1862-1874 Revenue Insurance Cancellations

Some images have also been provided courtesy of revenue-collector.com, Randall Chet and Rusty Cargill.

The United States passed the Revenue Act of 1862 which issued revenue stamps initially to help finance the Civil War. The practice of using stamps to collect taxes persisted long after the conflict was over. Many of these stamps were designed to be affixed to documents such as promissory notes, receipts, powers of attorney, and life-insurance policies. Insurance companies cancelled these stamps with many methods, hand written manuscript, stamped or printed cancels; even automated devices were used. 

Henry Tolman compiled a list and developed a numbering system for the First Issue revenue cancels. His original collection and documentation was sold after his passing. Bill Halstead is the current owner of much of the original Tolman work and this effort could not have been done without his data and image contributions. The original Tolman documentation contains many things that are not in Tolman's published work, "Insurance Cancellations on United States Revenue Stamps of The 1862-1874 Issues". This information has been included in this listing. We are also adding newly discovered stamps and cancellations; these are being given the most logical new Tolman number. 


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