Hawaii's Grinnell Missionary Stamps

Part V
by Michael Mills

Though there is no doubt that there are differences in the typeface elements between the Grinnells and Missionaries, Culhane investigated their commonalities and differences. He found significant commonality among minor elements of some areas of frame lines, and he makes a strong argument that the differences involving the typeface elements of the Grinnells and accept stamps can easily be accounted for when viewed in context of the printing history of the accepted Missionaries, leading to the hypothesis that the Grinnells are a unacknowledged Missionary printing.

From all this, it is Culhane's contention that "The 71 Grinnells are the remnants of an unrecognized printing of the Missionaries." If so, then one has to wonder if other accepted stamps may eventually be deemed cousins, parents, or siblings of the Grinnells and the Missionaries.  

In February 2002 the Grinnells were submitted to the Royal Philatelic Society for expertising, and after a long process the society finally delivered their verdict in late October 2004. According to the Expert Committee at the RPSL, the Grinnells did not match the known authentic Missionaries. Though they confirmed the Rugers findings that the paper and ink of the stamps were appropriate for the 1851-period and that the Grinnells were printed by letterpress.

I asked Culhane about the RPSL's opinion, but he was reluctant to discuss the RPSL's opinion until they had published their opinion. However, he did say, "it boils down to interpretation as opposed to physical fact."  And that, as they say, is a whole new kettle of fish.

Unlike many philatelic mysteries where the object in question passes or fails on comparison to certified material, the Grinnells are in uncharted waters once the assertion is accepted that technically and forensically the Grinnells haven't been ruled out and that the provenance substantiates the claims that their source is an assistant who worked in the printing office when the Missionaries were produced.

In 1851 Hawaii was remote, isolated, and only affecting the trappings of Westernisation. Stamp printings were not highly bureaucratic affairs, as fully documented as in London or Berlin, making post office documentary evidence all the more elusive. There's a lack of hard evidence about the actual schedule and dates of the Hawaiian Missionary printings, when and how they were distributed and how the local Hawaiian post offices ran the business of moving the mails.

In addition, the actual physical printing of the stamps is not well documented, if at all. There are three values, two-, five, and thirteen-cents. For each value, two cliches were set side-by-side. A printer assembled the type elements into each cliche, and each cliche shows a variation known as either either Type I or II, left- or right-hand side. The five-cent was probably set and printed first, followed by the two-cent and thirteen-cent. Additionally, a second printing or setting of the thirteen-cent was done, substituting "H.I. & U.S." for "Hawaiian Postage."

For each printing the operator broke up the previous typeface settings and formed the cliches of the new setting from elements of the last setting, which in the case of the five-cent, Type II, meant the replacement of a small letter "n" with a more appropriately sized one.

This crude method of printing and the lack of post office paperwork neither helps to prove or disprove the origins of the Grinnells, but does leave a window of possibilities and ambiguities open. The trail of the Grinnells is hardly over. Indeed, after the RPSL's opinion, Culhane will respond, and it's more than likely that more tests, searches, and investigations will be conducted.

The "Po`oleka O Hawaii" is the journal of the  Hawaiian Philatelic Society, edited by Gregory Chang. They can be reached at HPS, POB 10115, Honolulu, HI 96816.