The May 21 edition of The E-Sylum included pictures of a counterstamped Civil War token submitted by Bill Miller of Denton, MD, who was hoping that a reader might have some clues about theorigin of his mystery item.

I took the opportunity to engage in a little exercise to see if I could fill in some blanks for the incomplete text of the counterstamp which might in turn help identify its origin. My analysisincludes quite a bit of speculation, but I will provide the reasoning and method for coming to the conclusions I reached.

The critical key to the analysis was found in the upper left side of the counterstamped surface: a dot flanked by two lines, which was intended to delineate the text above it from text below it.That small dot provides an important clue as it can be assumed that it is the center point of the width of the lines of text. Also, while the letters in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lines of text have thesame height, the spacing and width of the letters varies, and I assume this was so that the overall length of each line of text could be kept roughly the same.

With these two assumptions in mind, I was able to estimate the center of each line and the number of characters (letters and spaces) in each row. I identified five rows of text, with the top onebeing so truncated both vertically and horizontally that it was of limited use in my analysis, except that the partial word seemed to have a B, possibly an A, a G, and then possibly a second G. Withthat sequence of letters the word BAGGAGE popped into my head.

I began by drawing an imaginary line downward from the dot near the top of the counterstamp; that line provided the middle point of each line of text. All that was left to do was fill in theblanks. To illustrate my method I will start with the last line.

Line 5: Although the first word shown is only partially there, the two words are pretty clearly HUNDRED DOLLARS. The center of that line is the letter E in HUNDRED. There are then 9 characters(letters and a space) to the right of it, which means there should be 9 letters and spaces to the left of it: ----HUNDRED-DOLLARS. So, we need a three letter word to fit in front of the word HUNDRED(leaving a space in between them). Since we are looking for an amount, that three letter word would be a number, which means the word is ONE, TWO, or SIX.

The text that can be read suggests this is some sort of indemnity disclaimer, and based on the assumption that this a 19th century counterstamp the amount of $600 seemed excessive and a bit oddfor this purpose, so I am leaning towards $100 or $200 being the amount; for no particular reason I went with $100 since that seems a generous amount for 19th century insurance coverage for a pieceof baggage (assuming this is related to baggage).

So, line #5 reads ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS

Using the same method I cane to some conclusions about the text on the other lines.

Line 2: the partial first word reads ERATION. I discovered a handy website that allows you to type in a sequence of letters and chose to search for words that begin or end with that same sequence(http://www.wordbyletter.com/). So, I was able to generate a long list of words that ended with ERATION, and the most suitable one for this application seemed to be CONSIDERATION, and using theimaginary vertical center line, that meant that there was enough room to add the word IN in front, so now we can fill in the blanks with the words IN CONSIDERATION. At the right side of line 2 is apartial word starting with FR, and based on my assumption that each line of text is about the same width, there is only space for a couple more letters, so I settled on the word FREE.

So, line #2 reads IN CONSIDERATION OF FREE

Line 3: this was a tough one as so little of the first visible word on the left side is included. I calculated the number of characters that I was looking for and came up with the word CARRIAGE;the last word on that line only shows the first letter but since there is only room for one more letter I assumed that word to be IS.

So, line #3 reds CARRIAGE ITS VALUE IS

Line 4: this is nearly an impossible challenge. Between what we can see and what we can easily deduce, the partial text reads TO BE LIMITED TO. There are seven characters to the left of that, andbased on what we already know about the subject matter I speculated that the missing word is AGREED.

So, line 4 reads AGREED TO BE LIMITED TO

When you put it all together, the text (minus the top line) reads:

IN CONSIDERATION OF FREE
CARRIAGE ITS VALUE IS
AGREED TO BE LIMITED TO
ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS

This begs the question about what is being subjected to this condition. My initial speculation about the top line including the word BAGGAGE would make this text an indemnity disclaimer fortransporting baggage. Line 1 has space for ten letters and spaces to the left of the word I have assumed is BAGGAGE, and of course there could have been more lines of text above that line on theoriginal counterstamp. So, what is above the dot flanked by two lines is the subject of the limitation that is being described below it.

My speculation is that this token was counterstamped with a die used to make a railroad baggage claim tag. The metal tag would have included a unique number which would have corresponded to asimilar tag attached to the baggage or luggage. I did a little cursory searching on the Internet and I did not find anything with this type of text, but perhaps some experts in that field could offermore insight.

Julia Casey writes:

To read the complete article, see:
ROCHESTER AND PINE N.Y. RAILROAD BAGGAGE CHECK TAG(https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/rochester-and-pine-n-y-railroad-baggage-check)

Jeff Kelley adds:

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: MAY 21, 2017 : A Mystery Item Struck on Civil War Token(http://www.coinbooks.org/v20/esylum_v20n21a13.html)
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: MAY 28, 2017 : More On the Mystery Item Struck on Civil War Token(http://www.coinbooks.org/v20/esylum_v20n22a14.html)