There was recently an exciting find by a reader of the Korea Stamp Society’s (KSS) webpage. Mr. Edwin Burgoyne, who has been researching information on old covers that were part of his wife’s (Alison) missionary family’s collection, read the articles about Dr. Sherwood Hall’s TB/Christmas and New Year’s seals. He especially noticed the article about the unissued seal of 1940. He then contacted us about the two covers he had in his collection, and after discussions about the covers, he was very kind to give us permission to show images of these two covers and one of the letters inside the envelopes.
These two covers were sent by Clarence Hoffman, a Presbyterian minister in Korea to his daughter, Katherine, who was in India. Alison Burgoyne is the granddaughter of Clarence Hoffman, and her mother Claire, the youngest of five children, was born in Korea. Katherine Hoffman, the third child of six ob Clarence Hoffman, is Alison Burgoyne’s aunt. Dr. Hall does not mention Mr. Hoffman in his book “With Stethoscope in Asia: Korea”, however, Mr. Hoffman is mentioned in a number of books as a prominent missionary who was in Korea from 1910 until 1941. Obviously Mr. Hoffman must have known or was connected closely in some way with Dr. Hall, and his TB/Christmas seal program, in order to have obtained these very rare seals, and then used them on letters to his sister in India.
