Hawaiian Missionaries
| Hawaiian "Missionaries" | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Country of production | Hawaii |
| Location of production |
The Polynesian Honolulu |
| Date of production | 1851 |
| Nature of rarity | Few exist |
| No. in existence | 15 |
| Face value | Two cents |
| Estimated value |
|
The Hawaiian Missionaries are the first postage stamps of the Kingdom of Hawaii, issued in 1851. They came to be known as the "Missionaries" because they were primarily found on the correspondence of missionaries working in the Hawaiian Islands. Only a handful of these stamps have survived to the present day, and so they are amongst the great rarities of philately.
In the early 19th century, mail to and from Hawaii was carried by ship captains on an ad hoc basis. By 1849, partly as a side effect of the California Gold Rush and the settlement of California, mail to and from San Francisco had increased greatly. In response, the Hawaiian government established a post office and set postal rates. Henry Martyn Whitney, the first postmaster, was authorized to print stamps for those rates in June 1851, which he did using the printing press of The Polynesian, a weekly government newspaper.
The stamps went on sale October 1, 1851, in three denominations covering three rates: the 2-cent stamp was for newspapers going to the US, the 5-cent value was for regular mail to the US, and the 13-cent value was for mail to the US East Coast, combining the 5 cents of Hawaiian postage, a 2-cent ship fee, and 6 cents to cover the transcontinental US rate.
The design was very simple, consisting only of a central numeral of the denomination framed by a standard printer's ornament, with the denomination repeated in words at the bottom. The top line read "Hawaiian / Postage" for the 2- and 5-cent values, but "H.I. & U.S. / Postage" for the 13-cent value, reflecting its unusual role of paying two different countries' postage. A thin line surrounded by a thicker line framed the stamp as a whole. All stamps were printed in the same shade of blue on pelure paper, an extremely thin tissue-like paper prone to tearing; 90% of known Missionaries are damaged in some way.
Although the stamps were in regular use until as late as 1856, of the four values issued only about 200 have survived (Scott Trepel's census in the Siegel catalog lists 197, but see below), of which 28 are unused, and 32 are on cover.
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