Billy's 1938 Stamp Album

When my father, William W. Cannon, was age 13 (in 1938), he had a stamp album.

I found it among his possessions after he died. There is nothing of any real monetary value, but there are some treasures in it. Billy's father, Edwin Q. Cannon, was the son of George Q. Cannon and Eliza Lamercia Tenney. George met Eliza while visiting Payson, Utah, which is where my wife is also from. Ed was born in 1886 and the postal stamp is from 1884.

I am assuming it probably was obtained from a letter sent to Eliza by a member of her family. Ed was a hunter and evidence of that is provided by a 1938 duck stamp with his signature on it.

Ed was bishop of the Ensign 20th Ward in 1938 and the collection includes a letter to him from the Palestine-Syrian Headquarters in Beirut, Lebanon.

The address was that of his business, the Salt Lake Stamp Co. In the photo, one of the stamps which was attached to the envelope is folded up so that his full name would appear. It is also interesting to look at the stamps in light of the coming Second World War which changed the landscape of the world, particularly in Africa and Eastern Europe. I love many of the African stamps: Cameroon,

French Sudan,

Ivory Coast,

Middle Congo,

Niger,

Senegal,

Ubangi,

Madagascar,

and Zanzibar.

Of particular interest is a stamp with Adolph Hitler representing the Deutsche Reich.

Germany is well represented as Ed served a mission there from 1907 to 1910. Billy had many of the slots for German stamps, covering multiple pages, filled.

I assume that many of the stamps came from letters received at the Salt Lake Stamp Company. Many stamps came from countries that, in addition to Germany, would be heavily involved in and changed by World War II: Hungary,

Japan,

Czechoslovakia,

Danzig,

Poland,

and Russia.

One area of the world that was greatly impacted by the War was Palestine with consequences that still reverberate around the world today.

Finally, I really love one of the stamps of Mongolia.

It is fun to get a glance back at my father's childhood and at the same time realize that the world is a very different place after a war that impacted his generation so incredibly. The story of that impacted world is visually set forth in the variety of the stamps.