DEPARTMENT 67

The French departments were created in 1791, replacing Ancien Régime provinces, as the first administrative level below the central state. Former boundaries were changed and most departments were named after rivers or geographical features, in order to reduce old loyalties to Royalist nobility. Strasbourg became capital of Department 67, Bas Rhin (Lower Rhine) - which it still is today. Shown here is another privately carried letter, from Basel in Switzerland, put in the postal mail at "67 / STRASBOURG" and sent to Colmar, 1797.