1929 2c Commemoratives Issues, Set of 5 Stamps

 These five commemoratives were issued in 1929.  This offer includes:

U.S. #651
1929 2¢ George Rogers Clark

Frontiersman and soldier George Rogers Clark (1752-1818) became a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia militia during the Revolutionary War.  He assembled a force of 175 men and began fighting in the Northwest Territory – the land north of the Ohio River, south of Canada, west of Pennsylvania, and east of the Mississippi River.

In 1778, Clark took Indiana’s Fort Sackville from the British, and with it, the settlement of Vincennes.  The enemy soon recaptured the fort, but Clark again attacked and forced them to surrender.  Clark’s victory at Vincennes and other settlements were key to the U.S. claim of ownership of the vast Northwest Territory at the end of the Revolutionary War.

U.S. #654-56
1929 2¢ Edison’s First Lamp

These stamps were issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first incandescent electric light, invented by Thomas Edison.  U.S. #654 was printed on a flat plate press.  U.S. #655 and 656 were printed on a rotary press.  The latter was the first commemorative coil stamp.

Because of the Post Office policy never to portray a living person on a United States stamp, Edison's picture could not be shown on the stamp that honored him. 

U.S. #657
1929 2¢ Sullivan’s Expedition

John Sullivan (1740-1795) led a controversial expedition against the Iroquois confederacy in 1779.  His force of 4,500 troops sought to eliminate England’s close allies by destroying their food supply.  The Sullivan Expedition destroyed villages and crops across a broad swath of Pennsylvania and New York.  Criticized for the brutality of the campaign, Sullivan resigned his commission in 1779.

The citizens of New Hampshire considered Sullivan a hero.  He served as the state’s attorney general, speaker of the house, and governor before being appointed the first judge of the Federal District Court in 1789.