COVER N. 717 - USA

Postmark: (Mechanical) Milwauke WI 530 05.05.2026

Posted on the 5th April ; received on the 12th May, 2026

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A nice cover with nice stamps, pity the mechanical cancel. Anyway, thanks a lot, Norbert, this goes great with the Ali cover you also sent me. 

I have to confess my ignorance regarding the personality that is honoured in this stamp of the Black Heritage series that USPS has been running since 1978. so, I had to look the name up on wikipedia to learn that Phillis Wheatley, (c. 1753 -1784) was the first published afro-american female poet.

Born in western Africa, probably in what is now Gambia or Senegal, and brought to America as a slave some years before the USA independence, 1761, to be more precise, Phillis life story is sadly one of going full circle. 

In fact, she would in time acquire a level of education uncomparable to that of other persons sharing the same origins, for her owners, John and Susanna Wheatley, and especially their daughter Mary and son Nathaniel, tutored her and later acknowledged her writing abilities to the point of seeking support for the publication of her first poetry book in London, something that would come to fruition in 1773, thanks to the interest of   Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, who subsidised the publication.

Phillis would be manumitted by the Wheatleys in 1873, and after their death she would marry a  free black grocer with whom she had three children, all of which sadly died still in their  infancy. 

John Peters, her husband, who  further to his job as grocer also worked  as shopkeeper, lawyer, and physician to provide for his family, was emprisoned for debt in 1784, what caused Phillis to start working as a scullery made at a boarding house to make ends meet, something she barely was able to do. It was during this time that she contracted Pneumonia, the cause of her death on December the 5th 1784.

Honouring her legacy as the first Afro-American published female writer, USPS issued the "Forever USA" stamp on the cover, on 29JAN2026.

Postage was completed with two 10 cent stamps of the “Flowers”! definitive issue dated of 18JUL2024. The flowers illustrating the stamp are Poppies and Cornflowers.