Covers

I’ve maintained a census of the 2nd Bureau $2 and $5 stamps for several years now.  As far as I know, there are only 13 pieces or covers with the five dollar Marshall stamp (Scott 313), and many of the items were created by contemporary philatelists.  Shown below is the only solo franked $5 cover in the census, item 313-12.

Five dollar Marshall stamp on cover.

Sent from Klotzville, Lousiana on the 17th of January, 1909 to a P.O. box in New Orleans.  The $5 franking hugely overpaid the 2-cent first-class domestic letter rate to a man named N. W. Taussig.  Mr. Noah William Taussig and his brother, Issac, were prominent businessmen in New York and New Orleans sugar industries where Noah was the board chairmen of the American Molasses Company.  Noah most likely created and sent this cover from a sugar factory in Klotzville to himself.  The handwriting on the cover matches his 1922 passport application (available on ancestry.com).

Constance and Noah Taussig’s passport photo (circa 1922).

Mr. Taussig’s name may be familiar to airmail collectors as the creator of the “Taussig” first flight cover that is on display at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum.  Taussig created the cover that bears President Woodrow Wilson’s autograph and was carried on the historic May 18, 1918, flight from Washington, D.C. to New York City.  The prized cover was sold to Mr. Taussig for $1000 at auction to benefit the American Red Cross.

Inaugural airmail flight envelope created and later purchased by N. Taussig.

June 14, 1918, newspaper clipping of autographed cover purchase.

These are the only two philatelic “Taussig” covers known to me.  Know of any others?