For the 20th anniversary of the inauguration of the United States Airmail Service, Postmaster General James A. Farley and President Roosevelt created a week-long event to commemorate the occasion. As part of the celebration, the postal service made a commemorative first-day cancellation for National Air Mail Week, May 15-21, 1938.
The Post Office Department formally established domestic U.S. airmail service on May 15, 1918, with the inaugural route taking the planes up the east coast between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York, according to Wikipedia. After the service started, aircraft carrying express mail passed daily over northeastern Maryland.
For the local celebration in 1938, Postmaster J. Mercer Terrell arranged for an airmail plane piloted by Dr. A. L. Trussell to make the first stop in Elkton to pick up mail from the local post office. The aircraft landed at Elk Landing to collect a sack of letters containing the special cancellation.
The cachet with the headline ELKTON, MARYLAND showed an old stagecoach carrying mail over the old post road and an airplane flying overhead. A press release for the day called it “the fastest method of fast mail service.”
Source: personal collection
