People ask when the long expected update to Meyer and Harris will be finished. A project
to update this classic work was commenced about 1984 under the auspices of the Philatelic
Foundation. Dick Graham was appointed editor and he recruited others to complete various
parts. Those people included Wally Beardsley, Randy Burt and me. In a short time, it
was decided to produce an entire new work rather than "update" Meyer and Harris. Over
time, the other participants faded away from the project through death or other interests.
But the project still lives and this web site is one of the final parts in finishing it.
Through participation of the broader community of Hawaii collectors, this web site will
hopefully identify more material than was developed through the resources of only the
original workers on the project. This Web site also offers up some of the imponderable
questions to solicit additional input.
The status of the book project is quite advanced. Randy Burt completed substantial
gathering of material at the Archives of Hawaii before moving to Florida and authoring
articles of his own. Randy also assisted my effort to identify sailings of all vessels
to and from Hawaii up to 1886 so postmarks without year dates could be more precisely
dated. Wally Beardsley died in 1989 but finished his drafts of all the chapters on
stamps, postal stationery and postal cards. Jim Shaffer has done some marvelous work
identifying and organizing cancels and auxiliary marks and proof-reading/editing the
Treaty Period text. Chapters on the island postal history, town postmarks and foreign
postal history to 1882 have been completed or drafted and significant parts of the UPU
Period have been written. The length of the chapters suggests a three volume work.
Within the next five years, we should see the completed book(s). You can be a part in
finishing it.
