postal money order
Postal money order
Object Details
- Description
- This is a specimen postal money order of the type issued in 1894 is marked from the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania receiving station number 7 and bears the number 694.
- The design of postal money order forms stayed the same from 1864 to 1893. Officials changed the domestic forms in 1893 and again in 1894 in efforts to improve efficiency and security. Beginning in September 1893 the payee's name was included on the original form; previously it had been only on the separate advice. The addition cleared up questions of ownership and how the form should be endorsed.
- In early 1894 the Post Office Department sent money-order offices new books of forms that were to be in place by the time the January 24, 1894 legislation took effect on July 1 of that year. "In April, 1894," explained the Postmaster General's Annual Report of 1896, "a domestic money-order form of a new and handsome design was introduced, shaped like a bank draft, and therefore better suited to commercial usage than the form previously used. The old form was printed upon ordinary paper by the surface-printing process, while the new order is reproduced by lithography upon bond paper of an excellent quality, which is tented by the same method, improving the general appearance of the order and forming a safeguard against attempts at alterations and erasures (182)." The new form also included a coupon that was added to assist postmasters and with accounting procedures, but it never proved practical and in part lead to another redesign in 1899.
- References:
- Annual Report of the Postmaster General for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1894.
- Annual Report of the Postmaster General for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1895.
- Annual Report of the Postmaster General for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1896.
- Annual Report of the Postmaster General for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1899.
- DeBlois, Diane. "Money Order: The Birth of a 'War Baby.'" P.S.: A Quarterly Journal of Postal History 7:2 (1985): 36-56.
- Data Source
- National Postal Museum
- Date
- 1894
- Object number
- 1986.0945.1
- Type
- Postal Money
- Medium
- paper; ink
- Dimensions
- Other: 12.9 x 22.1cm (5 1/16 x 8 11/16in.)
- Place
- Pennsylvania
- See more items in
- National Postal Museum Collection
- Topic
- Customers & Commerce
- Record ID
- npm_1986.0945.1
- Usage
- Usage conditions apply
There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page .
International media Interoperability Framework
IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more.