This 1976 First Day Cover features the 13¢ Clara Maass commemorative stamp issued by the United States on August 18, 1976. The cover bears an Art Craft cachet and is postmarked in Belleville, New Jersey, Maass’s birthplace and the official first-day city.
Clara Maass was a pioneering nurse who volunteered for yellow fever experiments in Cuba in 1901. She ultimately gave her life to the research, becoming one of the few American nurses to die during the historic campaign that helped confirm the mosquito vector of the disease.
The striking black-and-white cachet depicts Maass in her nurse’s uniform alongside a scene of her attending a yellow-fever patient, with the inscription “Gave Her Life During Yellow Fever Research.” The stamp itself shows a color portrait of Maass wearing her distinctive cap.
Addressed to architect John L. Rogerson at Mil/Jac Construction Co. in Los Angeles, the cover carries an interesting commercial provenance typical of many mid-1970s FDCs that traveled through business mail channels.
A clean, well-centered example ideal for collectors of medical or nursing history topicals, Art Craft cachets, or U.S. commemoratives of the 1970s.
