1:39 PM


Welcome back to my blog.....The found this envelope on Ebay and even if it is not related to the Steamboat Arabia, I just had to take a closer look since it is such eye candy and gives a great deal of info- Someone pulled off the stamp- Collectors!....However, I can tell it was sent by a steamboat because area around where the stamp was has a bar like  ink...cancelling the stamp. So, I guess this is indirectly related and you did learn something new! CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

I can spend hours on Ebay reading the letters in the Postal History looking for anything connected to my Arabia project.... It takes time to look at each piece of ephemera because the one I found today (see below) was simply described as
"This is a receipt from the New York Central Railroad Company dated Oct. 25, 1854. It measures approx. 8 by 5 inches."
 When I looked at the document, the name G F Filley, St Louis caught my eye. This huge iron manufacturer was known as the Excelsior Stove Works in St Louis. This is where knowing the names of the store's owners comes in handy because no where on this document says Excelsior Stove Co.

This invoice for shipping tells me they manufactured iron mold patterns and sent 2 boxes of patterns to Buffalo, NY in 1854 (two years before Arabia sank). There were closer manufacturer's to Buffalo, but this factory preferred to buy theirs from St. Louis. As I mentioned before, you can see why the Union had to secure St Louis from the Confederates during the Civil War; after all St Louis was a vast manufacturer of goods.
(check back, because I will look up the description for this firm in the St Louis 1858 Sketch Book and try to find Oliver Filley's CDV (owner in firm and St Louis Mayor).