4. ‘Blue Boy’ Alexandria Postmaster’s Provisional
In the world of U.S. stamp collecting, the Blue Boy is akin to the Mona Lisa. Between 1845, when Congress established federally standardized rates for postage and 1847, when the first federal postage stamps were produced, postmasters in counties and cities within the 29 states issued their own provisional stamps. Postmasters got creative with the designs. For example, the St. Louis provisional stamps display the image of two bears holding the United States coat of arms between them.
Of particular interest are such provisional stamps from Alexandria, which was retroceded to the state of Virginia (from the District of Columbia) in these years. Seven such stamps are known to exist, but most of them are “buff” or a brownish-yellow color. Only one of them is bright blue—found on a love letter sent in 1847, that was supposed to be burned by its recipient—earning it the name “Blue Boy,” after the famous portrait—of a boy in fancy blue clothes—by English painter Thomas Gainsborough.
