5¢ Red Brown (1), horizontal pair, ample margins to full, cancelled by blue grids with matching lightly struck "Nashville Te. Feb. 13" (1851) circular datestamp on folded letter to New York City with bold "Wesley Wheless Banking House Nashville Tenn." oval handstamp, struck before the stamps were applied as they slightly overlap rim, original enclosure is dated February 12 and is on the bank's printed letterhead

Very Fine--an outstanding 5¢ 1847 cover with a beautifully struck banking house handstamp.

The USPCS census records only two examples of this banking house handstamp on an 1847 Issue cover. On the other cover (ex Dick, Rohloff and Rudy) the handstamp slightly ties the 5¢ pair so it was obviously struck after the stamps were applied--in contrast to this cover. This is by far the finer strike of the two recorded examples. The same handstamp is found on obsolete bank notes (an example is shown below, which is not part of this lot). As an interesting aside, Wesley Wheless, a British banker, died in 1861 while on a family vacation in England. His wife brought his corpse back to the U.S. hidden in a piano box packed with salt in the ship's hold, and the story is told that sharks followed the ship on its ocean journey.

Ex Katharine Matthies and Ryohei Ishikawa. Illustrated in the Chronicle 108 (p. 231). With 1993 P.F. certificate.

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