Rev. A. Baur and Buffalo Lake, MN

This weekend I worked on scanning and organizing pictures from Grandpa Alfred Baur’s Funeral. It sounds like a simple task. Of course, I ended up taking a detour or two…

Some of the picture were contained in an envelope with Helen Baur’s name on it. Apparently she was in charge of making duplicates for family members. From the look of the pictures, many were at one time in somebody's photo album. Perhaps they were returned when “the kids” cleaned out after a parent’s death. Others may never had been distributed. They remained in the envelope with the names of Alfred’s siblings written on them. Anyway, this envelope got me to looking at other empty envelopes I have from Grandma Clara’s box. One of them is addressed to Rev. A. Baur… when he was living in Buffalo Lake, MN?

Cedar Mills, MN is the only place where Alfred was a pastor, and yet this envelope is addressed to him as Rev. This just doesn’t make sense. Mmmm...what to do??? The first parsonage at Cedar Mills was built in 1892 .

The post mark! That will tell me when he was living in Buffalo Lake. Nope. The postmark is to blurred to read. Ah, it has a two cent stamp. That should help me get a year. Postage rates always go up. I just need to match a year with two cent postage. The stamp itself was published from 1883-1885 and 1919-1928. 2 cent postage was used for many years until 1918. Postage was bumped up to 3 cents as part of the war effort. It dropped again to 2 cents from 1919-1928. World War I was from 1914-1918. Alfred was 25 years old in 1918 (draft age). He died in 1927 at age 34. He was pastor at Cedar Mills from 1916-1927. I’m betting the letter was mailed sometime between 1919 and 1927, an eight year window.

So Alfred received this letter while serving at St. John’s in Cedar Mills, but he lived in Cedar Mills… didn’t he? Where is Buffalo Lake anyway? Thanks Google Maps. Buffalo Lake is about 15 miles S.W. of Cedar Mills. Let’s try putting in the exact address R.4. Buffalo Lake, Minn. I suspect the address of R.4. is going to help much. According to Google Maps this is MN-4, Hector, MN; 5 miles west of Buffalo Lake.

I started checking census records and couldn’t find anything past the MN 1895 census and the 1910 Federal census. I did find out the War messed things up a bit. I will pursue this more in the future. All because of a silly envelope!

Back to the stamp. I still have the Google search for the stamp on my computer screen.There is a link to a stamp collector’s site. I click on it and find myself looking at an image of the stamp on my envelope. It’s estimated value ranges from $64 to $2,500, depending on issue and condition.

How in the world can one tell the difference? Little things like are there 6 color dots on Washington's nose or 12 dots, the thickness of lines. Was it published with the Intaglio printing method or using Offset printing.

Some of you know Grandma Clara was an avid stamp collector. Do we really think she would have missed something like this? I’m guessing the stamp isn’t worth anything… but I’m sure not going to throw it away!  :-)