At the beginning of our nation, and in the midst of the war for independence, there was a 

critical need to bind the people together through a reliable and secure system for the 

exchange of information and the delivery of correspondence. This led to the creation of 

America’s postal system in 1775, which preceded the birth of our country. The United 

States Postal Service has played a vital, sustaining, and unifying role in the life of the 

nation and in the lives of the American public ever since. 

The history of the Postal Service is a large story set on a broad canvas. It is intertwined with

the history of America, and it provides a lens from which to observe the evolution of the

United States.

The postal system strengthened the foundations of our democracy by fostering the flow of

ideas and access to America’s free press. It enabled the vast expansion of American industry

and commerce, spanning and influencing the rise of the railroads in the 19th century, air

travel in the 20th century, and the advanced digital technology of recent decades. As

America’s economy and society have evolved, so too has the Postal Service progressed, both

meeting and reflecting the nation’s changing needs.

The United States Postal Service: An American History tells the story of an ever-changing

and improving institution. It introduces us to the people and events that have shaped our

story, and most importantly, how and why the Postal Service continues to play an indispensable role in every American community. From connecting people to each other, to

businesses, and to their government, one doorstep and one mailbox at a time, the Postal

Service continues to bind the nation together.

I hope you will enjoy reading this history of the United States Postal Service, and its 

impressive contributions to the story of our nation. 

Sincerely, 

Megan J. Brennan

Postmaster General
United States Postal Service

Washington, D.C.
The United States Postal Service: An American History

Publication 100

© 2020 by the United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.

Acknowledgments

Megan J. Brennan 

Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer

Ronald A. Stroman

Deputy Postmaster General and Chief Government Relations Officer

Roderick N. Sallay

Manager, Legislative Policy and Strategy Development

Jennifer M. Lynch

Historian and Corporate Information Services Manager

Stephen A. Kochersperger

Senior Research Analyst, Postal History

Junemarie J. Brandt

Research Analyst, Postal History

Francis J. Schultz-Depalo

Senior Designer, Brand Equity and Design

This book was prepared by the Office of the Historian, Government Relations and Public Policy, United States Postal Service.

The Postal Service thanks all who contributed to this publication, especially Daniel Afzal, Ana D. Cikowski,

Hannah C. Close, Polly J. Gibbs, Brian M. Jarvis, Veronica E. Poe, and the late Megaera Ausman and Rita Lloyd Moroney.

Image Credits 

LOC: Courtesy of the Library of Congress 

NPM: Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum

Front Cover: LOC; 3: NPM; 5: Courtesy The New York Public Library; 10: Courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library/Rare Books, 

Anti-Slavery collection; 11: NPM; 12: LOC; 14: NPM; 18: LOC; 19, mail wagon: LOC; 20, photo: NPM; 24: LOC, Printed Ephemera collection; 

25: LOC; 26: LOC; 29: LOC; 33: LOC; 40: LOC; 55: LOC; 62: NPM; 85: Courtesy of Curtis Jewell; 87: Courtesy of Bro. Joseph W. Schmitz 

Special Collections, St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas; 88: LOC; 89: Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society; 90: Recruitment 

poster courtesy National Archives and Records Administration, other images courtesy LOC; 94, registry receipt: NPM; 94–95, reward circular: 

Railway Mail Service Library; 100, George Washington stamp: NPM; 108 (top): LOC; 110, pneumatic tube: LOC; 111, Autopeds: LOC; 113, 

hovercraft: Courtesy of Tony Kirk; 127: NPM; Outside back gate: LOC.

All other images are from the collection of the United States Postal Service.

The following are among the registered trademarks of the United States Postal Service: 

Air Mail, APC, Approved by the Postmaster General, Automated Postal Center, Certified Mail, City Carrier Uniform (design), Click-NShip, Confirm, Critical Mail, Customized MarketMail, Eagle Logo, Every Door Direct Mail, Express Mail, First-Class Mail, First-Class 

Mail International, Forever, Global Forever, gopost, IMb, IMb Tracing, Informed Delivery, Informed Visibility, Intelligent Mail, Mail 

Truck (design), Mailbox (design), MERLIN, Metro Post, My USPS.com, Parcel Post, Parcel Select, PC Postage, PCC, PLANET Code, Pony 

Express, Postal Customer Council, Postal Police, PostalOne!, Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail Flat Rate, Priority Mail 

Regional Rate, Registered Mail, Reply Rides Free, Seal of the Postal Service, Self-Service Ship and Mail Center & Design, Sonic Eagle 

(design), Stamps by Mail, Standard Mail, The Last Mile, The Postal Service, United States Post Office, United States Postal Inspection 

Service, United States Postal Service, United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, U.S. Mail, U.S. Postal, U.S. Postal Service, 

USPS, USPS BlueEarth, USPS Change of Address, USPS Delivery Confirmation, USPS Marketing Mail, USPS Mobile, USPS Retail Ground, 

USPS Tracking, usps.com, ZIP, ZIP+4. 

The following are among the trademarks of the United States Postal Service: 

Carrier Pickup, First-Class, Mail Truck (design), Mr. ZIP (and design), Next Generation Mailbox, PO Box, Post Office, Post Office Box, 

Postal Service, POSTNET, Signature Confirmation, Stamps by Phone, Stamps Online, Standard Post, US Mail, Village Post Office, ZIP 

Code.

ISBN 978-0-9630952-4-4
Messenger of Sympathy and Love

Servant of Parted Friends

Consoler of the Lonely

Bond of the Scattered Family

Enlarger of the Common Life

Carrier of News and Knowledge

Instrument of Trade and Industry

Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance

Of Peace and of Goodwill

Among Men and Nations

Inscription on the former Washington, 

D.C., Post Office, now home of the 

Smithsonian's National Postal Museum
CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Colonial Times 2

The Postal Service Begins 4

Early Postal Legislation 4

The Constitution and the Post Office 4

Ebenezer Hazard, Postmaster of New York 5

Benjamin Franklin, First Postmaster General 6

Abraham Lincoln, Postmaster 7

Other Famous Postal Workers 7

The Growth of the Postal Service 8

Alexis de Tocqueville 9

Saving On Postage and Paper 10

The Private Express Statutes 11

Moving the Mail 12

Steamboats 12

Overland Mail to California 14

The Pony Express 16

Overland by Stagecoach 16

Mail Service and the Civil War 18

The Confederate Post Office Department 19

Mail by Rail 20

Owney, Mascot of the Railway Mail Service 20

A Perilous Profession 22

Railway Mail Clerk James Julian 23

Star Routes 24

Reaching Out to Everyone 26

Free City Delivery 26

Delivery Frequency 27

City Delivery Pioneer 28

Rural Free Delivery (RFD) 30

Postmasters in the Mid-19th Century 34

Post Office Names 36

The 20th Century 38

Parcel Post 38

Postal Savings System 39

Airmail 40

Katherine Stinson, the “Flying Schoolgirl” 40

New York to San Francisco 42

Airmail Pilot Bill Hopson 44

New Deal Art: Eager and Alive 46

The Postwar Boom 52

From Zone Codes to ZIP Codes 54

Mechanization and Early Automation 57

Postal Reorganization 60

The Postal Service Board of Governors 66

The Automation Age 68

Sorting Letters Better 68

Processing Flats 70

Processing Parcels 70

Automating Mail Handling and Acceptance 71

Giving Customers Greater Access 72

Collaborating with Customers and Competitors 73

Intelligent Mail 74

21st Century Challenges and Change 76

Service at Risk 76

Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding 

Reform Act of 2003 76

Dealing with the Unimaginable 77

Postal Accountability and Enhancement 

 Act of 2006 78

Crisis and Crossroads 79

21st Century Innovation 80

Cutting Controllable Costs 80 

Innovating to Increase Revenue 81

Need for Postal Reform Legislation 82

Delivering Despite Disaster 84

Everyday Heroism 85

Diversity Past and Present 86

Mary Katherine Goddard, Postmaster 86

Refugio Benavides, Postmaster 87

Vinnie Ream, Clerk, Dead Letter Office 88

William Cooper Nell, Post Office Clerk 89

William H. Carney, Letter Carrier 90

Social Change in the Sixties 91

Protecting the Mail 92

Extending Mail Service 92

Cleaning the Mailstream 92

The De Autremont Train Holdup, 1923 94

Pursuing Rogues and Robbers 95

Protecting the Innocent 96

The Office of Inspector General 98

Investigating Fraud 99

U.S. Postage Stamps 100

The First Postage Stamps 100

United States Postage Stamps 100

Stamp Firsts 100
Commemorative Stamps 101

Booklets 102

Coils and Vending Machines 102

Nondenominated Stamps 102

Self-adhesives 102

Forever Stamps 103

Semipostals 103

Customized Postage 104

Postal Stationery 104

Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee 104

Stamp Collecting 106

The World’s Largest Stamp Gallery 106

Errors, Freaks, and Oddities 107

Making Stamps 108

Unusual Delivery Methods 110

Delivery in Cities: A Visual Timeline 114

Letter Carrier Uniforms 114

Mail Collection Vehicles 116

City Delivery Vehicles 118

Uniform Badges 119

Uniform Emblem Patches 119

Postmasters General 120

Statistics: Pieces and Post Offices 122

History of Postage Rates 124

Rates for Domestic Letters, 1792–1863 124

Rates for Domestic Letters, 1863–2019 124 

Rates for Stamped Cards and Postcards, 

1873–2019 126

Rates for the Pony Express 126

Rates for Domestic Airmail, 1918–1977 127

Postal Insignia 128

Seals 128

Inscriptions 129

Research Sources 130

Notes 132

Bibliography 136

Chronology of Events 138

INTRODUCTION

On July 26, 1775, members of the Second Continental 

Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, agreed

That a postmaster General be appointed for the United 

Colonies, who shall hold his office at Philada, and shall be 

allowed a salary of 1000 dollars per an: for himself, and 340 

dollars per an: for a secretary and Comptroller, with power to 

appoint such, and so many deputies as to him may seem proper 

and necessary.

That a line of posts be appointed under the direction of 

the Postmaster general, from Falmouth in New England to 

Savannah in Georgia, with as many cross posts as he shall think 

fit.1

This simple statement signaled the birth of the Post 

Office Department, the predecessor of the United States 

Postal Service. 

As the first American communications network, 

our postal system not only facilitated commerce and 

strengthened the bonds of family and friendship — it 

united a nation. The Founding Fathers believed that to 

succeed, a democratic form of government depended upon 

the free exchange of news, ideas, and opinions. Thomas 

Jefferson wrote in 1804

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now 

trying . . . that man may be governed by reason and truth. 

Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all 

the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the 

freedom of the press.2

The first major postal law, passed by Congress in 1792, 

encouraged the exchange of newspapers by allowing them 

to travel through the U.S. Mail at extremely low rates of 

postage — in some cases for free — to ensure the success of 

the democracy. 

Nearly two and a half centuries later, the United States 

Postal Service is still delivering for America, reaching 

further as the nation expands and moving faster as 

technology develops. 

Many things have changed since 1775. In scale, the postal 

system has grown from 75 Post Offices scattered along the 

East Coast to more than 30,000 locations tucked into every 

corner of the nation. Travel has sped up — from steamboats 

that traveled at 6 miles per hour to airplanes that soar nearly 

100 times faster. New channels of communication have 

opened — from the telegraph wires of the 19th century to 

wireless Internet in the 21st century. 

Time and again, advances in technology have challenged 

the Postal Service to adapt to new ways of doing business. 

They have also offered new opportunities, from airplanes 

that enabled coast-to-coast overnight delivery, to 

supercomputers that allow for tracking of letters in near 

real-time. 

The Postal Service is a vital element of our nation’s 

economy and communications infrastructure. It has served 

our country for more than 240 years by adapting to the 

changing needs of a changing nation in fulfillment of its 

historic mission, which is stated in Title 39 of the U.S. Code: 

The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation 

to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through 

the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence 

of the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient 

services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services 

to all communities.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 1
COLONIAL TIMES

I

n early colonial times, correspondents depended on 

friends, merchants, and Native Americans to carry 

messages among the colonies. However, most correspondence ran between the colonists and England, the 

Netherlands, or Sweden — their mother countries. It was 

largely to handle this mail that, in 1639, the first official 

notice of mail service in the colonies appeared. The General 

Court of Massachusetts designated Richard Fairbanks’ 

tavern in Boston as the official repository for mail brought 

from or sent overseas, in line with the European practice of 

using coffee houses and taverns as mail stations.

Local authorities operated post routes within the colonies. 

Then, in 1673, Governor Francis Lovelace of New York set 

up a monthly post between New York and Boston. The service was short-lived, but the post rider’s trail became known 

as the Old Boston Post Road, part of today’s U.S. Route 1.

Governor William Penn established Pennsylvania’s first 

Post Office in 1683. In the South, private messengers, usually 

slaves, connected the huge plantations; a barrel of tobacco 

was the penalty for failing to relay mail to the next plantation. As plantations expanded inland from port regions, so 

did the communications network.

Central postal organization came to the colonies only 

after 1692, when Thomas Neale received a 21-year grant 

from the British Crown, whose settlements dominated 

the Atlantic seaboard, for a North American postal system.3

 Neale never visited America. Instead, he appointed 

Governor Andrew Hamilton of New Jersey as his Deputy 

Postmaster General. Neale’s franchise cost him only six 

shillings and eight pence a year but was no bargain. He 

died heavily in debt in 1699 after assigning his interests in 

America to Andrew Hamilton and another Englishman, 

Robert West.

In 1707, the British government bought the rights to the 

North American postal system from West and Andrew 

Hamilton’s widow. The government then appointed 

Hamilton’s son John as Deputy Postmaster General of 

America. He served until 1721, when he was succeeded by 

John Lloyd of Charleston, South Carolina.

In 1730, Alexander Spotswood, a former lieutenant 

governor of Virginia, became Deputy Postmaster General 

of America. The appointment of Benjamin Franklin 

as Postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737 may have been 

Spotswood’s most notable achievement. Franklin, only 31 

Post Route Map, 1729

A version of this map 

appeared in Herman 

Moll’s Atlas Minor, 

published in London in 

1729. The map’s legend, 

“An account of ye

 Post 

of ye Continent of Nth

America,” describes 

weekly mail service to and 

from the 13 Post Offices, 

including “the 3 Great 

Offices ... Boston, New 

York & Philadelphia.”

2 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Table of Postage Rates, 

1765 (detail view)

This table lists the postage 

rates for letters traveling 

between various towns 

from Quebec to Virginia. 

It was printed in 1765, 

when Benjamin Franklin 

and John Foxcroft were 

joint Postmasters General 

for the Crown. Rates are 

listed in pennyweights 

and grains of silver.

years old at the time, was a successful printer, publisher, and 

civic leader. He would later become one of the most popular 

men of his age.

Two other Virginians succeeded Spotswood: Head Lynch 

in 1739 and Elliot Benger in 1743. When Benger died in 

1753, Benjamin Franklin and William Hunter, Postmaster 

of Williamsburg, Virginia, were appointed by the Crown as 

joint Postmasters General for the colonies. Hunter died in 

1761, and John Foxcroft of New York succeeded him, serving until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

During his time as joint Postmaster General for the Crown, 

Franklin made important and lasting improvements to the 

colonial posts. He began to reorganize the service, setting out 

on a long tour to inspect Post Offices in the North and as far 

south as Virginia. New surveys were made, milestones were 

placed on principal roads, and new and shorter routes were 

laid out. For the first time, post riders carried mail at night to 

speed service between Philadelphia and New York.

Thanks in large part to Franklin’s efforts, the colonial 

posts in North America made their first profit in 1760. 

When Franklin left office, post roads (roads on which mail 

travels) operated from Florida to Maine and into Canada. 

Mail between the colonies and the mother country operated 

on a regular schedule, with posted times. 

The Crown dismissed Franklin in 1774 for actions sympathetic to the cause of the colonies. Shortly after, William 

Goddard, a printer, newspaper publisher, and former 

Postmaster, set up the Constitutional Post for intercolonial 

mail service. Colonies funded it by subscription, and net 

revenues were to be used to improve mail service rather 

than to be paid back to the subscribers. By 1775, when 

the Continental Congress met at Philadelphia, Goddard’s 

post was flourishing, and 30 Post Offices operated between 

Williamsburg and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The Constitutional Post required each Postmaster to hire 

only reputable post riders. Each post rider had to swear to 

secure his mail under lock and key. As for the Crown’s competing service, Goddard warned: 

Letters are liable to be stopped & opened by ministerial 

mandates, & their Contents construed into treasonable 

Conspiracies; and News Papers, those necessary and important 

vehicles, especially in Times of public Danger, may be rendered of 

little avail for want of Circulation ...4

The Constitutional Post afforded security to colonial messages and provided a communication line that played a vital 

role in bringing about American independence. n

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 3
THE POSTAL SERVICE BEGINS

I

n May 1775, three weeks after the battles of Lexington 

and Concord, the Second Continental Congress met 

in Philadelphia to plan for the defense of the colonies 

against British aggression and “to take into consideration 

the state of America.”5 The conveyance of letters and intelligence was essential to the cause of liberty. A committee, 

chaired by Benjamin Franklin and including Samuel Adams, 

Richard Henry Lee, Philip Livingston, Thomas Lynch, and 

Thomas Willing, was named to consider the creation of a 

postal system. 

The committee reported back to Congress on July 25, 

1775. The Continental Congress agreed to the committee’s recommendations on the following day, creating the 

position of Postmaster General, and naming Franklin to it. 

Richard Bache, Franklin’s son-in-law, was named comptroller, and William Goddard was appointed surveyor. 

Under Franklin and his immediate successors, the postal 

system mainly carried communications between Congress 

and the armies. Postmasters and post riders were exempt 

from military duties, so service would not be interrupted.

Benjamin Franklin served as Postmaster General until 

November 7, 1776. He was in office when the Declaration of 

Independence created the United States in July 1776, which 

made Franklin the first Postmaster General of the United 

States (see “Benjamin Franklin, First Postmaster General” on 

page 6). America’s present Postal Service descends from the 

system Franklin placed in operation.

Early Postal Legislation

In 1781, Congress ratified the Articles of Confederation. 

Article IX addressed postal issues:

The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole 

and exclusive right and power of ... establishing or regulating 

post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United 

States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through 

the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said 

office ...

Postmaster General Ebenezer Hazard, serving from 1782 to 

1789, created new east-west post routes as the population expanded westward, including a route to serve the frontier town 

of Pittsburgh. Although he devoted most of his energies to 

developing inland service, Hazard also reestablished monthly 

mail service to Europe, which the war had disrupted.

Instructed by Congress in 1785 to contract with stagecoach companies to carry mail on heavily traveled routes, 

Hazard established a regular mail route via stagecoach between Boston and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. President 

George Washington criticized Hazard when he substituted 

riders on horseback on some routes to improve service and 

reduce costs. Washington supported the use of postal allocations to subsidize stagecoaches. He looked at coaches as 

providing “a facility to the means of traveling for strangers 

... a circumstance highly beneficial to any country.”6

During Hazard’s tenure the entire postal headquarters 

staff consisted of himself, a secretary/comptroller, an inspector of dead letters, three surveyors, and 26 post riders. He 

wrote a friend about his job’s demands: 

... I have not had time for proper relaxation, and, in three years 

past, have not been to the distance of ten miles from this city. I 

once hired a clerk, but found my salary was not equal to that 

expence in addition to the support of my family, and was obliged 

to dismiss him.7 

At Hazard’s suggestion, Congress passed the Ordinance 

of October 18, 1782, revising and codifying postal laws 

and regulations. The ordinance continued the Post Office’s 

monopoly on mail, restricted censorship to times of war 

or when specifically ordered by the Postmaster General or 

Congress, and allowed post riders to carry newspapers at 

moderate rates.

The Constitution and the Post Office

In June 1788, the ninth state ratified the Constitution, which 

gave Congress the power “To establish Post Offices and 

post Roads” in Article I, section 8. A year later, the Act of 

September 22, 1789, continued the Post Office and made 

the Postmaster General subject to the direction of the 

President.8

 Four days later, President Washington appointed Samuel Osgood as the first Postmaster General under 

the Constitution. A population of almost four million was 

served by 75 Post Offices and about 2,400 miles of post 

roads.

The Post Office received two 1-year extensions by the 

Acts of August 4, 1790, and March 3, 1791.9

 The Act of 

February 20, 1792, continued the Post Office for another 

two years and formally admitted newspapers to the mails, 

established specific post roads, and prohibited postal 

4 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
officials from opening letters.10 Later legislation enlarged 

the duties of the Post Office, strengthened and unified its 

organization, and provided rules for 

its development. The Act of 

May 8, 1794, continued the 

Post Office indefinitely.11

The Post Office moved 

from Philadelphia in 1800 

when Washington, D.C., became the seat of government. 

Two horse-drawn wagons 

carried all postal records, 

furniture, and supplies. n

Stagecoaches

Beginning in 1785, Congress encouraged 

the use of stagecoaches to transport mail 

between Post Offices to subsidize the 

growth of stagecoach lines.

Ebenezer Hazard, 

Postmaster of New York

Prior to his service as Postmaster General, Ebenezer 

Hazard was Postmaster of New York City from 

October 5, 1775, until about January 1777, when 

he was appointed surveyor of the national Post 

Office. On November 14, 1776, Postmaster Hazard 

petitioned the Continental Congress for a salary 

increase, noting his previous year’s salary was “by no 

means a compensation for his services” due to the 

extraordinary costs associated with 

the war.12 Hazard hoped that 

his friend, the Reverend 

John Witherspoon, 

a member of the 

Continental Congress, 

would intercede on 

his behalf, and wrote 

to Witherspoon of 

the financial and 

physical challenges 

he faced. In his 

letter (at right) the 

“General” that 

Hazard refers to is 

George Washington. 

I shall only observe, that the word ‘incidents’ 

used in our quarterly accounts ... certainly can 

mean nothing more than those incidents which 

are usual in time of peace; such as office rent, 

firewood, sealing-wax, etc., and cannot justly be 

construed to include the extraordinary expenses 

occasioned by the present war.

... The necessity of keeping the office near 

Head-Quarters arose from the importance of 

the General’s despatches, and his being near 

the centre of the Army, who are almost the 

only persons for whom letters now come per 

post. The General has doubtless informed 

Congress of his different removals. In each 

of these I have followed him; and I am sorry I 

have reason to say ... that I have been obliged 

to follow him on foot. I do not mean even to 

hint a reflection upon the General, whom I 

esteem and respect. Furnishing me with a horse 

did not belong to his department; but those 

whose business it was have not treated me 

genteelly. However, lest it should be said that I 

was unfaithful in my office, and to convince his 

Excellency of my readiness to oblige him, and 

serve the publick, I submitted to this indignity, 

and the fatigue consequent upon it, although it 

was not my business, as a Postmaster, to follow 

the Army like a sutler.13

(Note: A sutler was a peddler who followed an army 

and sold to it.)

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 5
Benjamin Franklin, 

First Postmaster General

Born in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin left school 

at age 10 to work in his father’s candle shop.14 In 

1718, Franklin apprenticed to his brother James, 

a printer and founder of Boston’s New England 

Courant. Franklin read voraciously, contributed anonymous articles to his brother’s newspaper, and managed the paper while his brother was imprisoned 

for a political offense. At 17, Franklin ran away and 

ended up in Philadelphia, where he found work as a 

printer. Franklin started 

his own print shop by 

1728 and purchased The 

Pennsylvania Gazette. 

His wildly successful 

Poor Richard’s Almanack

secured his fortune.

Postal Career Begins

Franklin was appointed Postmaster of 

Philadelphia by the British 

Crown Post in 1737. 

Newspaper publishers often served as Postmasters, 

which helped them to gather and distribute news. 

Postmasters were the first to receive news; they could 

also exclude rival newspapers from the mail.

Postmaster General Elliott Benger added to 

Franklin’s duties by making him comptroller, with 

financial oversight for nearby Post Offices. When 

Benger’s health failed, Franklin successfully lobbied 

for the job, and, with Virginia’s William Hunter, was 

named joint Postmaster General for the Crown on 

August 10, 1753.

Franklin surveyed post roads and Post Offices, introduced a simple accounting method for Postmasters, 

and had riders carry mail both night and day. He 

encouraged Postmasters to establish the penny 

post where letters not called for at the Post Office 

were delivered for a penny. Franklin also instructed 

Postmasters to admit all newspapers to the mail for a 

small fee. His efforts contributed to the Crown Post’s 

first North American profit in 1760.

In 1757, while serving as joint Postmaster General, 

Franklin went to London to represent Pennsylvania’s 

government. In 1763, back in the colonies, he 

traveled 1,600 miles surveying post roads and Post 

Offices from Virginia to New England.

In 1764, Franklin returned to London, where he 

represented the interests of several colonial governments. In 1774, judged too sympathetic to the colonies, he was dismissed as joint Postmaster General.

First Postmaster General under the 

Continental Congress

Back on American soil in 1775, Franklin served as a 

member of the Second Continental Congress, which 

appointed him Postmaster General on July 26 of that 

year. With an annual salary of $1,000 and $340 for 

a secretary and comptroller, Franklin was responsible 

for all Post Offices from Massachusetts to Georgia 

and had authority to hire Postmasters as necessary. 

He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Richard Bache, 

in November 1776.

Founding Father of a New Nation

In 1776, Franklin worked with the committee that 

wrote the Declaration of Independence, then left 

for Paris to secure French support for the war with 

England. The treaty of alliance he helped negotiate 

in 1778 was vital to the success of the American 

Revolution. Later, Franklin helped negotiate the peace 

treaty with Great Britain.

After returning to Philadelphia in 1785, Franklin 

attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and 

lived to see the Constitution adopted. He died 

April 17, 1790.

Benjamin Franklin, Postmaster Stamp

Issued April 7, 2006

6 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Abraham Lincoln, 

Postmaster

Two Postmasters became 

U.S. Presidents later in their 

careers — Abraham Lincoln 

and Harry Truman. Truman 

held the title and signed papers but immediately turned 

the position and its pay over 

to an assistant. Lincoln was 

the only President who had 

served as a Postmaster.

On May 7, 1833, 

24-year-old Lincoln was 

appointed Postmaster of 

New Salem, Illinois. Lincoln 

served until the office was 

closed May 30, 1836. Postal records show that Lincoln 

earned $55.70 as Postmaster in fiscal year 1835 and 

$19.48 for one quarter’s work in fiscal year 1837. 

Besides his pay, Lincoln, as Postmaster, could send and 

receive personal letters free and get one daily newspaper delivered free.

Mail arrived once a week. If an addressee did not 

collect the mail, as was the custom, Lincoln delivered it 

personally — usually carrying the mail in his hat. Even 

then, Lincoln was “Honest Abe.”

Reportedly, when the New Salem Post Office was discontinued, Lincoln had a balance of $16 or $18, which 

he took with him to Springfield, Illinois. Months later, 

while his close friend Dr. A. G. Henry was visiting, a 

Post Office agent called on Lincoln to collect the funds. 

Henry knew that Lincoln had been in financial straits 

and feared that he might not have the money. Henry recalled that just as he was about to offer Lincoln a loan, 

the future President:

 . . . went over to his trunk at his boarding house, 

and returned with an old blue sock with a quantity 

of silver and copper coin tied up in it. Untying the 

sock, he poured the contents on the table and 

proceeded to count the coin, which consisted of 

such silver and copper pieces as the country-people 

were then in the habit of using in paying postage. 

On counting it up there was found the exact 

amount, to a cent, of the draft, and in the identical 

coin which had been received. He never used, 

under any circumstances, trust funds.15

Abraham Lincoln Stamp

Issued June 29, 1995

Other Famous Postal Workers

John Brown

Abolitionist, Postmaster, Randolph, PA

Charles Bukowski

Poet and novelist, clerk, Los Angeles, CA 

Bing Crosby

Singer and actor, clerk, Spokane, WA 

Walt Disney

Producer, substitute carrier, Chicago, IL

Charles R. Drew

Scientist and surgeon, part-time special delivery 

messenger, Washington, D.C.

William Faulkner

Novelist, Postmaster, University, MS

Sherman Hemsley

Actor, clerk, Philadelphia, PA, and New York, NY 

Conrad Hilton

Hotel magnate, Postmaster, San Antonio, NM

Rock Hudson

Actor, letter carrier, Winnetka, IL 

Sidney Lanier

Poet, clerk, Macon, GA

Charles Lindbergh

Aviator, contract airmail pilot

John Prine

Singer and songwriter, letter carrier, Maywood, IL

Knute Rockne

Football coach, clerk, Chicago, IL

Adlai E. Stevenson

Vice President, First Assistant Postmaster General 

Noah Webster

Lexicographer, special agent

Richard Wright 

Author, substitute clerk, Chicago, IL

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 7
THE GROWTH OF THE POSTAL SERVICE

As the United States grew, the Post Office 

Department developed new services that lasted 

into the 21st century and subsidized the development of every major form of transportation.

Between 1789, when the federal government began operations, and 1861, when civil war broke out, the United States 

grew dramatically. Its territory extended into the Midwest 

in 1787 through the Northwest Ordinance, reached down 

the Mississippi River and west to the Rocky Mountains after 

the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and stretched to the Pacific 

coast by the 1840s. The country’s population grew from 3.9 

million people in 1790 to 31.4 million in 1860. 

The Post Office Department grew too. The number of 

Post Offices increased from 75 in 1790 to 28,498 in 1860. 

Post roads increased from 59,473 miles at the beginning 

of 1819 to 84,860 by the end of 1823. By the end of 1819, 

the Department served citizens in 22 states, including the 

newest states of Illinois and Alabama. 

These new territories and states, as well as established 

communities, pressed the Post Office Department for more 

routes and faster delivery. The Department met these needs 

by expanding its service and developing faster ways to move 

mail. By 1822, it took only 11 days to move mail between 

Washington, D.C., and Nashville, Tennessee.

Post Offices Multiply

As new Post Offices were established, their names were handwritten in this 1831 

copy of the Table of Post Offices in the United States. From 1790 to 1860, the U.S. 

population grew almost eightfold, while the number of Post Offices increased by a 

factor of nearly 380 — from 75 to 28,498.

8 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
In 1828, there were 7,530 Post Offices and 29,956 postal 

employees, mail contractors, and carriers, which made the 

Department the largest employer in the executive branch. 

Because the Department awarded a large number of jobs 

and contracts, the Postmaster General’s power grew as well. 

President Andrew Jackson recognized the potential for patronage and, in 1829, invited William T. Barry of Kentucky 

to become the first Postmaster General to sit as a member 

of the President’s Cabinet. Barry’s predecessor, John McLean 

of Ohio, had been the first Postmaster General to refer to 

the Post Office, or General Post Office as it sometimes was 

called, as the Post Office Department, but the organization 

was not specifically established as an executive department 

by Congress until June 8, 1872.16 

By 1831, postal employees accounted for 76 percent of 

the civilian federal workforce. Postmasters outnumbered 

soldiers 8,764 to 6,332 and were the most widespread representatives of the federal government.

As the country grew, people in new states and territories 

petitioned Congress for even more post routes, regardless 

of their cost or profitability. The Post Office Department, 

and thus the federal government, had to decide whether 

to subsidize routes that promoted settlement but did not 

generate enough revenue to pay for themselves or to operate in the black. The Department struggled with this issue. 

With congressional support and keeping fiscal responsibility firmly in mind, the Department ultimately made 

decisions in the 19th century that reflected public service 

as its highest aim. It funded post routes that supported 

national development and instituted services to benefit all 

residents of the country.

The Post Office Department also simplified and lowered 

postage rates in the middle of the 19th century. Before 

that time, postage was based on the number of sheets in a 

letter and the distance a letter traveled. Families, friends, or 

businesses further distant paid more to keep in touch. For 

instance, from 1799 to 1815, it cost:

n 8 cents/sheet, sent 40 miles or fewer.

n 10 cents/sheet, sent over 40 and up to 90 miles.

n 12.5 cents/sheet, sent over 90 and up to 150 miles.

n 17 cents/sheet, sent over 150 and up to 300 miles.

n 20 cents/sheet, sent over 300 and up to 500 miles.

n 25 cents/sheet, sent more than 500 miles.

In 1845, the Department began charging rates based on 

weight and whether a letter was going more than or fewer 

than 300 miles. In 1851, the distance limit for the lowest rate 

increased to 3,000 miles, which included most of the United 

States, while an even lower rate was charged if postage was 

prepaid. 

In 1855, the prepayment of letter postage became mandatory. Previously, postage could be paid by the sender or the 

recipient, or partially by each. Beginning January 1, 1856, 

mailers were required to prepay postage using U.S. postage 

stamps, which had been introduced in 1847 to simplify 

Alexis de Tocqueville

In 1831, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville began his travels in 

America, a journey that led to his classic book, Democracy in 

America. He wrote of the mail:

I traveled along a portion of the frontier of the United States in a 

sort of cart, which was termed the mail. Day and night we passed 

with great rapidity along the roads, which were scarcely marked 

out through immense forests. When the gloom of the woods 

became impenetrable, the driver lighted branches of pine, and we 

journeyed along by the light they cast. From time to time we came 

to a hut in the midst of the forest; this was a post-office. The mail 

dropped an enormous bundle of letters at the door of this isolated 

dwelling, and we pursued our way at full gallop, leaving the 

inhabitants of the neighboring log houses to send for their 

share of the treasure.17

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 9
Saving on Postage and Paper

Until July 1845, two sheets of 

paper cost twice as much to mail 

as one sheet. People rarely used 

envelopes, which would have 

counted as another sheet — 

they simply folded their letter 

so that the outside was blank 

and sealed it with wax or an 

adhesive wafer. To fit even more 

lines on one page, some people 

cross-wrote their letters. When 

they reached the end of the 

page they turned the paper 90 

degrees and continued writing.

Letters Sent to Abolitionist Deborah Weston of 

New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1839

10 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
payment and help account for postage revenues (see “U.S. 

Postage Stamps” on page 100.) 

The Act of March 3, 1863, based postage for a letter on its 

weight and eliminated all differences based on distance.18

(See “Rates for Domestic Letters” on page 124.) The act also 

created three classes of mail: letters, called First-Class Mail; 

newspapers and other periodicals, called second-class mail; 

and all other mailable matter, called third-class mail.

The Private Express Statutes

To enable the Post Office Department to finance its operations largely from its revenue, Congress gave it a monopoly over the delivery of letters. Without such protection, 

Congress believed that private companies would siphon off 

profitable delivery routes, leaving the Department overly 

reliant on the U.S. Treasury.

Initially the costs and challenges of transporting mail discouraged competition, but the development of reliable steamboat and railroad lines in the early 19th century encouraged 

entrepreneurs to jump into the delivery business. The first 

two private posts sprang up in 1839; dozens soon followed. 

About 150 local posts are known to have operated, mostly in 

the 1840s and 1850s — nearly a third of them in New York 

City. Some private companies transported mail between large 

cities; others provided home delivery of mail within cities. By 

limiting their services to only the most profitable delivery areas, they could provide more frequent service at cheaper rates. 

In 1841, Postmaster Jonathan J. Coddington of New York 

estimated that private competition had reduced mail volume 

on the New York–Boston route by one third. 

To help stem the Department’s loss of revenue, Congress 

passed laws, now known as the Private Express Statutes, 

which gradually closed loopholes that allowed private companies to deliver letters. The first major postal law, passed 

in 1792, prohibited the private carriage of letters on post 

roads “whereby the revenue of the general post-office may be 

injured.”19 In 1799, Congress outlawed the private carriage of 

letters on roads adjacent or parallel to post roads. Congress 

later specified that waterways (1823) and railroads (1838) 

could be post roads. The proliferation of private posts in the 

early 1840s prompted Congress to pass a law in 1845 forbidding the establishment of “any private express or expresses 

for the conveyance . . . by regular trips or at stated periods 

. . . of any letters” to or from anywhere that U.S. Mail was 

regularly carried.20

The 1845 act largely ended inter-city competition, but private companies continued to deliver mail within cities because 

city streets were considered exempt from the act. So in 1851 

Congress specified that the Postmaster General could designate city streets as “post routes.” In 1860, Postmaster General 

Joseph Holt declared the streets of New York City, Boston, and 

Philadelphia to be post routes, and federal prosecutors took 

the owner of Blood’s Despatch — the largest private carrier in 

Philadelphia — to court to shut him down. In November of 

the same year, the judge in the case ruled partially in Blood’s 

favor by finding that “post roads” and “post routes” were not 

synonymous. Congress responded a few months later by 

specifically including “post routes” in the postal monopoly; 

Blood’s Despatch went out of business within a year. 

The last of the private posts — Boyd’s Dispatch and 

Hussey’s (both in New York) — continued to deliver letters 

in violation of the law until the 1880s. 

In 1979, the Postal Service suspended the prohibition 

against the private delivery of extremely urgent letters; the 

delivery of packages has never been included in the postal 

monopoly. n

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 11

Striding Messenger Stamp, circa 1845

The Striding Messenger stamp features a giant 

messenger stepping over the Philadelphia Post 

Office. It was originally issued by the Philadelphia 

Despatch Post in 1843 to indicate payment for local 

letter delivery. This privately printed stamp was the 

world’s first pictorial issue — the first stamp to depict 

something other than a monarch or statesman. 

D. O. Blood & Company bought the Philadelphia 

Despatch Post around 1845 and used a variation 

of the stamp overprinted with the company’s name. 
MOVING THE MAIL

I

n 1800, the speed of travel was limited by natural forces 

like wind, currents, or a horse’s pace. By century’s end, 

mail trains were crisscrossing the country with postal 

clerks onboard, who sorted mail in transit.

Steamboats

At the turn of the 19th century, when the nation’s waterways 

were its main transportation arteries, travel often depended 

on river currents, wind, and muscle. Traveling upstream on 

some rivers was so difficult that boat owners sometimes sold 

their vessels upon reaching their destination and returned 

home overland. 

Robert Fulton launched America’s first successful steamboat line, connecting New York City and Albany via the 

Hudson River, in September 1807. Although Fulton’s steamboats traveled at only six miles per hour, their dependability 

revolutionized travel. As long as their fires were fed, the 

boats’ boilers created steam, turning the paddlewheels. 

On October 2, 1807, the New-York Evening Post asked: 

Would it not be well if she [the boat] could contract with the Post 

Master General to carry the mail from this [city] to Albany?

Fulton’s steamboat carried mail as early as November 

1808. Initially, letters were carried either unofficially by crew 

and passengers — bypassing local Post Offices — or under 

the existing provisions for ship letters, whereby Postmasters 

at ports of call gave ship captains two cents for each letter 

and then charged letter recipients six cents postage. In 1810, 

Postmaster General Gideon Granger offered Fulton a contract to carry mail, but Fulton apparently declined. 

The New Orleans, the first commercial steamboat to ply 

the lower Mississippi River, began carrying mail from New 

Orleans to Natchez, Mississippi, in 1812 — also without 

a mail contract. In December of 1812, John Hankinson, 

Postmaster of Natchez, alerted Granger to the drop in his 

office’s revenue as more and more letters bypassed the Post 

Office. In 1813, Congress authorized the Postmaster General 

to contract for the carriage of mail by steamboat, provided it was no more expensive than if transported by land.21

Granger informed Hankinson that he could enter into a 

mail transportation contract with the captain of the New 

Orleans, but apparently no contract was made. 

On February 27, 1815, Congress authorized the 

Postmaster General to contract for the carriage of mail by 

steamboat “on such terms and conditions as shall be considered expedient” and required the operators of steamboats 

and other craft to promptly deliver any letters they carried 

to Postmasters at ports of call, under penalty of a fine.22 The 

next month, the steamboat captains on the Hudson River 

line entered into a contract with the Postmaster General. 

Steamboats on the Mississippi River, meanwhile, continued 

to transport letters either outside the U.S. Mail or as ship 

letters.

To help limit revenue losses, in 1823 Congress declared 

waterways upon which steamboats regularly traveled to be 

post roads, making it illegal for private express companies to 

carry mail on them.23

By the late 1820s, the Post Office Department had contracted for mail to be carried by steamboats along the East 

Coast, between New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, 

and from Washington, D.C., to Richmond. Mail contractors 

The Mayflower, 1855 

In December 1855 — less than a year 

after entering service between St. Louis 

and New Orleans — the Mayflower

was destroyed by fire. The average 

lifespan of an antebellum steamboat on 

the Mississippi River was 5 to 6 years. 

Daily hazards included explosions, fires, 

collisions, and the submerged, hullpiercing deadwood called “snags.” 

12 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
continued to use stagecoaches on parts of the routes and used 

stagecoaches exclusively when waterways were clogged with 

ice in winter. By 1827, steamboats were also carrying mail 

under contract between Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans. 

By the early 1830s, contracted service began on the Ohio 

River, from present-day Huntington, West Virginia, via 

Cincinnati, to Louisville, Kentucky, but no further west. 

Postmaster General Amos Kendall stated in his 1835 report 

to the President that an “immense correspondence” was carried in steamboats, postage-free, west of Louisville. He noted 

that where there was no contracted service it was “difficult, if 

not impractical, to enforce the Post Office laws, and bring the 

letters so transmitted into the post offices.”24 

Contracted steamboat service west of Louisville to New 

Orleans began in November 1837. Nevertheless, many merchants continued to send their correspondence outside the 

U.S. Mail, postage-free. 

In the mid-1800s, the Post Office Department greatly 

expanded its use of steamboats to carry mail. Between 1845 

and 1855, the distance mail was transported by steamboat 

nearly doubled, from 7,625 to 14,619 miles.

In November of 1848, Postmaster General Cave Johnson 

dispatched a special agent to establish Post Offices in the 

newly acquired territory of California. By Christmas, 

steamships under contract with the Navy Department 

were carrying U.S. Mail from New York to California via 

New York to California by Steamship

The first U.S. Mail traveled to California by steamship, via the Isthmus of Panama, in December 1848. 

The ocean routes via Panama remained a vital link in the nation’s mail system until the completion of the 

transcontinental railroad in 1869. (Illustration based on J.H. Colton’s 1850 Map of the United States of 

America, in the collection of the Library of Congress.)

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 13
Overland Mail 

Employee Handbook, 

1859

This handbook for 

employees of Butterfield’s 

Overland Mail Company 

included a fold-out route 

map, a schedule, a rate 

chart, special instructions, 

and room for daily 

log entries. Company 

employees were 

instructed to “never lose 

sight of the mails for a 

moment” and to “be 

particular to see that 

the mails are protected 

from the wet and 

kept safe from injury 

of every kind.” (From 

the Smithsonian’s 

National Postal 

Museum.)

the Isthmus of Panama.25 This was before the construction of the canal. When the ships reached Panama, the 

mail was taken off and transported in canoes or on pack 

animals — and later by railroad — about 50 miles to the 

Pacific coast. Another steamship collected the mail on 

the Pacific side and headed north. The aim was to get a 

letter from the East Coast to California in three to four 

weeks but this goal was often missed. For example, in 1850, 

citizens of Los Angeles learned California was admitted to 

the Union six weeks after the fact. New routes to the West 

were needed.

Overland Mail to California

Following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, immigration exploded. As the population grew, so did the need to 

connect California with the rest of the country through the 

U.S. Mail. 

The first overland mail route to California was established 

in the spring of 1851, bringing mail to Sacramento via Salt 

Lake City. However, service on the route was erratic, partly 

because deep snow and blizzards in the Sierra Nevada 

Mountains prevented travel through much of the winter. 

To bypass the snowy Sierras, George Chorpenning, the 

mail contractor, rerouted the mail southward: from San 

Francisco, he sent the mail south by steamship to San Pedro, 

near Los Angeles, and then overland to Salt Lake City. Still, 

the service remained far from regular. 

In 1857, a second overland mail route was established 

to California, to San Diego via San Antonio, Texas. Mail 

carriers along this route were challenged by Indian attacks 

and a scarcity of water and mules. Passengers who rode in 

the mail wagon sometimes had to get off and walk to relieve 

overworked mules. Occasionally, they even had to help push 

the mail wagon.

The third overland mail route to California, the 

Butterfield Overland Mail, was the longest and most 

legendary. In 1857, Congress authorized the Postmaster 

General to contract for the carriage of letters from some14 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Butterfield Overland Mail, 1858 to 1861

It took stagecoaches 21 1⁄2 days to traverse the nearly 2,800-mile-long mail route from St. Louis and Memphis 

to San Francisco. The route was discontinued in early 1861 because of the impending Civil War. 

where on the Mississippi River — it would be the contractor’s choice — to San Francisco for six years. The mail was 

to be carried using “good four-horse coaches or spring 

wagons, suitable for the conveyance of passengers.”26

Congress wanted the contractor to choose the location 

of the route because Congress itself could not. Southern 

congressmen wanted it in the South; Northern congressmen 

wanted it in the North. More was at stake than the mail — 

everyone believed this route would determine the path of 

the future transcontinental railroad. 

The day after the bill passed, Aaron Brown of Tennessee 

was appointed Postmaster General. Brown, a southerner, 

favored a southern route. Although Congress had specified 

that the contractor choose the location of the route, when 

none of the proposed routes were southern enough, Brown 

himself decided the route: from St. Louis and Memphis, 

converging at Little Rock (soon changed to Fort Smith), 

then on to San Francisco via El Paso and Yuma. Brown 

assigned the contract to John Butterfield and company, 

whom he considered best able to provide the service. 

Having two starting points for the route — St. Louis and 

Memphis — was an attempt to appease both northern and 

southern interests, but the bulk of the route hugged the 

southern U.S. At a couple of places, the route skirted the 

Mexican border; west of Yuma, for about 70 miles, it was 

actually in Mexico.

The New York Times howled: 

What possible object there can be in selecting this extreme 

Southern route we are utterly unable to conceive, unless it is that 

of forcing the future railroad to take an unnatural course, such as 

neither buffalo, emigrants nor capital would ever select.27

Scheduled semiweekly service on the Butterfield 

Overland route began on September 15, 1858. The specified running time was 24 days, but within a year the average trip time had been shaved to about 21 1⁄2 days. Even 

the loudest critics of the route’s location had no complaints 

about the service.

Still, faster transportation to the Pacific coast was needed.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 15
The Pony Express

American transportation pioneer William H. Russell advertised for hostlers and riders to work on his central overland 

express route via Salt Lake City in March 1860.

Russell had failed repeatedly to get the backing of the 

Senate Committee on Post Office and Post Roads for an 

express route to carry mail between St. Joseph, Missouri — 

the westernmost point reached by the railroad and telegraph — and California. St. Joseph was the starting point 

for the nearly 2,000-mile central route to the West. Except 

for a few forts and settlements, the route beyond St. Joseph 

was a vast, unknown land, inhabited primarily by Native 

Americans.

Many thought that year-round transportation across this 

area was impossible because of extreme weather conditions. 

Russell organized his own express to prove otherwise. 

With partners Alexander Majors and William B. Waddell, 

Russell formed the Central Overland California & Pike’s 

Peak Express Company, later known as the Pony Express. 

They built new relay stations and readied existing ones. The 

country was combed for good horses — hardy enough to 

challenge deserts and mountains and to withstand thirst in 

summer and ice in winter. Riders were recruited hastily but, 

before being hired, had to swear on a Bible not to cuss, fight, 

or abuse their animals and to conduct themselves honestly.

On April 3, 1860, the Pony Express began its run through 

parts of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, 

Utah, Nevada, and California. On average, a rider covered 75 

to 100 miles daily. He changed horses at relay stations set 10 

to 15 miles apart, swiftly transferring himself and his mochila (a saddle cover with four pockets or cantinas for mail) to 

the new mount.

Stagecoach in 

Wyoming, circa 1900 

Overland by 

Stagecoach 

16 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
The first mail by Pony Express from St. Joseph to 

Sacramento took ten days, cutting the overland stage time 

via the southern route by more than half. The fastest delivery was in March 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln’s 

inaugural address was carried from St. Joseph to Sacramento 

in 7 days and 17 hours.

On July 1, 1861, the Pony Express began operating under 

contract as a mail route. By that time, the Central Overland 

California & Pike’s Peak Express Company was deeply in 

debt. Though it had charged as much as $5 a half ounce for a 

letter at a time when ordinary U.S. postage was no more than 

ten cents, the company did not make its operating expenses. 

On October 26, 1861 — two days after the transcontinental telegraph line was completed — the Pony Express 

officially ended. It became one of the most enduring legends 

of the West. 

Pony Express Stamp

Issued July 19, 1960. The Pony Express ran for only 

18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861. It 

operated under contract as a U.S. Mail route during 

only the final four months.

Crossing the country by stagecoach was an adventure, even by 19th-century standards. William 

Tallack, who traveled east by stagecoach in 1860, 

noted that “not one in a hundred travellers go 

eastward by the Overland on account of its risks 

and discomforts.”28 Tallack observed that traveling by ship via Panama, though more than twice 

the distance, was just as fast, and generally more 

comfortable. 

Stagecoach passengers risked death or injury 

if coaches were attacked by robbers or Indians. 

Bad roads, though less fearsome, were a more 

persistent danger. At their worst, they overturned 

coaches, and at their best, bruised passengers. 

Edmund Hope Verney, a lieutenant in the British 

Royal Navy who had seen battle in the Crimean 

War and India, traveled overland from California to 

Kansas in 1865. In an article in the June 1866 issue 

of London’s Good Words and Sunday Magazine, 

Verney recalled: “I can remember no night of horror equal to the first night’s travel on the Overland 

Route.” He described jolts to the carriage that 

would “strike the cranium violently against the 

roof.” The carriage was so crowded, he wrote, that 

not only was there a difficulty about stowing 

away one’s feet, but we had even to fit in our 

knees one with another, and then occasionally 

give and take pretty smart blows caused by the 

jostling of the carriage. 

Nine people could squeeze inside a stagecoach; 

additional passengers sometimes traveled on the 

roof. Inside, three lucky passengers had the back 

seat. Three passengers sat in the middle seat, 

which had only a leather strap for a backrest, 

and three sat in the front seat, facing backwards. 

Middle and front seat passengers faced each other 

and had to interlock their legs. Through-passengers 

remained sandwiched together for about 22 days, 

with only brief stops for meals and changes of 

stock or equipment. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 17
Mail Service and the Civil War

The Civil War was America’s bloodiest conflict. An estimated 750,000 Americans lost their lives during the war, 

including an estimated 50,000 civilians — more Americans 

than have died in all the wars since that time. Soldiers 

suffered in battle, while traveling, and from the everyday, 

sometimes fatal hardships of camp life. Friends and family 

at home also suffered, not knowing if a son, brother, or 

husband survived. 

Mail was a treasured link between camps and battlefields 

and “back home.” Recognizing its importance to morale, the 

armies assigned personnel to collect, distribute, and deliver 

soldiers’ mail; wagons and tents served as traveling Post 

Offices. Some soldiers wrote home weekly; some seemed to 

spend all their free time writing. A letter from home could 

be tucked into a pocket close to a soldier’s heart, to be read 

and re-read in moments of loneliness. Many soldiers carried 

letters in their pockets, to be forwarded to loved ones if they 

were killed in action.

During the war, the U.S. Post Office Department introduced several improvements that made it easier to send and 

receive mail. Since soldiers sometimes had trouble getting 

postage stamps and keeping them dry, beginning in July 

1861, they were allowed to mail letters without stamps by 

writing “Soldier’s Letter” on the envelope; postage was then 

collected from the recipient. In July 1863, postage rates were 

simplified and in some cases lowered when distance-based 

letter rate categories were eliminated. That same month, free 

home delivery of mail was introduced in the nation’s largest 

cities. And in November 1864, the money order system 

began, making it safer for soldiers and citizens alike to send 

money through the mail. 

The South established its own Post Office Department in 

February 1861, two months before the start of the war, with 

former U.S. Congressman John Henninger Reagan appointed Postmaster General in March. Federal mail service to 

southern states was officially suspended on May 31, 1861, 

following Reagan’s proclamation that he would assume 

control of the Confederate Post Office 

Department on June 1.

The United States banned the exchange 

of mail between citizens of the North and 

South in August 1861, although smugglers 

often carried mail illegally across the lines. 

Prisoner-of-war mail was exchanged at designated points under a flag of truce. Citizens 

could also send letters via the flag-of-truce 

system, although like prisoners’ mail, their 

letters were censored.

To prevent Postmasters in the seceded 

states from using U.S. postage stamps, the 

U.S. Post Office Department redesigned its 

postage stamps soon after it suspended mail 

service to the South. The newly designed 

stamps were distributed to Postmasters and 

customers beginning in August 1861, in exchange for the old ones. Initially Postmasters 

were instructed to give customers six days 

following notification to exchange old stamps 

for new ones, after which time the old ones 

were demonetized (rendered valueless). But 

the time limit was stretched in some cases 

to accommodate customers. In New York 

City, citizens were given about six weeks to 

exchange their postage stamps. 

As the war progressed, coins, which were more highly 

valued than paper money, gradually disappeared from the 

marketplace. By the summer of 1862 the lack of coinage 

Three Union Officers at Fort Brady, Virginia, 1864

Mail was a treasured link between camps and battlefields 

and “back home.”

18 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
posed a serious hardship to trade. Merchants 

began issuing their own promissory notes, 

called “shinplasters,” and many people began 

using postage stamps as small change. 

Unfortunately shinplasters were often redeemable only where received, and stamps 

were liable to crumple and clump together. 

A law of July 17, 1862, authorized the use 

of postage stamps as currency, and beginning 

in August 1862, the Treasury Department 

issued special “postage currency” — 

reproductions of postage stamps on larger, 

thicker, ungummed pieces of paper, in denominations of five, 

ten, twenty-five, and fifty cents. Due to coin shortages, the 

Treasury Department continued issuing paper notes representing fractions of a dollar through 1876, although beginning in October 1863, they were called “fractional currency” 

and did not feature reproductions of stamps.

U.S. Mail Wagon, Army of the Potomac, circa 1864

Army personnel were assigned to collect, distribute, and 

deliver mail.

The Confederate Post Office Department

The Post Office Department of the Confederate States 

of America was established February 21, 1861, by an act 

of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. 

On March 6, 1861, the day after Montgomery Blair’s appointment by President Abraham Lincoln as Postmaster 

General of the United States, former U.S. Congressman 

John Henninger Reagan was appointed Postmaster 

General of the Confederate States of America by 

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States. 

South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, 

Louisiana, and Texas already had seceded from the 

Union. In the following months, Virginia, 

Arkansas, North Carolina, and most of 

Tennessee followed suit. Reagan instructed 

southern Postmasters to continue to render their accounts to the United States as 

before until the Confederate postal system 

was organized. Meanwhile, he sent job 

offers to southern men in the Post Office 

Department in Washington. Many accepted and brought along their expertise, as 

well as copies of postal reports, forms in 

use, postal maps, and other supplies.

In May 1861, Reagan issued a proclamation stating that he officially would 

assume control of the Post Office Department of the 

Confederate States on June 1, 1861. Postmaster General 

Blair responded by ordering the cessation of United States 

mail service throughout the South on May 31, 1861. 

Although an able administrator headed the 

Confederate Post Office Department, its mail service 

was continuously interrupted. Through a combination 

of pay and personnel cuts, postage rate increases, and 

streamlining of mail routes, Reagan eliminated the postal 

deficit that existed in the South. But blockades and the 

invading Northern army, as well as a growing scarcity of 

postage stamps, severely hampered postal 

operations. 

Federal mail service in the South gradually resumed as the war came to an end. 

By November 15, 1865, 241 mail routes 

had been restored, and by November 1, 

1866, 3,234 Post Offices out of 8,902 in 

the South were returned to federal control. 

Postmaster General Reagan was arrested at the end of the war, but was later 

pardoned and eventually made it back to 

Congress, where he became chairman of 

the Committee on Post Offices and Post 

Roads.

John Henninger 

Reagan, Confederate 

Postmaster General

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 19
Mail by Rail

Some three decades before the Pony Express galloped into 

postal history, the “iron horse” made its formal appearance. 

In August 1829, an English-built locomotive, the Stourbridge 

Lion, completed the first locomotive run in the United 

States on the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company Road 

in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. The next month, the South 

Carolina Railroad Company adopted the locomotive as its 

tractive power.

In 1830, the Baltimore & Ohio’s Tom Thumb, America’s 

first steam locomotive, successfully carried more than 

40 people at over ten miles per hour. This beginning was 

considered less than auspicious when, in late August 1830, 

a stage driver’s horse outran the Tom Thumb on a parallel 

track in a race at Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland. Later, however, a 

steam locomotive reached the unheard-of speed of 30 miles 

per hour in an 1831 competition in Baltimore. 

The Post Office Department recognized the value of rail 

to move mail as early as November 30, 1832, when stagecoach contractors on a route from Philadelphia to Lancaster, 

Pennsylvania, were granted an allowance of $400 per year 

“for carrying the mail on the railroad as far as West Chester 

from December 5, 1832.” 29 Although the Department 

apparently awarded several contracts for rail transportation as a part of stagecoach routes in succeeding years, the 

Postmaster General listed only one railroad company as a 

contractor during the first six months of 1836, for Route 

1036 from Philadelphia to Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania.

The Department appointed the first route agent, John 

Kendall, nephew of Postmaster General Amos Kendall, to 

accompany the mails between Albany and Utica, New York, 

in 1837. An Act of July 7, 1838, designated all United States 

railroads as post routes, and railroad mail service increased 

rapidly. 

Owney, Mascot of the Railway Mail Service 

On an autumn day in 1888, a shaggy pup took his first 

steps toward becoming a postal legend when he crept 

into the Albany, New York, Post Office. Postal employees allowed him to stay and named him Owney.

At first, Owney stayed close to the Post Office, but 

he soon began riding mail wagons to the train depot 

and then rode the railway mail car down to New York 

City and back to Albany. As Owney traveled farther, 

his friends at the Albany Post Office feared he might 

wander too far away to find his way home again, 

so they purchased a leather collar with a tag reading “Owney, Post Office, Albany, N.Y.” Railway mail 

clerks recorded Owney’s travels by attaching metal 

baggage tags to his collar to identify the rail lines he 

traveled on.

He was soon weighed down by his collection of 

tags. Postmaster General John Wanamaker presented 

Owney with a little jacket to distribute their weight 

more evenly.

Owney took to traveling farther and staying away 

longer, eventually visiting Mexico, Canada, Japan, 

China, Singapore, Suez, Algiers, and the Azores.

While being 

shown off to 

an Ohio newspaper reporter, 

Owney bit the 

clerk who was 

handling him. The Postmaster had Owney put down 

on June 11, 1897. Railway mail clerks chipped in 

money to have a taxidermist preserve Owney’s body, 

which then was sent to postal headquarters in 

Washington, D.C., for exhibit.

In 1911, the Post Office Department entrusted 

Owney to the Smithsonian Institution. Since 1993, 

Owney has been part of the National Postal Museum 

in Washington, D.C. In 2011, Owney was honored on 

a commemorative U.S. postage stamp.

Owney the Postal Dog Stamp

Issued July 27, 2011

Owney with Railway Mail Clerks, 1890s

20 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
The expanded use of railroads greatly reduced transportation time. For example, in 1835, mail going from New York 

City to Raleigh, North Carolina, took about 94 hours. Two 

years later, the time had been cut nearly in half to 55 hours. 

By 1885, it was more than halved again to just over 19 hours. 

The time-savings was due not only to increased use of the 

rails but also to better use — the introduction of Railway 

Post Offices (RPOs) in the 1860s. 

In June 1840, two mail agents were appointed to the 

Boston-Springfield route, “to make exchanges of mail, attend 

to delivery, and receive and forward all unpaid way letters 

and packages received.” 30 The route agents opened the 

pouches from local offices, separated mail for other local 

points on the line for inclusion in the pouches for those 

offices, and sent the balance to distributing Post Offices for 

further sorting. Gradually, the clerks began to make up mail 

for connecting lines and local offices, and the idea of sorting 

mail on the cars evolved.

In 1862, William A. Davis, head clerk of the St. Joseph, 

Missouri, Post Office, began the first experiment in distributing mail in railroad cars on the Hannibal-St. Joseph 

run. Although this practice expedited the connection with 

the overland stage at St. Joseph, it was discontinued in 

January 1863. On August 28, 1864, the first U.S. Railway 

Post Office (RPO) route was officially established when 

George B. Armstrong, Chicago’s assistant Postmaster, placed 

a car equipped for general distribution in service between 

Chicago and Clinton, Iowa, on the Chicago and North 

Western Railroad. Similar routes were established between 

Railway Mail Clerk and 

Catcher Arm, 1913

Clerks used catcher arms to grab 

mailbags from trackside mail cranes, 

to exchange mail at small towns 

“on the fly” without stopping.

Mail by Rail Video

Watch Mail by Rail, a 4-minute video exploring life in the railway mail service as told by four former 

clerks. Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum via its YouTube channel, SmithsonianNPM.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 21
New York and Washington, D.C.; Chicago and Rock Island, 

Illinois; Chicago and Quincy, Illinois; and New York and 

Erie, Pennsylvania.

When railway mail service began, the cars were equipped 

primarily to sort and distribute letter mail. By about 1869, 

other mail was being sorted. Parcel Post service, added 

in 1913, soon outgrew the limited space aboard trains. 

Terminals, established adjacent to major railroad stations, 

allowed parcels to be sorted then loaded into mail cars and 

RPOs for transport to cities and towns.

In 1930, more than 10,000 trains moved mail. Following 

passage of the Transportation Act of 1958, which allowed the 

discontinuance of money-losing passenger trains, mail-carrying passenger trains began to decline rapidly. By 1965, 

only 190 trains still carried mail, and by 1970 virtually no 

First-Class Mail traveled by rail.

On April 30, 1971, the Post Office Department terminated seven of the eight remaining RPO routes. The last 

Railway Post Office, which operated between New York and 

Washington, D.C., on Penn Central/Conrail, made its final 

run on June 30, 1977.

Highway and air congestion 

and an increase in the weight 

of catalogs and advertising mail 

during the 1980s led to renewed 

rail use. Amtrak carried mail on 

many trains, and freight trains 

pulled flatcars holding trailers 

full of mail. In 1993, Amtrak 

and the Postal Service reintroduced the RoadRailer®, special 

intermodal equipment that 

could travel on highways and 

on rails without having to be 

hoisted onto a railroad flatcar. 

Although Amtrak stopped 

carrying mail in October 2004, 

several of the nation’s freight 

railroads continue to carry mail 

as an intermodal service. n

A Perilous Profession

Railway mail clerks had one of the toughest jobs in 

the Post Office Department. Working elbow-to-elbow in fast-moving railcars, they needed brains 

and brawn to memorize complicated mail sorting 

schemes and accurately sort mail in transit. At many 

stations trains did not even stop — clerks readied 

the mail pouches and threw them out of the open 

car door while simultaneously snagging pouches of 

outgoing mail that hung trackside. 

 Annual reports of the Postmaster General gave 

harrowing accounts of clerks injured and killed in the 

line of duty. Trains were derailed because of livestock on the tracks, open switches, oncoming trains, 

broken rails, and washed-out bridges, to name but 

a few hazards. Until the 1920s, most mail cars were 

Wreck of the Red Arrow, 1947

Six railway mail clerks were among the dozens of 

people killed and more than 100 injured when the 

Pennsylvania Railroad’s Red Arrow passenger train 

derailed and plunged over a 150-foot embankment 

near Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, on February 18, 1947. 

22 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Railway Mail Clerks, 1929 

A rash of train robberies following World War I 

prompted the Postmaster General to arm railway mail 

clerks beginning in 1921.

made of wood, lit by oil lamps, and heated by woodstoves. Mail cars were normally coupled directly behind 

the locomotive, with sparks belching from its stack. 

With the lighter wooden mail car sandwiched between 

the heavier locomotive and passenger coaches, mail 

clerks risked severe injury in the event of a wreck. Even 

the sudden lurch of a train could injure a clerk if he lost 

his balance. 

The work was so dangerous that an entire section of 

the Annual Report of the Postmaster General relating to 

the railway mail service was titled “Casualties.” In 1904, 

21 men lost their lives in the line of duty, including 

one who was shot and killed by a train robber. By the 

1920s, so many bandits were targeting mail trains that 

the Postmaster General armed railway mail clerks with 

government-issued pistols with orders to “shoot to kill.”

Railway Mail Clerk James Julian

James Julian served as a railway mail clerk from 

about 1905 to the 1930s. In 1993, his oldest 

son, Percy, became the 16th honoree in the Black 

Heritage stamp series.

James, whose parents had been slaves, was born 

in Alabama in 1871. When Percy was born in 1899, 

James was working as a letter carrier at the Post 

Office in Montgomery, Alabama. By 1905, James 

had landed a higher-paying job as a clerk in the railway mail service, where he worked for more 

than 25 years.

James Julian worked on the Montgomery, Alabama, 

and Artesia, Mississippi, Railway Post Office until about 

1922.The preceding decade had been particularly 

challenging for African American railway mail clerks. 

Starting in 1913, there was a movement to racially 

segregate federal workers, including in the railway mail 

service; some supervisors fired African American clerks 

on trumped-up charges and routinely passed over others for promotion. But James Julian persevered. 

James and his wife, a former 

schoolteacher, steered all of their 

children to higher education. 

One by one they sent them to 

college — Percy was the first. In 

1919, the whole family — everyone except James — moved to 

Indiana, where the children attended DePauw University. James 

remained in Alabama for three 

more years until he was able to transfer to a railway 

mail service job in Indiana and join them.

All of James Julian’s children achieved success, but it 

was Percy who left the most lasting legacy. In the mid1900s, Percy pioneered the synthesis of medicinal drugs 

— one of his discoveries has been ranked in the top 25 

achievements in the history of American chemistry. In 

1993, Percy Julian was honored on a commemorative 

postage stamp — a fitting tribute for the son of a lifelong postal worker.

Percy Lavon Julian 

Stamp

Issued January 29, 

1993

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 23
Star Routes

Post riders on horseback were the first contractors to 

carry mail between Post Offices. In 1773, post road surveyor Hugh Finlay noted that a stagecoach driver held a 

contract to carry semiweekly mail between Portsmouth, 

New Hampshire, and Boston, Massachusetts. In 1785, 

the Continental Congress instructed the Postmaster 

General to award mail transportation contracts to stagecoach operators, subsidizing public travel and commerce with postal funds. Despite their higher costs and 

sometimes lower efficiency, stagecoach proposals were 

preferred over horseback. 

An Act of March 3, 1845, took steps to reduce mail 

transportation costs. Congress abandoned its preference 

for stagecoaches, with contracts to be awarded to the 

lowest bidder for what “may be necessary to provide 

for the due celerity, certainty and security of such transportation.”31 These were known as “celerity, certainty 

and security” bids. Postal clerks shortened the phrase to 

three asterisks or stars (***). The bids became known as 

star bids, and the routes became known as star routes.

Until 1882, most of the Post Office Department’s 

budget went towards mail transportation. In 1845, more 

than two-thirds of postal costs were for transportation. 

By 1849, the Department cut transportation costs on all 

routes — horseback, stage, steamboat, and railroad — 

by 17 percent, from $2,938,551 in 1844 to $2,428,515. 

Route distances rose 20 percent for the same years, from 

35.4 million miles to 42.5 million miles in 1849. Star 

routes were largely responsible for the savings as contractors switched to horseback, which cut per-mile costs 38 

percent, from 7.2 cents to 4.5 cents. 

Still, throughout the 1850s, the Department continued 

to favor stagecoaches over horses on certain routes. In 

1852, Postmaster General Samuel D. Hubbard instructed 

contract bidders to state the type of conveyance “if a 

higher mode than horseback be intended,” noting that 

stagecoaches were preferred on certain routes.32

Postmaster General Joseph Holt’s 1859 annual report 

criticized the “enormous sums” paid to stagecoach 

companies to transport mails, “some of which [were] 

so light as scarcely to yield a revenue sufficient to 

defray the expense of carrying them on horseback.” 

He declared, “In advertising for the new lettings, ‘Star 

Bids’... will alone be invited ... without any designation 

of modes of conveyance.”33 The 1860 annual report is 

the last to discriminate between “coach” and “inferior” 

modes of service.34

Contractors had to be at least 16 years old until 1902, 

when the age limit was raised to 21. Subcontractors or 

carriers could be 16. Contractors were bonded and took 

an oath of office; subcontractors and carriers also took 

the oath.

From 1802 to 1865, postal laws required carriers to 

be free white persons. Violators were fined. The typical 

4-year contract did not provide payment for missed 

trips, regardless of weather conditions. Unexcused 

service failures could result in fines up to three times the 

trip’s price. 

Regular schedules made carriers easy targets for 

thieves. Criminal punishment was harsh. Anyone found 

guilty of robbing carriers could receive five to ten years 

of hard labor for the first offense and death for the 

second. Meanwhile, some carriers faced the hazards of 

snow, avalanches, ice packs, cliff-hugging roads, seas of 

mud, and dangerous waters.

Contractors provided their own equipment. A 

1930s-era Post Office Department memo quotes Harry 

Elfers, who transported mail ten miles from Sandusky, 

Ohio, to Kelleys Island in Lake Erie. In bad weather, he 

would sail from the island to Marblehead, the closest 

mainland point, only four miles away. That could take 

20 minutes or 8 hours, depending on the weather. 

Ticket for Mail Stage, 1843

In addition to carrying U.S. Mail under contract, stage 

owners carried passengers and freight. Until 1845, 

stagecoaches were given preference in the award of 

mail transportation contracts, to subsidize the growth of 

stagecoach lines.

24 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Either way, his pay was the same. Elfers recalled the 

specialized equipment he used:

When I was a youngster I was out in a boat about 

all the time. Now I don’t care for ordinary sailing 

but battling with the ice has a fascination for me. 

As soon as the ice begins to form, I feel eager to 

get out one of the ‘ironclads’ and fight my way 

across. An ‘ironclad’ is a flat-bottomed skiff. There’s 

a sail in the bow to carry us through the water or 

over the ice when conditions are right. There are 

two iron-shod runners on the bottom so the boat 

may be used as a sled. The sides are sheathed with 

galvanized iron. This is very important, because thin 

ice will cut a boat like a knife.35

Most star route carriers traveled by horse or horsedrawn vehicle until the early 20th century. Boats, sleds, 

snowshoes, and skis also were used. Today’s contractors use trucks, tractor trailers, and automobiles, 

or whatever it takes — mule trains into the Grand 

Canyon, flat-bottomed pole boats in the Louisiana bayous, and airplanes and hovercraft in Alaska. Dogsleds 

were used in Alaska until 1963. Today, mail is dropped 

by parachute on some Alaskan routes. During the winter, snowmobiles carry mail in the highlands of Utah, 

Colorado, and Montana. 

In the 1800s, some star route carriers also delivered 

mail to customers along their routes. Such unofficial 

arrangements were formalized beginning July 1, 1900, 

when some contracts required service to and from rural 

mailboxes along the routes. By 1918, some contracts 

also required the sale of stamps, money orders, and 

Registered Mail along routes.

In 1948, Congress allowed the Postmaster General to 

renew 4-year contracts with satisfactory service providers rather than award a new contract to the lowest 

acceptable bidder, to prevent the many contract failures 

resulting from speculators who underbid tried-and-true 

contractors by just a few dollars. 

Star routes declined in the 1950s as unnecessary and 

duplicate service was eliminated. However, the 1960s 

saw growth as the Highway Act of 1958 improved 

highways while rail service declined. Between 1960 

and 1970, star-route miles more than doubled. In the 

1970s, star routes officially became known as highway 

contract routes (HCRs), although popular usage of the 

older term continues.

Mail by Dogsled, Tanana, Alaska, circa 1910

Star route contractors have a history of transporting the mail by any 

means necessary. The last dogsled route in Alaska, from Gambell to 

Savoonga, was converted to an 

airplane route in 1963.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 25
REACHING OUT TO EVERYONE

I

n the late 19th century, free home delivery of mail was 

introduced — first in cities, then in rural areas — and 

letter carriers became familiar, trusted visitors to homes 

and businesses across the country.

Free City Delivery

Before 1863, postage paid only for the delivery of mail from 

Post Office to Post Office. Citizens picked up their mail, 

although in some cities they could pay an extra one- or 

two-cent fee for letter delivery or use private delivery firms. 

Among the postal reforms suggested by Postmaster General 

Montgomery Blair in his 1862 report to the President was 

free delivery of mail by salaried letter carriers, which he felt 

would “greatly accelerate deliveries, and promote the public 

convenience.”36 He reasoned that if the system of mailing 

and receiving letters was more convenient, people would use 

it more often, and pointed to increasing postal revenues in 

England, which already had adopted free city delivery. 

Congress agreed. An Act of Congress of March 3, 1863, 

effective July 1, 1863, provided that free city delivery be 

established at Post Offices where income from local postage 

was more than sufficient to pay all expenses of the service.37

For the first time, Americans had to put street addresses on 

their letters. 

Mail Truck in Washington, D.C., 1916

To speed delivery, postal officials urged city residents to provide mail slots or receptacles, so carriers would not 

have to spend an estimated 30 to 60 minutes each day waiting at residents’ doors. Mail slots or receptacles were 

required for city delivery service beginning in March 1923.

26 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Delivery Frequency

Daily

From the start, city letter carriers were expected to 

deliver mail “as frequently as the public convenience

required.38 Postmasters determined the number of 

daily trips in their cities. Business districts, with heavier mail volume and more time-sensitive mail, typicall

received more frequent deliveries than strictly residen

tial sections of cities. In 1905, carriers in downtown 

New York City made nine daily deliveries, whereas in

Cleveland, Ohio, two to five was the norm. 

” 

y 

-

The 1922 Annual Report of the Postmaster 

General stated that “in the smaller cities, three daily 

deliveries in business sections is the general rule, in 

larger cities three or four, and in the largest cities 

three to seven deliveries.”39 

To save money, in 1923 the number of daily trips 

on many routes was reduced by one. In 1930, further reductions were made, and for a few months in 

1934 some residential areas received mail only once 

a day. Some residential customers also temporarily 

received once-a-day delivery during World War II, 

due to labor shortages. In 1947, some Postmasters 

temporarily reduced the number of daily deliveries in 

their cities to stay within their operating budget, and 

in 1949, one delivery trip per day was eliminated in 

many cities to save money. 

On April 17, 1950, “in the interest of economy,” 

Postmaster General Jesse M. Donaldson ordered 

all Postmasters to limit the number of deliveries in 

residential sections to one each day, and to eliminate 

one Saturday delivery in business districts.40 

Because of changing transportation patterns and 

distribution procedures, few second or third daily deliveries to businesses were needed by 1969. Multiple 

daily deliveries to many business districts ended in 

the 1970s, and were largely phased out by the end 

of the 1990s.

As a rule, rural carriers have always made one trip 

per delivery day.

Weekly

From the outset, both city and rural carriers delivered 

mail Monday through Saturday.41

In May and June 1947, Saturday deliveries were 

temporarily eliminated in some cities due to budget 

shortfalls. 

In 1957, a budget crisis prompted Postmaster 

General Arthur E. Summerfield to end Saturday 

deliveries nationwide. On one Saturday — April 13, 

1957 — there was no mail delivery. Public outcries 

convinced President Dwight D. Eisenhower to sign a 

bill three days later, increasing funding for the Post 

Office Department, and service resumed. 

In May 1964, the Department ended Saturday delivery of packages in 6,091 cities where carriers delivered 

on foot — again, to save money. Delivery resumed in 

January 1966 after President Lyndon B. Johnson promised to seek increased funding from Congress.

In 1975, an unprecedented $989 million deficit 

prompted Postmaster General Benjamin F. Bailar to 

consider ending Saturday delivery. In 1976, Congress 

ordered its continuation and created the Commission 

on Postal Service to study the challenges facing the 

Postal Service. In 1977, the Commission concluded 

that “mail delivery to all addresses should be reduced 

from six days to five days a week” to cut soaring 

postal costs, but the idea was unpopular and Bailar 

abandoned it.42 In 1979, rising mail volumes and 

postage rate increases gave the Postal Service its first 

budget surplus since 1945. 

In 1980, facing another budget crisis, Postmaster 

General William F. Bolger briefly considered ending 

Saturday delivery. Two postage rate increases the 

next year and rising mail volumes — again — got 

the Postal Service through the crisis. Meanwhile, in 

December 1980, Congress directed the Postal Service 

not to reduce “the number of days each week for 

regular mail delivery,” and has included similar instructions in annual appropriations legislation since then.43

In 2009, financial challenges prompted postal officials to again propose ending Saturday delivery. Due 

to sustained growth in package shipping, the proposal was revised in February 2013 to keep Saturday 

package delivery. Later that year, the Postal Service 

began Sunday delivery of Amazon packages to residential addresses in select cities. Sunday package delivery was later expanded to additional locations and 

other types of packages, as the volume warranted. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 27
City Delivery Pioneer

Joseph William Briggs, a Cleveland, Ohio, postal 

clerk, is often credited with conceiving the idea 

of free city delivery during the winter of 1862, 

while contemplating long lines of customers trying 

to keep warm as 

they inched toward his window. 

Many were women 

hoping for news of 

loved ones in the 

Civil War. Briggs 

enlisted local businesses to serve as 

staging areas for 

sorting customers’ 

mail, and he began 

delivering mail to 

his patrons free of 

cost. 

In 1864, Briggs wrote Postmaster General 

Montgomery Blair, suggesting improvements to 

the free delivery system that had launched in 

1863. Blair liked Briggs’ ideas, brought him to 

Washington, and appointed him special agent 

in charge of superintending the operation of the 

letter carrier system, a role he performed until his 

death on February 23, 1872.

In 1921, a postal committee was charged with 

determining who should be credited with the 

establishment of free city delivery. After examining 

the available evidence, the committee reported 

“no one individual can be considered the author 

or originator of this service.” The committee said, 

“Mr. Briggs cannot be properly credited as the 

author of the City Free Delivery Service, but the 

evidence seems sufficient to warrant the statement 

that he was the first letter carrier in the city of 

Cleveland, Ohio.”44

A plaque in the Cleveland Post Office commemorates Briggs’ service as that city’s first free letter 

carrier and his contributions to establishing the 

service nationwide.

28 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
By June 30, 1864, free city delivery had been established 

in 65 cities nationwide, with 685 carriers delivering mail 

in cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, 

Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, 

Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. By 1880, 104 cities were served by 2,628 letter carriers, and by 1900, 15,322 

carriers provided service to 796 cities. 

Postmasters, groups of citizens, or city authorities could 

petition the Post Office Department for free delivery service 

if their city met population or postal revenue requirements. 

The city had to provide sidewalks and crosswalks, ensure that 

streets were named and lit, and assign numbers to houses. 

Initially, carriers hand-delivered mail to customers. If a 

customer did not answer the carrier’s knock, ring, or whistle, 

the mail remained in the carrier’s satchel until the customer 

was home. By 1912, new customers were required to provide 

mail slots or receptacles, and Postmasters were urged to encourage existing customers to provide them as well. As late 

as 1914, First Assistant Postmaster General Daniel C. Roper 

estimated that a letter carrier spent 30 minutes to an hour 

each day waiting at doors where there was person-to-person 

delivery. As of March 1, 1923, mail slots or receptacles were 

required for delivery service.

By the 1930s, as a convenience to customers living on the 

margins of a city, letter carriers began delivering to customers with “suitable boxes at the curb line.”45 In the ensuing 

decades American suburbanization, which exploded in 

the 1950s, brought an increase in curbside mailboxes. The 

Department introduced curbside cluster boxes in 1967. 

Their use has been increasingly encouraged in recent decades to promote efficiency and economy of service. 

Originally, letter carriers worked 52 weeks a year, typically 

9 to 11 hours a day from Monday through Saturday, and if 

necessary, part of Sunday. An Act of June 27, 1884, granted 

them 15 days of leave per year. In 1888, Congress declared 

that 8 hours was a full day’s work and that carriers would 

be paid for additional hours worked per day. The 40-hour 

workweek began in 1935. 

Some carriers walked as many as 22 miles a day, carrying 

up to 50 pounds of mail at a time. They were instructed to 

deliver letters frequently and promptly — generally twice 

a day to homes and up to four times a day to businesses. 

On April 17, 1950, the number of residential deliveries was 

limited to one each day. Multiple deliveries to businesses 

were phased out over the next few decades as changing 

transportation patterns made most mail available for 

first-trip delivery. The weight limit of a carrier’s load was 

reduced to 35 pounds by the mid-1950s and remains the 

same today. 

Post-Mounted Mailbox, 1920s

Post-mounted collection boxes predominated in the 

late 19th and early 20th centuries. They began to be 

phased out in favor of larger, free-standing models in 

the 1950s.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 29
Genevieve Baskfield was appointed a village carrier 

in Zumbrota, Minnesota, in 1919, at the age of 

18. Village delivery was a service similar to city

delivery, offered in small towns from 1912 to

about 1960. More than 100 women are known

to have served as village carriers, mostly from

1918 through 1920, when about 5 percent of the

nation’s 943 village carriers were women.

Rural Free Delivery (RFD)

In 1890, nearly 41 million people — 65 percent of the 

American population — lived in rural areas. Although many 

city dwellers had enjoyed free home delivery since 1863, 

rural citizens had to pick up their mail at the Post Office, 

leading one farmer to ask: “Why should the cities have fancy 

mail service and the old colonial system still prevail in the 

country districts?”46

Postmaster General John Wanamaker, who served from 

1889 to 1893, was a merchant who became one of the most 

innovative and energetic people ever to lead the Post Office 

Department. He thought it made more sense to have one 

person deliver mail than to have 50 people ride into town 

to collect their mail. He cited business logic and social 

philosophy as reasons to give rural dwellers free delivery. 

Businesses could expand their markets. Rural customers 

paid the same postage rates as city people. Rural people 

needed the important information provided by newspapers 

yet did not always have time to walk or ride to the Post 

Office. Young people might stay on the farm if correspondence and magazines eased their isolation.

“I think the growth of the Farmers’ Alliance movement 

and the other farmers’ movements in the past few years has 

been due to this hunger for something social as much as to 

anything else,” Wanamaker wrote in 1891.47 He proposed 

that rural customers receive free delivery.

In January 1892, Congressman James O’Donnell introduced “A Bill to Extend the Free Delivery System of Mails 

to Rural Communities,” but the House Committee on Post 

Office and Post Roads balked at the proposed $6 million 

price tag. An amendment bringing the figure down to 

$100,000 also was rejected.

A year and two months later, on March 3, 1893, a bill 

introduced by Georgia Congressman Tom Watson passed. 

It appropriated $10,000 for experimental rural free delivery. On March 6, 1893, Wilson S. Bissell was sworn in as 

Postmaster General. He did not pursue the experiment, citing the pressure of more important concerns and the need 

for at least $20 million to inaugurate rural free delivery, a 

figure later identified as a guess. Instead, he recommended 

establishing additional Post Offices where needed.

Bissell was succeeded by William L. Wilson on March 1, 

1895. Wilson agreed with his predecessor that rural free 

delivery was not practical, but was willing to attempt the 

experiment if Congress made more money available. That 

year, Congress appropriated $20,000 for the experiment and 

another $10,000 in 1896, bringing the total to $40,000 — 

enough for the Post Office Department to begin its rural free 

delivery experiment.

30 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY

Village Carrier, circa 1920
On October 1, 1896, rural free delivery service began 

in Charles Town, Halltown, and Uvilla in West Virginia, 

Postmaster General Wilson’s home state. Within a year, 44 

routes were underway in 29 states. 

Just five days before Christmas in 1899, the Post Office 

Department decided to experiment with extending RFD 

across an entire county. Postmaster General Charles Emory 

Smith ordered that 63 small Post Offices and 35 star routes 

and mail messengers be replaced by rural free delivery in 

Carroll County, Maryland. County-wide delivery proved 

viable.

Judged a success, rural free delivery became a permanent 

service effective July 1, 1902. The word “free” was dropped in 

1906, since it was understood.

During the six years rural delivery was an experiment, 

customers sent more than 10,000 petitions asking that 

routes be established. The Department had time to evaluate 

the extent to which RFD could replace small, fourth-class 

Post Offices and star routes, whether it could be used to 

offer services such as money orders, and what national RFD 

service would cost. The Department also had an opportunity to see what else was needed to make the service successful: good roads, standardized mailboxes, and a “great army 

of rural carriers” — about 8,500 in 1902. The Post Office 

Department claimed that “as a class there are no more faithful employees in the Government service.”48

Before Rural Free Delivery... 

On October 1, 1890, Congress authorized 

funding of $10,000 to test the feasibility of 

delivering mail to small towns and villages, 

defined as those having populations of from 

300 to 5,000 people. Experimental free delivery 

was established in 12 small communities 

on February 1, 1891, and in 34 additional 

communities by July 1891. Just two years later, 

postal officials recommended discontinuing 

the experiment, noting that after the novelty 

of free delivery had worn off, customers 

preferred to pick up their mail at the Post 

Office. The experiment was discontinued in all 

46 communities by July 1896.

Although a uniform has never been required for rural 

carriers, some, such as this carrier, chose to wear one. 

When it was established in October 1900, this carrier’s 

route was 35 miles long and served 1,000 customers.

Rural Carrier, Rural Route No. 2, Rochester, Indiana

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 31
The backing of the National Grange, National Farmers’ 

Congress, and State Farmers’ Alliance was important to rural 

delivery’s establishment and success, as was the enthusiastic 

response of rural customers. Although one Kansas farmer 

expressed concern that rural people would become lazy if 

they did not have to pick up their mail, more typical were 

reactions such as those of the Colorado woman who was 

glad to “have our mail fresh instead of stale” and the Arizona 

citizen who wrote:

I am more than ever proud of being an American citizen. ... I 

live three and a half miles from the Tempe post-office, and have 

been sick for a week past, yet my mail is brought to my door 

every morning, except Sunday. ... It looks as if “Uncle Sam” had 

at last turned his eye in our direction.49

Farmers helped by putting out boxes for the rural 

carriers — everything from lard pails and syrup cans to 

old apple, soap, and cigar boxes. Postal officials decided a 

standardized box would better protect mail and, in 1901, 

asked manufacturers to design boxes to the following 

specifications:

n The box must be made of metal, 6 by 8 by 18 inches, 

and weather-proof.

n Boxes should be constructed so they can be fastened 

to a post at a height convenient to the carrier without 

alighting.

n Keys for customers’ boxes should be easy to use by a 

carrier with “one gloved hand in the severest weather.”50

Manufacturers stenciled the words “Approved by the 

Postmaster General” on satisfactory boxes. While customers were not required to remove existing mailboxes, only 

approved mailboxes were permitted on new routes or when 

replacing old boxes. Boxes could be square, oblong, circular, 

or semicircular, as long as they protected mail from rain, 

snow, and dust.

Delivering Mail in Maine, 1930

32 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Rural carriers sold stamps and money orders, registered 

letters, and, in short, served as traveling Post Offices. They 

were the vanguard for delivery in suburban areas, a “middle 

territory, neither distinctly city nor rural in character” first 

mentioned by the Post Office Department in its Annual 

Report of 1902, with Bridgeport, Connecticut, cited as an 

example.51 Rural carriers served suburban areas until these 

areas were annexed by an adjacent city postal district. 

Carriers supplied their own transportation — usually horses and wagons until, in 1929, the Post Office Department 

noted that improved roads had led to “almost a complete 

change in rural delivery from horse-drawn vehicles to 

motor cars.”52

Although rural carriers could deliver packages weighing 

up to four pounds, by law the Post Office Department could 

not deliver heavier parcels, which had to be shipped via private express companies. Beginning in 1904 the Department 

asked Congress for authorization to experiment with the 

delivery of larger packages. In 1911, Postmaster General 

Frank H. Hitchcock recommended that Congress allow such 

service in rural and urban areas and requested a total of 

$150,000 for such an experiment, with the thought of paving 

the way for a general Parcel Post. 

The increase in the number of rural delivery routes led to 

a decrease in the number of small Post Offices. In 1901, the 

Post Office Department operated the largest number of Post 

Offices in American history, 76,945. The next year, there were 

1,000 fewer Post Offices. Despite a growing population and 

more mail, the number of Post Offices continued to drop each 

subsequent year, with the exception of 1947 and 2001.

In 2019, more than 46 million homes and businesses were 

served by the Postal Service’s rural letter carriers. Rural delivery continues to provide a vital link between urban and rural 

America. n

Picking Up Mail in Missouri, 1940

RFD: To The Country Video

Watch RFD: To The Country, a 3-minute video on the history of RFD, courtesy of the 

Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum via its YouTube channel, SmithsonianNPM. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 33
Postmasters in 

the Mid-19th Century

In 1860, Postmasters took the following oath: 

“I, ________, do swear/affirm that I will faithfully 

perform all the duties required of me, and abstain 

from everything forbidden by the laws in relation 

to the establishment of the Post Office and post 

roads within the United States. I do solemnly 

swear/affirm that I will support the Constitution of 

the United States.”

Postmasters had to post a bond and reside in the 

community where the Post Office was located. The 

Postmaster was exempt from militia duty but could 

be called upon to work on the roads. 

The job of Postmaster was an important one — 

candidates were proposed by the outgoing 

Postmaster, the local community, or local congressmen. Beginning in 1836, Postmasters at the largest 

Post Offices were appointed by the President 

and usually received the job as a political plum. 

The Postmaster General continued to appoint 

Postmasters at smaller Post Offices. The Post Office 

often was kept as a sideline to the Postmaster’s 

primary occupation, such as storekeeper.

The Postmaster had to keep the Post Office 

open during normal business hours and, if mail 

was delivered on a Sunday, for one hour after the 

arrival of mail. If a church service was going on, 

the Postmaster had to wait until it concluded, and 

then open the office for an hour. This decision 

dated back to the 19th-century controversies over 

the drivers of mail wagons blowing on a horn or a 

trumpet as the wagon came into 

town. Some ministers complained 

that the men would rise up, leave 

the church, and head for the Post 

Office, where they would visit with 

each other and even play cards.

The decision to keep the Post 

Office closed during services was 

a compromise. However, the 

Postmaster General refused to 

stop mail wagons from running 

on Sundays, since this would 

delay the mail too much.

Postmaster Mary H. Sumner Long

Mary H. Sumner Long was appointed Postmaster of 

Charlottesville, Virginia, by President Ulysess S. Grant 

on March 2, 1877 — one of his last days in office. 

Long’s friends urged President Grant to appoint her 

on account of her father, the late Union General 

Edwin V. Sumner. Her husband was Confederate 

General Armistead L. Long, who had resigned as her 

father’s aide at the start of the Civil War and became 

one of General Robert E. Lee’s closest aides. 

Grant reportedly stated: 

I have great respect for General Sumner. He was a 

gallant soldier. But General Long was also a gallant 

soldier, and I will help Mrs. Long on her husband’s 

account. (The Washington Post, June 26, 1898.)

By that time, Armistead Long had gone completely 

blind, due perhaps to his war service, and relied 

upon his wife for support.

Longest-Serving 

Postmaster

In 1828, at the age of 18, 

Roswell Beardsley was appointed 

Postmaster of North Lansing, New 

York. He served until his death in 

1902 at the age of 93 — a total 

of 74 years. The Post Office in his 

small country store was well-loved 

by his patrons, including some 

families whom Beardsley served 

for five generations.

34 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Postmasters’ Convention

Postmasters met in Waco, Texas, on July 12, 1899, for the first convention of the Texas Postmasters Association.

Postmaster Finder

The Postmaster Finder database lists Postmasters by Post Office since 1986, and in some cases 

back to an office’s establishment. You can search for Postmasters by name or by Post Office at 

about.usps.com/who-we-are/postmasterfinder.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 35
Post Office Names

Historically, local communities proposed the name for 

their Post Offices, subject to the approval of the Post 

Office Department. The sources of some Post Office 

names are lost to history; there are no postal records on 

name origins. Often Post Offices were named after the 

town they served; sometimes they were named after 

the first Postmaster. Many Post Office names changed 

over time. For example, the name of the Joliet, Illinois, 

Post Office was originally Juliet, then Romeo, then Juliet 

again before being changed to Joliet.

At first, unique names for Post Offices were not mandatory. The 1825 Official Register of the United States lists 

many instances of two Post Offices with the same name 

in the same state. Some states had three Post Offices 

with the same name — for example, three Bloomfields in 

Ohio and three Washingtons in Pennsylvania. 

By the 1840s, the utility of unique names was officially 

recognized. Instructions on the application to establish a 

Post Office read: 

The name of the candidate for postmaster should not 

be applied as the name of a post office. It is preferable 

to have some LOCAL or PERMANENT name, which 

must not be the name of any other office in the State; 

and you should aim to select a name not appropriated 

to any office in the United States.53

Despite these instructions, many new Post Offices 

were named after the first Postmaster. In one 15-year 

period in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, 9 out of 20 

new Post Offices were given the Postmaster’s first or 

last name or some variant. 

Meanwhile, Post Office names too similar to each 

other continued to create confusion. In Vermont 

in 1852, mail for Saint Johnsbury East and Saint 

Johnsbury Centre often went to Saint Johnsbury, 

causing delays. Instructions in the 1880s addressed this 

problem, specifying that offices have short names that 

would “not resemble the name of any other post office 

in the United States.”54 In the 1890s, the instructions 

were relaxed, calling for names dissimilar to “any other 

post office in the State.”55

Between 1850 and 1890 the number of Post 

Offices increased from 18,417 to 62,401. Inconsistent 

geographic names were deemed “a serious and 

growing evil in the publications of the Government.”56

On September 4, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison 

created the United States Board on Geographic 

Names to settle questions regarding place names 

and to induce uniformity. In its first annual report, 

issued in 1892, the Board singled out the Post Office 

Department as one of many sources of confusion, 

citing the “thousands of cases where the name of the 

Self-Service Postal Unit, Wheaton, Maryland, 1964

36 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Boring, Maryland, Post Office, 1970

post-office does not conform to the local name of the 

place.”57 The Board outlined 13 guiding principles in 

assigning names, including a preference for locally 

accepted names; avoiding the possessive form and the 

words “city” and “town”; using “burg” over “burgh,” 

“boro” over “borough,” and “center” over “centre”; 

and choosing one-word names where possible.

On February 13, 1891, Postmaster General John 

Wanamaker ordered postal employees to follow 

the Board’s decisions whenever possible, and two 

more orders in the 1890s reiterated this. As a result, 

thousands of Post Office names were shortened in 

the 1890s. Perhaps to calm fears of sweeping name 

changes, in his 1896 annual report, the Postmaster 

General stated that “in the selection of new names 

the Department rule of short, single names is strictly 

adhered to, but changes of names are not [normally] 

authorized... at offices of long standing.”58 Some 

communities successfully lobbied to have the earlier 

form of their name reinstated. For example, the 

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Post Office lost its “h” in 

1894, but regained it in 1911. 

The Postal Operations Manual requires a Post Office 

to normally bear the official name of the town or 

community it serves. 

Facility Names

In 1998, the Paterson, New Jersey, Post Office was 

designated the “Larry Doby Post Office,” honoring 

the Hall of Fame outfielder who was the first African 

American to play baseball in the American League. 

In 2003, a Chicago postal facility was designated 

the “Cesar Chavez Post Office,” honoring civil rights 

leader Cesar E. Chavez. Since 1967, some postal 

facilities have been named in honor of individuals 

— usually by Congress and sometimes by the Postal 

Service. Nearly one in seven public laws passed by the 

113th Congress (2013–2014) concerned the naming 

of a postal facility in honor of an individual, from civic 

leaders to servicemen and women killed in the line of 

duty. The name applies to the building that houses 

the Post Office, not to the Post Office itself. 

The Postal Operations Manual specifies that the 

Postal Service may name a postal facility after an 

individual “only with the approval of the Postmaster 

General and only if the individual has been deceased for at least 10 years, with the exception of 

former Postmasters General, former members of the 

[Postal Service’s] Board of Governors, or deceased 

U.S. Presidents.”59 These restrictions do not apply to 

individuals honored by acts of Congress. For a list of 

congressional honorees, see about.usps.com/who-weare/postal-history/dedicated-facilities.pdf.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 37
THE 20th CENTURY

At the start of the 20th century, Americans were 

served by the Post Office Department. At the century’s close, they were served by the United States 

Postal Service. At the beginning of the 20th century, most 

Americans lived in rural areas. By its end, the country was 

an industrial and service economy of international preeminence, and the character, volume, and means of transporting 

mail had changed. The Post Office Department, transformed 

into the United States Postal Service, continued its tradition 

of innovation, adaptation, and change to better serve postal 

customers.

Parcel Post 

By law, the Post Office Department could not carry parcels 

weighing more than four pounds at the beginning of the 

20th century. Private express companies, which had begun 

to flourish in the mid-1800s, delivered large packages. 

The establishment of rural free delivery had provided a 

heady taste of life for rural Americans. Soon the demand 

increased for the delivery of packages containing food, dry 

goods, drugs, and other commodities not easily available 

to farmers. When Congress considered enacting a law to 

allow Parcel Post service, express companies and country 

merchants fought long and hard against it. Rural residents, 

who represented 54 percent of the country’s population in 

1910, were equally emphatic in wanting Parcel Post. While 

Congress was hotly debating the question, one express 

company declared a large dividend to stockholders. Public 

indignation at their so-called exorbitant profits helped 

Congress decide the issue.

The Act of August 24, 1912, authorized Parcel Post, a 

service that would:

embrace all other matter, including farm and factory products 

not now embraced by law in either the first, second or third class, 

not exceeding eleven pounds in weight, nor greater in size than 

seventy-two inches in length and girth combined ...60

Parcel Post began on January 1, 1913. It was an instant 

success, with 300 million parcels mailed in the first six 

months the service was offered. The effect on the national economy was electric. Marketing and merchandising 

through Parcel Post spurred the growth of the great 

mail-order houses. Montgomery Ward, the first mail-order company, started with a catalog of more than 100 

products in 1872. Sears, Roebuck and Company followed 

Montgomery Ward in 1893. The year Parcel Post began, 

Sears handled five times as many orders as it did the year 

before. Five years later, Sears doubled its revenues.

Parcel Post grew too, literally and in volume. Its weight 

and size limits were expanded over time, reaching 70 

pounds and 100 inches on August 1, 1931.61 After World 

War II, Parcel Post’s comparatively low rates stimulated 

its growth while the business of express companies began 

to decrease. Eventually, Congress intervened to rescue 

the Railway Express Agency from a precarious financial 

position. On January 1, 1952, the maximum weight of 

parcels sent via the mails to large (first class) Post Offices 

was reduced to 40 pounds, if the parcels were traveling up to 

150 miles, and to 20 pounds for any greater distance. None 

of these parcels could exceed 72 inches in length and girth 

combined. Parcels bound for other Post Offices still could 

weigh up to 70 pounds and be up to 100 inches in size. 

Parcel Post volume fell.

To offset this, weight and size limits for parcels moving 

between larger Post Offices gradually were increased starting 

on July 1, 1967, so that by July 1, 1969, the weight limit for 

all such parcels had been increased to 40 pounds, and by 

July 1, 1971, the size limit had been increased to 84 inches. 

Mailing Children 

Just a few weeks after Parcel Post began, Jesse and 

Mathilda Beagle “mailed” their 8-month-old son 

James to his grandmother, who lived a few miles 

away near Batavia, Ohio. Baby Beagle was just 

under the initial 11-pound limit for parcels. Rural 

Carrier Vernon Lytle picked up the baby from his 

parents’ house and carried him in his mail wagon to 

his grandmother’s house. The postage was fifteen 

cents, and the “parcel” was insured for $50. 

Although it was against postal regulations, several 

children traveled via U.S. Mail in the early years 

of Parcel Post. Initially the only animals that were 

allowed in the mail were bees and bugs. In 1918, 

day-old chicks were allowed in the mail. In 1919, 

some additional “harmless live animals” were permitted, but children did not fall into this category.62

38 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
On February 27, 1983, a uniform weight and size 

limit was set at 70 pounds, 108 inches, for parcels 

mailed from any Post Office to any destination within the United States. On January 10, 1999, the size 

limit for Parcel Post increased to 130 inches. Parcel 

Post was renamed Standard Post on January 27, 

2013, and USPS Retail Ground on January 22, 2016.

Postal Savings System

An Act of Congress of June 25, 1910, established the 

Postal Savings System in designated Post Offices, 

effective January 1, 1911. The legislation aimed to get 

money out of hiding, attract the savings of immigrants accustomed to saving at Post Offices in their 

native countries, provide safe depositories for people 

who had lost confidence in banks, and furnish more 

convenient depositories for working people.

The system paid two percent interest per year. 

Initially, the minimum deposit was $1, and the balance in an account could not exceed $500, excluding interest.

Deposits were slow at first, but by 1929, $153 

million was on deposit. Savings spurted to $1.2 

billion during the 1930s and jumped again during World 

War II, peaking in 1947 at almost $3.4 billion.

After the war, banks raised their interest rates and began 

offering the same governmental guarantee as the Postal 

Savings System. In addition, United States savings bonds 

gave higher interest rates. Deposits in the Postal Savings 

System declined, dropping to $416 million by 1964.

On April 27, 1966, the Post Office Department stopped 

accepting deposits to existing accounts, refused to open new 

accounts, and cut off interest payments as the annual anniversary date of existing accounts came up. When the system ended officially July 1, 1967, about $50 million in the unclaimed 

deposits of more than 600,000 depositors was turned over to 

the U.S. Treasury Department to be held in trust indefinitely.

An Act of August 13, 1971, authorized the Treasury to 

turn over the money on deposit to various states and jurisdictions, each sharing proportionately based on its own 

deposits. Some money was kept for future claims, but under 

the Postal Savings System Statute of Limitations Act of 

July 13, 1984, no claims could be brought more than one 

year after enactment. Thus, no claims made after July 13, 

1985, have been honored.

The above Statute of Limitations applies only to certificates. Postal savings stamps and postal savings bonds can be 

redeemed by sending them to the Bureau of the Public Debt, 

Post Office Box 426, Parkersburg, WV 26106-0426.

Roller Skates Speed Service, 1913

In 1913, some clerks at the Chicago Post Office wore 

roller skates to sort mail faster. Chicago was the 

birthplace of the nation’s mail order industry and had 

the second busiest Post Office, after New York City. 

Postal Savings System Certificate

If you inherit an old Postal Savings System 

certificate of deposit, do not expect to get rich. 

The system ended in 1967, and the U.S. Treasury 

Department stopped accepting claims in 1985.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 39
Airmail

The Post Office Department’s most extraordinary role in 

transportation was played in the sky. The Department was 

intrigued with the possibility of carrying mail through the 

skies and authorized its first experimental mail flight at 

an aviation meet on Long 

Island, New York, in 1911. 

Earle Ovington was sworn 

in as a mail carrier and 

made daily flights between 

Garden City Estates and 

Mineola, New York, dropping his mail bags from 

the plane to the ground 

where they were picked 

up by Mineola Postmaster 

William McCarthy.

In the next few years, the 

Department authorized 

dozens more experimental 

flights at fairs, carnivals, 

and air meets in more than 

20 states. These flights 

convinced the Department 

that an airplane could carry a payload of mail. Beginning 

in 1912, officials repeatedly urged Congress to appropriate money to launch airmail service. In 1916, Congress 

finally authorized the use of $50,000 from steamboat and 

powerboat service appropriations for airmail experiments. 

The Department advertised for bids for contract service 

in Massachusetts and Alaska, but received no acceptable 

responses.

In 1917, Congress appropriated $100,000 to establish 

experimental airmail service 

the next fiscal year. The Army 

wanted to operate the service to give its pilots more 

cross-country flying experience. The Postmaster General 

and Secretary of War agreed: 

the Army Signal Corps would 

lend its planes and pilots to 

the Department to start the 

service.

The Post Office Department 

began scheduled airmail 

service between New York and 

Washington, D.C., May 15, 

1918 — an important date 

in commercial aviation. 

Simultaneous takeoffs were made from Washington’s Polo 

Grounds and from Belmont Park, Long Island — both trips 

by way of Philadelphia. 

Airmail’s Bumpy Beginning 

Airmail got off to a bumpy start. On the 

first flight out of Washington, D.C., in 

May 1918, the pilot flew in the wrong 

direction. He was supposed to follow the 

railroad tracks and head north towards New 

York, but instead ended up near Waldorf, 

Maryland, about 20 miles south. Suspecting 

he was lost, the pilot stopped to ask a 

farmer for directions, but crash-landed in 

a freshly plowed field. The airmail had to 

be picked up by a truck and driven back to 

Washington, where it caught a flight north 

the next day.

Katherine Stinson, the 

“Flying Schoolgirl”

In 1912, at the age of 21, Katherine Stinson 

became the fourth woman in the United States 

to earn her pilot’s license. The next year, she 

became the first woman to fly the U.S. Mail 

when she dropped mailbags from her plane 

at the Montana State Fair. Dubbed the “Flying 

Schoolgirl,” she captivated audiences worldwide 

with her youthful looks, long brown curls, and 

fearless feats of aerial derring-do. In 1917, she 

set a non-stop long-distance endurance record, 

flying from San Diego to San Francisco in 9 

hours and 10 minutes. In 1918, she became the 

first woman to fly an experimental mail route 

from Chicago to New York, as well as the first 

woman to fly the regular route from New York 

to Washington, D.C.

40 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
First International 

Mail Flight, 1919

Eddie Hubbard (left) 

and William Boeing 

stand in front of 

a Boeing C-700 

seaplane near Seattle, 

Washington, after 

returning from a survey 

flight to Vancouver, 

British Columbia, on 

March 3, 1919. They 

brought with them a 

pouch with 60 letters, 

making this the first 

U.S. international 

mail flight. In 1920, 

Hubbard began flying 

the first international 

contract mail route, 

from Seattle to Victoria, 

British Columbia. 

During the first three months of operation, the Post 

Office Department used Army pilots and six Army Curtiss 

JN-4H “Jenny” training planes. On August 12, 1918, the 

Department took over all phases of airmail service, using 

newly hired civilian pilots and mechanics, and six specially

built mail planes from the Standard Aircraft Corporation. 

These early mail planes had no reliable instruments, 

radios, or other navigational aids. Pilots navigated using 

landmarks and dead reckoning. Forced landings occurred 

frequently due to bad weather, but fatalities in the early 

months were rare, largely because of the planes’ small size, 

maneuverability, and slow landing speed. 

Congress authorized airmail postage of 24 cents, including special delivery. (See “Rates for Domestic Airmail, 1918–

1977,” on page 127.) The public was reluctant to use this 

more expensive service. During the first year, airmail bags 

often contained as much regular mail as airmail. To better 

its delivery time on long hauls and to entice the public to 

use airmail, the Department’s long-range plans called for a 

transcontinental air route from New York to San Francisco. 

The first legs of this transcontinental route — from New 

York to Cleveland with a stop at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, 

Airmail Pilot Wesley L. Smith, 1922

Wesley Smith flew the mail from 1919 to 1927. Like 

most early airmail pilots, he had many close calls, 

including the time he put out a fire in the left side of his 

engine by swerving to the right and then into a vertical 

dive. After regaining control of the plane and landing in 

a cornfield, he found that the only damage to the plane 

was to the tires, which had burned in the fire.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 41
then from Cleveland to Chicago, with a stop at Bryan, 

Ohio — opened in 1919. A third leg opened in 1920 from 

Chicago to Omaha, via Iowa City, and feeder lines were 

established from St. Louis and Minneapolis to Chicago. 

The last transcontinental segment — from Omaha to San 

Francisco, via North Platte, Nebraska; Cheyenne, Rawlins, 

and Rock Springs in Wyoming; Salt Lake City, Utah; and 

Elko and Reno in Nevada — opened on September 8, 1920. 

At this time, mail was carried on trains at night and flown 

by day. Still, the new service was 22 hours faster than the 

cross-country all-rail time. 

In August 1920, the Department began installing radio 

stations at each airfield to provide pilots with current weather information. By November, ten stations were operating, 

including two Navy stations. When airmail traffic permitted, 

other government departments used the radios instead of 

the telegraph for special messages, and the Department of 

Agriculture used the radios to transmit weather forecasts and 

stock market reports. 

February 22, 1921, marked the first time mail was flown 

both day and night over the entire distance from San 

Francisco to New York. Congress was impressed. It appropriated $1,250,000 for the expansion of airmail service. The 

Post Office Department installed additional landing fields, 

as well as towers, beacons, searchlights, and boundary markers, across the country. The Department also equipped the 

planes with luminescent instruments, navigational lights, 

and parachute flares. 

In 1922 and 1923, the Department was awarded the 

Collier Trophy for important contributions to the develNew York 

to 

San Francisco

1849 - 

Ship or 

steamboat via 

the Isthmus of 

Panama 

1 month or 

longer

1858 - 

Railroad to Tipton, 

MO, then overland 

mail route 

30–35 days 

(6–10 railroad + 

24–25 stagecoach)

1860 - 

Railroad to St. 

Joseph, MO, then 

via Pony Express

13–14 days 

(3–4 railroad, 

10 horseback)

1869- 

Transcontinental 

railroad 

7 days, 

2 hours

42 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
opment of aeronautics, especially in safety and for demonstrating the feasibility of night flights. Regular cross-country

through service, with night flying, began on July 1, 1924.

On February 2, 1925, Congress authorized the Postmaster 

General to contract for airmail service. The Post Office 

Department immediately invited bids from commercial aviation companies. By the end of 1926, 11 out of 12 contracted airmail routes were operating. 

The first commercial airmail flight in the United States 

occurred February 15, 1926. As commercial airlines took 

over, the Department transferred its lights, airways, and radio 

service to the Department of Commerce, including 17 fully 

equipped stations, 89 emergency landing fields, and 405 

beacons. Terminal airports, except government properties in 

Chicago, Omaha, and San Francisco, were transferred to the 

municipalities in which they were located. Some planes were 

sold to airmail contractors, while others were transferred to 

interested government departments. By September 1, 1927, 

all airmail was carried under contract.

Airplanes were used to transport mail internationally with 

the establishment of routes from Seattle to Victoria, British 

Columbia, on October 15, 1920, and from Key West, Florida, 

to Havana, Cuba, beginning November 1, 1920. The Havana 

route was discontinued in 1923, but resumed on October 19, 

1927, marking the beginning of regularly scheduled international airmail service.

Congress authorized the Postmaster General to enter 

into long-term contracts for flying the mail internationally 

on March 8, 1928. On October 1, 1928, Foreign Air Mail 

(FAM) Route 1 began regular service between New York 

Loading Airmail, 1930

A crew loads bags of mail into a Ford Tri-Motor Mail Passenger Plane via a compartment in the wing that lowered for 

loading. When Ford’s Tri-Motor “Tin Goose” debuted in 1926, most planes were still built of wood and fabric. Ford 

hoped the safer, all-metal plane would attract passengers — the “Tin Goose” could carry up to 15 people as well as 

the mail. Until passenger traffic picked up in the late 1930s, airlines depended upon mail transportation contracts for 

survival.

1900 -

Transcontinental 

railroad 

4 days, 

10 hours

1906 - 

Special 

throughtrain 3 days, 

18 hours

1921 -

Airplane and 

railroad 

3 days, 

11 hours

1924 - 

Transcontinental 

airmail 

1 day, 

10 hours, 

20 minutes

2019 - 

Airplane 

6–7 hours

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 43
Airmail Pilot Bill Hopson

William C. Hopson was less than impressed with photographs of himself. Submitting a photo to the Post Office 

Department’s Airmail Service in the early 1920s, he wrote: 

Enclosed please find photo of bum pilot ... 

When finished with picture just post in cellar, it’s 

guaranteed to keep away all rats, mice and other 

vermin.63

Hopson had 741 hours of flight time when he became an airmail pilot on April 14, 1920. He trained at 

Hempstead, Long Island, and won a pilot’s incentive 

contest sponsored by Otto Praeger, the Second Assistant 

Postmaster General. Hopson flew 413,034 miles, more 

than all but two of the service’s 44 pilots, logging 4,043 

hours in the air.

Like many airmail pilots, Hopson flew the Britishdesigned De Havilland (DH-4B) biplane. Its front cockpit, 

transformed into a cargo hold, could carry about 500 

pounds of mail, and the plane cruised at 95–100 mph. 

Although considered reliable, DH-4Bs tended to stall, 

and their high landing speeds made them difficult to 

land in short fields. But, wrote Hopson, they “are the 

only suitable ships for mountains in all weather.”64

For most of his career, Hopson flew the OmahaChicago leg of the transcontinental route. In 1925, he 

flew into a severe storm near Anita, Iowa. An air pocket 

dropped the plane almost to the ground before Hopson 

regained control. By then, his landing gear and lower 

wings had harvested about 75 bushels of corn. The plane 

turned over, pinning Hopson underneath. Surrounded by 

cornstalks and deluged by rain, he fired his revolver into 

the air to attract attention. The official report said:

The Pilot was only slightly injured, the mail wet in 

spots, and the plane practically a washout.65

Between weather and primitive instrumentation, each 

airmail trip was an adventure. As Hopson wrote:

The best system of flying bad weather is not so 

much to go rip roaring through nasty weather, but 

to use your head for something else besides a hatrack, and fly where bad weather ain’t.66

In 1925, base pay for beginning airmail pilots was 

$2,000 to $2,800, depending on how much night flying 

they did. Pilots also earned five to seven cents per mile 

flown, double for night flight. Pilots agreed, in writing, 

to fly in all kinds of weather. 

Hopson’s last flight for the Department was on 

August 27, 1927. On September 1, contract carriers 

began transporting all airmail. Hopson left the Airmail 

Service two days later and was hired to fly National Air 

Transport’s Contract Air Mail Route 17 between New 

York and Chicago. This was the Allegheny route, one 

of the most difficult because of limited safe places for 

emergency landings. 

Hopson died October 18, 1928, when his plane 

crashed into the top of a tree on a hill near Polk, 

Pennsylvania, during a bad storm. One man, grateful 

that Hopson had saved his life during an earlier flight, 

wrote a tribute that appeared in The St. Louis Times on 

October 20, 1928:

It was a dark, rainy, cloudy day on the New York 

end of the air mail. No planes through in two days. 

I wanted to get home to my family in California. I 

insisted on going. It wasn’t bravery — it was dumb 

ignorance, and an unlimited confidence in all air 

mail pilots.

”We will try to get through if you insist,” Pilot 

W.P. Hopson said. And we got through, clear to 

Cleveland. 

Thursday he didn’t get through. I kinder feel like 

his skill saved my life. So “Hoppie,” Old Boy, here’s 

hoping you are piloting the best cloud the Boss 

has got in his hangar up there, and you don’t have 

to worry about low ceiling, engine missing, head 

winds, or even whether the old rip cord will pull in 

case —. 

Yours,

Will Rogers

44 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
and Montreal. In 1929, routes were established from Miami 

to Nassau, Bahamas, on January 2; to San Juan, Puerto Rico, 

on January 9; to San Cristobal, Canal Zone, on February 4; 

and from Brownsville, Texas, to Mexico City on March 10. 

By the end of 1930, the United States was linked by air with 

nearly all the countries in the Western Hemisphere. 

Transpacific airmail routes began operating on 

November 22, 1935, with FAM Route 14, from San 

Francisco via Hawaii, Midway, Wake, and Guam to the 

Philippines. Airmail service was extended to Hong Kong 

on April 21, 1937; to New Zealand on July 12, 1940; to 

Singapore on May 3, 1941; to Australia on January 28, 1947; 

and to China on July 15, 1947. 

Transatlantic airmail routes connected the United States 

with Europe beginning May 20, 1939, with the 29-hour 

flight of Pan American Airways’ Yankee Clipper from New 

York to Marseilles, France, via Bermuda, the Azores, and 

Portugal. That same year, on June 24, a route was inaugurated between New York and Great Britain by way of 

Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland. On December 6, 

1941, direct airmail service to Africa was made possible by 

the inauguration of a route from Miami via Rio de Janeiro 

to the Belgian Congo. Though interrupted during WWII, 

improvements in aviation fostered the rapid expansion of 

international airmail routes in the postwar years.

On October 4, 1958, a jet airliner was used to transport 

mail between London and New York for the first time, cutting the transatlantic trip from 14 hours to 8. 

Airmail as a separate class of domestic mail officially ended on May 1, 1977, although in practice it ended in October 

1975, when the Postal Service announced that First-Class 

postage — which was three cents cheaper — would buy the 

same or better level of service. By then, transportation patterns had changed, and most First-Class letters were already 

zipping cross-country via airplane. Airmail as a separate 

class of international mail ended on May 14, 2007, when 

rates for the international transportation of mail by surface 

methods were eliminated. 

Charles I. Stanton, an early airmail pilot and airmail division superintendent who later headed the Civil Aeronautics 

Administration, said about the early days of airmail service:

We planted four seeds ... They were airways, communications, 

navigation aids, and multi-engined aircraft. Not all of these 

came full blown into the transportation scene; in fact, the last 

one withered and died and had to be planted over again nearly a 

decade later. But they are the cornerstones on which our present 

world-wide transport structure is built, and they came, one by one, 

out of our experience in daily, uninterrupted flying of the mail.67

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 45
NEW DEAL ART: 

EAGER AND ALIVE

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal sponsored 

several art programs to help get people back to work 

and restore confidence in a nation facing 25 percent 

unemployment in 1933.

From 1934 to 1943, the New Deal murals and sculpture seen in Post Offices were produced under the 

Treasury Department’s Section of Painting and Sculpture, 

later called the Section of Fine Arts. Unlike the Works 

Progress Administration/Federal Art Project, with which it 

often is confused, this program was not directed toward 

providing economic relief. Instead, the art placed in Post 

Offices was intended to help boost the morale of people 

suffering the effects of the Great Depression with art 

that, in the words of President Roosevelt, was: 

native, human, eager and alive — all of it painted 

by their own kind in their own country, and painted 

about things they know and look at often and have 

touched and loved.68

Artists competed anonymously in national and regional contests. After receiving a commission, an artist was 

encouraged to consult with the Postmaster and other 

townspeople to ensure that the subject would be meaningful. In 2019, more than 1,000 Post Offices nationwide continued to house this uniquely American art. 

Postman In Storm, Independence, Iowa (at right)

The oil on canvas mural Postman In Storm by Robert Taylor might evoke shivers from visitors to the Independence, 

Iowa, Post Office at 200 2nd Avenue, Northeast. The mural was installed in January 1938 and restored in 2000.

Air Mail, Piggott, Arkansas (below)

Air Mail by painter Daniel Rhodes is a nearly 12-foot-long work in oil on canvas. The public still can see this work of 

art, installed in 1941, when they visit the Piggott, Arkansas, Post Office, located at 116 North 3rd Avenue.

46 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 47
The Leisurely Native Tempo, Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands

Stevan Dohanos painted two murals for the Charlotte Amalie Post Office in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1940, including 

The Leisurely Native Tempo, which can still be seen in the Post Office lobby at 9846 Estate Thomas.

Winter Landscape, Canton, Missouri

Artist Jessie Hull Mayer painted Winter Landscape in oil and tempera for the Canton, Missouri, Post Office, 

located at 500 Lewis Street, where it can still be seen. The mural was installed in 1940, with restoration work 

done in 1971 and 2005.

48 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Legend of James Edward Hamilton — Barefoot Mailman (Panel 5 of 6), West Palm Beach, Florida

Stevan Dohanos painted six murals for the West Palm Beach, Florida, Post Office. Originally installed in 1940, they 

were moved to the office’s new location at 3200 Summit Boulevard in 1988.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 49
Washington Bridge, Ridgefield Park, New Jersey

Installed in 1937, this oil on canvas work by artist Thomas Donnelly depicts the George Washington Bridge with 

the New Jersey shore in the foreground and Manhattan in the background. The mural is located in the lobby of the 

Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, Post Office, at 155 Main Street.

Apple Harvest, Arlington, Virginia

Apple Harvest was one of a series of seven murals painted by artist Auriel Bessemer for the Arlington, Virginia, Post 

Office, at 3118 Washington Boulevard. The mural was installed in 1940 and restored in 2005.

50 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Indian Bear Dance, Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico

Installed in 1938, Indian Bear Dance by Boris Deutsch is a 12-foot-long oil on canvas mural located in the Geronimo 

Retail Unit, 300 Main Street, Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, Post Office. The retail unit is open 24 hours a day 

for postal customers and visitors interested in New Deal art.

Buffalo Range, Portales, New Mexico

Artist Theodore Van Soelen painted this nearly 12-foot-long mural in 1938. It can be seen in the Portales, New Mexico, 

Post Office, located at 116 West 1st Street.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 51
The Postwar Boom

The period following World War II was marked by a booming economy, a growing population, and a general sense of 

optimism. After decades of deprivation and war, this era 

of stability and prosperity put new cars, suburban homes, 

and college educations within the reach of more Americans 

than ever. 

 As millions of GIs returned home and started families, 

new housing was built in suburban subdivisions. The family 

car played a central role in suburban life; the number of 

cars on the road increased from 25.8 million in 1945 to 61.7 

million by 1960. 

America’s growing dependence on automobiles and the 

growth of the suburbs pushed the Post Office Department 

to change how it transported and delivered mail. Passenger 

trains — which had transported most mail since the 19th 

century — declined, as more and more people chose the 

open road over the railroad. Between 1940 and 1960, the 

operating miles of passenger trains fell by 45 percent, from 

170,429 miles to 93,816, continuing a downward trend that 

began in the 1920s. As trains were pulled from service, the 

Post Office Department quickly converted inter-city mail 

transportation to highway routes. The Department even 

established Highway Post Offices, similar to Railway Post 

Snorkel Mailbox, circa 1954 

Curbside “snorkel” mailboxes were first tested in Cleveland, Ohio, and Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1939. 

In the 1950s, the design was standardized and the boxes spread to cities nationwide.

52 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Experimental Mailster, 1952 

The Post Office Department began motorizing city 

delivery routes in the 1950s. Three-wheeled vehicles like 

this Mailster were tested in half a dozen cities beginning 

in June 1950. By the end of the decade, more than 

5,700 Mailsters were in service; the number peaked in 

1966, at about 17,700 nationwide.

Offices, with clerks aboard inter-city buses sorting mail en 

route (see page 112). 

Suburban growth challenged the Post Office Department 

to deliver mail to more households that were spread out 

geographically. The Department began motorizing city 

delivery routes in the 1950s, putting more and more letter 

carriers in motor vehicles. The percentage of “mounted” city 

carriers serving residential routes more than doubled in 

the 1950s, climbing from 11 percent in 1954 to 24 percent 

in 1960. Meanwhile, handcarts were given to some carriers 

who walked their routes, to double the amount of mail that 

they could deliver in one trip. 

The booming postwar economy led to ever-increasing 

amounts of mail. Between 1940 and 1960, mail volume more 

than doubled, from 27.7 billion to 63.7 billion pieces mailed 

annually. To deliver mail faster and more economically, the 

Department enlisted the help of customers to presort their 

outgoing mail into “cooperative mailing racks” in some office building lobbies, with sacks labeled for “local,” “air mail,” 

or “out-of-town” mail. Similarly, dual collection boxes were 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 53
Stamp Vending Machine, 1956

The Model “F” Stampmaster debuted in 1956. The 

machine not only made change but also “spoke” to 

customers with pre-recorded messages at the end 

of transactions, such as “Thank you. I am another 

example of streamlining your postal service,” and 

“Thank you. Introduce me to your friends. I like 

friends.”

Cooperative Mailing 

Rack, 1956

In the mid-1950s, 

cooperative mailing 

racks were placed 

in the lobbies 

of large office 

buildings in more 

than 130 cities, 

so customers could 

presort their outgoing 

mail. 

placed on some busy street corners — one for “local” and 

one for “out-of-town” mail. The Department also encouraged bulk mailers to presort and label their outgoing mail 

for either local or out-of-town dispatch.

To serve customers more efficiently, self-service machines 

like the “Mailomat” and the “Stampmaster” vending machine were added to some Post Office lobbies, so customers 

could quickly purchase postage without waiting in line for 

counter service. Catering to the car culture, the Department 

installed snorkel mailboxes on city streets and even experimented with drive-up service at Post Offices. 

From Zone Codes to ZIP Codes 

During World War II, thousands of experienced postal 

employees left to serve with the military. To help offset the 

loss, in May 1943, the Post Office Department began a zoning 

address system in 124 large cities. Under this system, delivery units or zones were identified by one or two numbers 

between the city and state — for example, Birmingham 7, 

Alabama — so that mail could be separated by employees 

who did not have detailed scheme knowledge. The zone numbering system was continued after the war to help employees 

sort ever-increasing mail volumes in rapidly expanding urban 

and suburban areas. Zone codes were used in 131 cities in 

total. Most of the cities used the system until 1963, when the 

Department implemented an even further reaching plan, the 

Zoning Improvement Plan (ZIP) Code.69

Between 1943 and 1963, mail volume more than doubled. 

The nature of the mail also changed. The development of 

the computer brought centralization of accounts and sent 

a growing mass of utility bills and payments, bank deposits 

and receipts, advertising, magazines, credit card transactions, mortgage bills and payments, and Social Security 

checks through the mail. By 1963, 80 percent of all mail in 

the United States was business mail. 

To cope with rising mail volumes, 

the Department needed to sort and 

distribute mail more efficiently. Adding 

more and more employees to sort 

ever-increasing volumes of mail was 

not an option. Costs aside, there was 

nowhere to put them, as many large 

postal facilities were already cramped.

In June 1962, after a study of mechanization, the presidentially appointed 

Advisory Board of the Post Office 

Department made several recommendations. One was the development of 

a nationwide address coding system, 

54 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Promoting Zone Codes, 

New York City, 1958

Acting Postmaster 

Robert Christenberry 

encouraged the public to 

mail early and use zone 

codes to speed their 

Christmas mail.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 55
an idea the Department had considered for a decade or 

more. A number of coding programs were examined and 

discarded before the Department selected a system advanced 

by Department officials. Postmaster General J. Edward Day 

announced that the ZIP Code would launch July 1, 1963.

Preparing for the new system involved a realignment of 

the mail system. The Post Office Department had previously 

recognized that new avenues of transportation would open 

and had begun to establish focal points for air, highway, and 

rail transportation. Called the Metro System, these transportation centers were set up around 85 of the country’s larger 

cities to deflect mail from congested city streets and compensate for the reduced number of mail-carrying passenger 

trains which had previously brought mail to city centers. The 

Metro concept was expanded and eventually became the core 

of 552 sectional centers, each serving between 40 and 150 

surrounding Post Offices. 

Once these sectional centers were delineated, the next 

step in establishing the ZIP Code was to assign codes to the 

centers and the postal addresses they served. The existence 

of postal zones in the larger cities, set in motion in 1943, 

helped to some extent, but in cases where the old zones 

failed to fit within the delivery areas, new numbers had to be 

assigned. 

Postmaster General and City Carriers with Mr. ZIP, 1963

Postmaster General J. Edward Day and two city letter carriers pose in front of Mr. ZIP, a cartoon character 

who promoted the use of the ZIP Code. 

“Swingin‘ Six” ZIP Code Video

Watch an entertaining 14-minute ZIP Code promotion featuring the folk group the “Swingin’ Six,” 

produced by the Post Office Department in 1966. Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Postal 

Museum via its YouTube channel, SmithsonianNPM.

56 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
By July 1963, a five-digit code had been 

assigned to every address throughout the 

country. The first digit designated a broad 

geographical area of the United States, ranging from zero for the Northeast to nine for 

the far West. This number was followed by 

two digits that more closely pinpointed population concentrations and those sectional 

centers accessible to common transportation 

networks. The final two digits designated 

small Post Offices or postal zones in larger 

zoned cities. 

The ZIP Code began as scheduled. At first, 

use of the new code was not mandatory for 

anyone, but in 1967, the Department required 

mailers of second- and third-class bulk mail 

to presort by ZIP Code. The public and business mailers alike adapted well to its use. 

The ZIP Code helped postal employees manually sort mail by consolidating 

regional, city, and state information into five 

easy-to-read numbers. Previously, clerks 

had to memorize the names and locations 

of thousands of Post Offices in order to 

sort mail to the right hub. The code also 

enabled computerized presorting of mail 

by business mailers, who could then bundle 

and deposit mail presorted by sectional 

center, which speeded delivery by eliminating multiple handlings. The new code also 

paved the way for further development of 

automated mail processing. 

Mechanization and Early Automation

Despite rising mail volumes, throughout 

much of the 20th century the Post Office 

Department relied on antiquated sorting 

equipment and mailhandling methods, 

such as the pigeonhole method of sorting 

mail from colonial times. Although a few 

letter sorting machines had previously been tested on a 

limited basis, like the Gehring Mail Distributing Machine

beginning in the 1910s and the Sestack Letter Sorter in 

the 1940s, it was not until the 1950s that the Post Office 

Department began its “crash program of modernization 

and mechanization.”70

In 1956, the Department began intense research on 

sorting codes used in 13 other countries to manually encode addresses for letter sorting by machine, and began to 

City Letter Carriers, Mobile, Alabama, 1956

City carriers sorted mail into delivery sequence by hand 

until the late 20th century.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 57
Sestack Letter 

Sorter, 1945

Letter sorting 

machines were 

tested in the 1950s 

and 1960s, including 

the Sestack Letter 

Sorter shown 

here in Chicago, 

in 1945. Invented 

by John Sestack, 

Senior Assistant 

Superintendent of 

Mail at the Chicago 

Post Office, several 

versions were 

tested in the 1950s. 

Ultimately, they were 

removed because 

they became jammed 

with letters.

58 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
work with the U.S. Bureau of Standards and the Rabinow 

Engineering Company, among others, to develop a system 

best suited to U.S. postal needs. They examined codes for 

extracting information and the memory core needed by 

automated letter sorting machines.

The Post Office Department also initiated projects and 

awarded contracts to develop a number of machines and 

technologies, including letter sorters, facer-cancelers, automatic address readers, parcel sorters, advanced tray conveyors, flat sorters, and letter mail coding and stamp-tagging 

techniques.

The first semiautomatic parcel sorting machine was 

introduced in Baltimore in 1956. A year later, a foreign-built, 

semiautomatic, multiposition letter sorting machine 

(MPLSM), the Transorma, was installed and tested for the 

first time in a U.S. Post Office. With five operators keying in 

memorized sorting codes, the Transorma could sort letters, 

cards, and circulars to 300 separations at the rate of 15,000 

pieces per hour, about double the amount that the same 

number of clerks could sort by hand.

 The first American-built MPLSM, based on a 

1,000-pocket machine adapted from a foreign design, 

was developed during the late 1950s. The first production 

contract was awarded to the Burroughs Corporation in 

1958 for ten machines. The machine was successfully tested 

in Detroit in 1959 and eventually became the backbone of 

letter sorting operations during the 1960s and 70s. 

In 1959, the Post Office Department also awarded its first 

volume order for mechanization to Pitney-Bowes, Inc., for 

the production of 75 Mark II facer-cancelers. 

The Department’s accelerated mechanization program 

began in the late 1960s and consisted of semiautomatic equipment such as the MPLSM, the single-position letter sorting 

machine, and the facer-canceler. In November 1965, the 

Department put a high-speed optical character reader (OCR) 

into service in the Detroit Post Office; nine Post Offices were 

using these OCRs by 1970. This first-generation machine was 

connected to an MPLSM and read the city/state/ZIP Code 

line of typed addresses to sort letters to one of 277 pockets. 

Although this first-generation OCR could read up to 43,000 

addresses an hour, letters fed into it had to be pre-culled, since 

it could read only the 80 most common of about 600 typefaces in use. 

Mechanization and early automation efforts increased productivity, but the Post Office Department was in a “race with 

catastrophe” trying to cope with dramatic increases in mail 

volume. In Chicago in 1966, postal operations ground to a 

halt. It soon became clear that a piecemeal approach would 

no longer work; a fundamental reorganization of the entire 

Post Office Department was needed. n

Farrington Automatic Address 

Reader, 1959

A prototype of Farrington’s 

automatic address reader was 

showcased at the Parade of Postal 

Progress in Detroit, Michigan, in 

1959. The exhibit was ahead of its 

time — a functioning version of 

this optical character reader (OCR) 

was first tested in 1962. In the 

next few years, more models were 

tested in other cities, and by July 

1970, fifteen OCRs were operating 

in nine cities. These first-generation 

machines could read the last line 

of typed addresses only. In the late 

1990s, OCRs began deciphering 

handwritten addresses.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 59
POSTAL REORGANIZATION 

I

n the mid-1960s, the Post Office Department struggled 

with outdated equipment, crowded facilities, underpaid 

workers, and an ineffective management structure.

Postal officials knew they needed new facilities — many of 

the nation’s largest Post Offices had been built in the 1930s 

and were designed to receive mail by rail. The facilities did 

not have enough docking space for large trucks, which began 

replacing trains as the primary mail movers in the 1950s. 

Also, mail volume had skyrocketed up 230 percent between 

1940 and 1960. 

But Congress held the purse-strings. All important 

decisions — from buildings and equipment used, to how 

many employees could be hired and what they were paid — 

were made by Congress. This led to artificially low rates of 

postage, which were popular with constituents but led to a 

stagnant postal infrastructure. 

During the 1963 Christmas season, mail volume at the 

Chicago Post Office was so high that trucks could not make 

it into the terminal to unload. Tons of mail, mostly Parcel 

Post, were delivered late; they were still playing catch-up 

with Christmas when Valentine’s Day rolled around. 

In October 1966, it happened again. The Chicago Post 

Office became gridlocked by mountains of mailbags. Mail 

trucks backed up outside the Post Office, unable to unload. 

At one point, it was estimated that 300 tractor trailers waited 

in a line that wound around the Chicago Post Office, which 

was then the largest Post Office in the world. One bulk mailer recalled that on October 1, one of his drivers had to wait 

all day to unload; a week later one of his drivers was stuck at 

the Post Office for three days waiting to unload one truck. 

It took about a month to clear the logjam, with mail 

re-routed to other offices around the country. It made national headlines and, finally, ignited a movement for postal 

reform. The Chicago Post Office became a symbol to the 

nation of how not to manage mail. 

During February 1967 hearings before the House 

Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury-Post Office, 

Postmaster General Lawrence F. O’Brien said that the 

The Chicago Post Office

For a week in October 

1966, the Chicago Post 

Office, at that time the 

largest Post Office in the 

world with 60 acres of 

floor space, ground to a 

virtual halt under a logjam 

of 10 million pieces of 

mail. This crisis triggered 

a bipartisan look at postal 

reform.

60 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Department was in a “race with catastrophe.” 

O’Brien described the crisis:

At the peak of the crisis in Chicago, ten million 

pieces of mail were logjammed. The sorting room 

floors were bursting with more than 5 million 

letters, parcels, circulars, and magazines that 

could not be processed. Outbound mail sacks 

formed small grey mountain ranges while they 

waited to be shipped out.

Our new and beleaguered Chicago postmaster 

summed it up pretty well when he said: “We had 

mail coming out of our ears.”

What happened in Chicago to cause the 

crisis? The answer is not that something specific 

happened in 1966, but that enough did not 

happen in the previous 33 years. ... we are 

trying to move our mail through facilities 

largely unchanged since the days of Jim Farley 

when our mail volume was 30 percent of what 

it is today.71

After O’Brien spoke, Oklahoma 

Congressman Tom Steed, chairman of 

the subcommittee, offered the following 

summary:

... would this be a fair summary: that at the 

present time, as the manager of the Post Office 

Department, you have no control over your 

workload, you have no control over the rates of revenue, you have 

no control over the pay rates of the employees that you employ, 

you have very little control over the conditions of the service of 

these employees; you have virtually no control, by the nature of 

it, of your physical facilities and you have only a limited control, 

at best, over the transportation facilities that you are compelled 

to use — all of which adds up to a staggering amount of “no 

control” in terms of the duties you have to perform.72

The answer was yes. Congress, the President, and the Post 

Office Department moved to improve this situation.

In April 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the 

President’s Commission on Postal Organization. Its ten 

members included the dean of Harvard’s Business School, 

the president of the AFL-CIO, and heads of major corporations. It was chaired by Frederick R. Kappel, a former 

chairman of AT&T, and became known as the Kappel 

Commission. The President asked the commission to “determine whether the postal system as presently organized is 

International Harvester Tractor Trailer, circa 1960

In the 1960s, many of the nation’s largest Post Offices 

lacked adequate docking space for the large numbers 

of trucks and tractor trailers that began to proliferate in 

the 1950s.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 61
National Guardsmen Sort Mail in New York, 1970

On March 18, 1970, letter carriers in New York City walked off the job to protest pay and working conditions. 

Although it was illegal for postal workers to strike, 152,000 other employees in 671 locations soon joined the 

walkout, halting much of the nation’s mail — including welfare and pension checks, tax refunds, census forms, and 

draft notices. To minimize mail congestion, Postmaster General Winton M. Blount ordered an embargo on all mail 

originating in or destined for the New York City metropolitan area. On March 23, 1970, President Richard Nixon 

declared a state of national emergency and sent federal troops to New York City to sort and distribute the backlog 

of mail. The strike ended two days later with the start of negotiations for a general wage increase.

62 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
capable of meeting the demands of our growing economy 

and our expanding population.”73

In June 1968, the Kappel Commission concluded that it 

was not. The commission traced this incapacity to “an absence of responsible management having normal operating 

authority.”74 It felt that the Post Office Department operated 

one of the nation’s largest businesses, yet it was not run as a 

business, primarily because its “nominal managers” did not 

have the authority to run it — rather, “important management decisions of the Post Office are beyond their control.”75

The Commission recommended:

n That a self-supporting postal corporation owned by 

the federal government be created.

n That all hiring and promotions in the postal system be 

made on a merit-based, nonpolitical basis.

n That postal employees be transferred from the federal 

Civil Service to a new postal career service and that 

conditions of employment for non-managerial employees be determined through collective bargaining 

between labor and management.

n	 That postage rates be set by a board of directors, after 

hearings by rate commissioners, subject to veto by 

Congress.

The commission released its recommendations in June 

1968. In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon supported the 

commission’s recommendations; others, including postal 

union leaders, opposed it.

On March 12, 1970, after extensive hearings, the House 

Post Office and Civil Service Committee reported a compromise measure containing provisions similar to the 

commission proposals endorsed by President Nixon. The 

bill included a 5.4 percent retroactive pay raise and a system 

that would allow employees to reach the top of their pay 

grade in 8 rather than 21 years. Postal employees called it 

too little, too late.

On March 18, a work stoppage began. It ultimately 

involved 152,000 postal employees in 671 locations. The 

President ordered the military to deliver the mail, and the 

unions asked Labor Secretary George Shultz to intervene. 

Postmaster General Winton M. Blount agreed to negotiate 

when the employees returned to work. They did, and negotiations began March 25. Eight days later, the negotiating 

parties recommended a general wage increase of six percent, 

Chicago Post Office Clerks, circa 1970

In the late 1960s, stagnant wages for federal workers 

led to the hiring of more women, especially in urban 

areas, where men could often find better paying jobs 

in the private sector. The Postal Reorganization Act 

of August 12, 1970, increased employees’ pay by 14 

percent and shortened the amount of time needed for 

employees to reach the top of their pay grade. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 63
retroactive to December 27, 1969, for all federal employees. Postal workers would get an additional eight percent 

increase if there was agreement on, and enactment of, legislation reorganizing the Post Office Department.

On April 16, 1970, after continuing negotiations, the 

Department and union leaders announced agreement on 

a reorganization plan, which was embodied in a legislative 

proposal and sent to Congress by President Nixon. The plan 

included the following key provisions: adequate financing 

authority, removal of the system from politics to assure continuity of management, collective bargaining, and setting of 

rates by the Postal Service after an opportunity for hearings 

before an impartial rate panel. In addition to the eight percent 

pay increase, the bill provided for negotiation of a new wage 

schedule permitting employees to reach the top of their pay 

grade in eight years. 

On August 3, 1970, by a vote of 57 to 7, the Senate approved the conference report on House Resolution 17070, 

a modified version of the legislation proposed by the 

President. Three days later, the House of Representatives 

approved it. On August 12, 1970, President Nixon signed 

into law the most comprehensive postal legislation since 

the founding of the republic, the Postal Reorganization 

Act.76

The act transformed the Post Office Department into the 

United States Postal Service, an independent establishment 

of the executive branch of the Government of the United 

States. The mission of the Postal Service remained the same, 

as stated in Title 39 of the U.S. Code:

The Postal Service shall have as its basic function the obligation 

to provide postal services to bind the Nation together through the 

personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of 

the people. It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services 

to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all 

communities.

Six Former Postmasters General at Signing Ceremony, August 1970

Six former Postmasters General and incumbent Postmaster General Winton M. Blount were present when President 

Richard Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act into law on August 12, 1970. From left: John A. Gronouski, J. Edward 

Day, James A. Farley, President Nixon, Postmaster General Blount, Arthur E. Summerfield, Lawrence F. O’Brien, and 

W. Marvin Watson.

64 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
The new Postal Service officially began operations on 

July 1, 1971, when the Postmaster General ceased to be 

a member of the President’s Cabinet. The Postal Service 

received:

n Operational authority vested in a Board of Governors 

and Postal Service executive management, rather than 

in Congress.

n Authority to issue public bonds to finance postal 

buildings and mechanization.

n Direct collective bargaining between representatives 

of management and the unions.

n A new rate-setting procedure built around an independent Postal Rate Commission.

The Postal Reorganization Act changed the United States 

postal system in many ways.

Finances and Rates

The act established an independent Postal Rate Commission 

of five members, appointed by the U.S. President with the 

advice and consent of the U.S. Senate, to recommend postal 

rates and mail classifications for adoption by the Postal 

Service Governors. It authorized the Postal Service to borrow 

money from the general public and phased out the general 

public service subsidy, which the Postal Service ended earlier 

than required, last accepting an operational subsidy in 1982. 

It also authorized appropriations to reimburse the Postal 

Service for carrying congressionally established categories of 

free and reduced-rate mail and required that rates for each 

class of mail cover direct and indirect costs attributable to 

that class, plus a portion of institutional costs.

Personnel

The act established a postal career service, which is a framework that permits terms and conditions of employment to 

be set through collective bargaining. It also prohibited political recommendations for appointments within the Postal 

Service. The Civil Service retirement program was retained.

Labor-Management Relations

The act authorized collective bargaining on wages and 

working conditions under laws applying to private industry 

and provided for binding arbitration if an impasse persists 

180 days after the start of bargaining. The ban on strikes, 

applicable to all federal employees, remained. The act authorized the National Labor Relations Board to determine 

proper bargaining units, supervise representative elections, 

and enforce the unfair labor practices provisions. It also 

protected the rights of all employees to form, join, or assist a 

labor organization or to refrain from such activity.

Transportation

The act generally extended existing laws governing transportation of mail, while providing some additional flexibility. The distinctions between various categories of motor carriers, previously contracted by the Post Office Department, 

were eliminated. The Civil Aeronautics Board retained 

authority to regulate rates for airmail transportation, but the 

Postal Service also was granted limited authority to contract 

directly with the airlines for air transportation services.

Pay

The act specified that the Postal Service would maintain 

compensation and benefits for its officers and employees 

comparable to that offered by the private sector for similar 

work. However, the act mandated that no officer or employee be paid compensation at a rate higher than a Cabinet 

officer. n

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 65
The Postal Service Board of Governors

The Board of Governors was established by the Postal 

Reorganization Act of August 12, 1970. It is much 

like the board of directors of a private corporation, 

and normally includes nine Governors who are appointed by the President with the advice and consent 

of the Senate.

The nine Governors select a Postmaster General, 

who becomes a member of the Board, and those ten 

select a Deputy Postmaster General, who also serves 

on the Board. The Postmaster General serves at the 

pleasure of the Governors for an indefinite term. The 

Deputy Postmaster General serves at the pleasure of 

the Governors and the Postmaster General.

Originally, Governors of the Postal Service were 

appointed for terms of nine years.77 The Postal 

Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) 

changed the Governors’ terms from nine to seven 

years. Each Governor’s term expires on December 8 

of a given year. Governors can be removed only for 

cause.

The 2006 act also added some professional qualifications for Governors. Governors are chosen to 

represent the public interest and cannot be representatives of special interests. Not more than five of 

the nine may belong 

to the same political 

party. They must be 

chosen solely based 

on their experience 

in public service, law, 

or accounting, or on 

their demonstrated 

ability to manage 

organizations or 

corporations in either

the public or private 

sector. At least four 

of the Governors 

must have demonstrated ability in 

managing organizations or corporations 

with at least 50,000 

employees.

The Board directs the exercise of the powers of the 

Postal Service, directs and controls its expenditures, 

reviews its practices, conducts long-range planning, 

approves officer compensation, and sets policies on 

all postal matters. The Board also takes up matters 

such as service standards and capital investments.

The Board employs a full-time secretary. As the 

primary staff assistant to the Board, the secretary is 

generally responsible for coordinating the resources of 

the Postal Service so that the Board fulfills its statutory 

duties in the most efficient and informed manner 

possible.

The Board of Governors meets on a regular basis, 

generally in Washington, D.C., but meetings may be 

scheduled in some other city where the members 

can see firsthand a Postal Service or large mailer’s 

operation.

All meetings are open to the public unless the 

Board specifically votes to close all or part of a 

meeting in line with exemptions permitted by the 

Government in the Sunshine Act of September 13, 

1976.

As the terms of the sitting Governors began to 

expire in 2010, the Senate failed to confirm replacement nominees. The Board adopted a resolution in 

November 2014 establishing a Temporary Emergency 

Committee (TEC) composed of the remaining members of the Board, to exercise those powers reserved 

to the Board necessary for continuity of operations. 

The Governors also adopted a resolution regarding 

the exercise of those powers conferred by law solely 

to the Governors (as distinguished from the full 

Board) — those powers include the appointment 

and removal of the Postmaster General and the 

establishment of prices and classifications for postal 

services. The Governors determined that their ability 

to exercise those powers reserved to the Governors 

was not impacted by the loss of a Board quorum.

The Board lost the six members needed for a 

quorum in December 2014. It operated without any 

appointed Governors, under authority delegated 

to the TEC, from December 2016 to August 2018, 

when the Senate confirmed two new appointees.

66 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Governors of the Postal Service (listed with date of appointment)

Theodore W. Braun January 11, 1971

Charles H. Codding January 11, 1971

Patrick E. Haggerty January 11, 1971

Andrew D. Holt January 11, 1971

George E. Johnson January 11, 1971

Frederick R. Kappel January 11, 1971

Elmer T. Klassen January 11, 1971

Crocker Nevin January 11, 1971

Myron A. Wright January 11, 1971

John Y. Ing June 22, 1972

Robert E. Holding October 26, 1972

Hayes Robertson May 14, 1974

William A. Irvine March 3, 1975

Hung Wai Ching August 5, 1976

Robert L. Hardesty August 5, 1976

William J. Sullivan January 12, 1979

Richard R. Allen October 5, 1979

George W. Camp October 5, 1979

Paula D. Hughes August 19, 1980

David E. Babcock August 20, 1980

Timothy L. Jenkins August 20, 1980

Wallace N. Hyde December 31, 1980

John R. McKean March 9, 1982

Peter E. Voss July 28, 1982

John L. Ryan May 10, 1983

Ruth O. Peters December 2, 1983

Frieda Waldman January 6, 1984

John N. Griesemer December 12, 1984

J. H. Tyler McConnell December 19, 1985

Robert Setrakian December 19, 1985

Crocker Nevin August 15, 1986

Norma Pace May 21, 1987

Ira D. Hall November 23, 1987

Tirso del Junco, M.D. July 15, 1988

Susan E. Alvarado July 15, 1988

Bert H. Mackie December 9, 1988

LeGree S. Daniels August 6, 1990

J. Sam Winters November 25, 1991

Einar V. Dyhrkopp November 24, 1993

S. David Fineman May 26, 1995

Robert F. Rider May 26, 1995

Ned R. McWherter October 2, 1995

Ernesta Ballard November 13, 1997

John F. Walsh November 16, 1999

Alan C. Kessler November 3, 2000

Albert V. Casey August 6, 2002

James C. Miller III April 22, 2003

Carolyn Lewis Gallagher November 3, 2004

Louis J. Giuliano November 3, 2004

John S. Gardner January 6, 2006

Mickey D. Barnett August 17, 2006

James H. Bilbray August 17, 2006

Katherine C. Tobin August 17, 2006

Ellen C. Williams August 17, 2006

Thurgood Marshall Jr. December 15, 2006

Dennis J. Toner September 17, 2010

Robert M. Duncan August 30, 2018

David C. Williams August 30, 2018

John M. Barger August 5, 2019

Ron A. Bloom August 5, 2019

Roman Martinez IV August 5, 2019

Post Office Department Headquarters, 1899–1934 

(previous page, far left)

This granite building on Pennsylvania Avenue, not far 

from the White House, was the last to simultaneously 

house both postal headquarters and the Washington, 

D.C., Post Office. Horse-drawn wagons brought mail 

to the building in its early years. By the time postal 

Headquarters moved to a larger building, almost all 

mail was carried by motor vehicles.

Postal Service Headquarters, 1973–Present (at right)

Vlastimil Koubek designed the present Postal Service 

Headquarters building, which is located in Southwest 

Washington, D.C., just a few blocks south of the 

National Mall.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 67
THE AUTOMATION AGE

I

n the decade following passage of the Postal Reorganization Act, mail volume rose by more than 25 percent. 

It was clear that more efficient work methods and equipment were needed to stem the rising costs of growing mail 

volume and an expanding delivery network.

In September 1982, the first computer-driven single-line 

optical character reader (OCR) was installed in Los Angeles. 

This equipment could read address information and print 

on envelopes barcodes representing the five-digit ZIP Code, 

which enabled mail to be automatically sorted to the correct 

delivery office. The sorting barcode, called a POSTNET barcode, consisted of groups of five long and short bars, with 

each group representing one digit of the ZIP Code.

The POSTNET barcode grew longer in 1983, when the 

Postal Service introduced the ZIP+4 code, which added a 

hyphen and four digits to the existing five-digit ZIP Code. 

The first five numbers continued to identify an area of the 

country and delivery office to which mail was directed. The 

sixth and seventh digits denoted a delivery sector: several blocks, a group of streets, a group of Post Office boxes, 

several office buildings, a single high-rise office building, a 

large apartment building, or a small geographic area. The last 

two digits denoted a delivery segment: one floor of an office 

building, one side of a block, specific departments in a firm, 

or specific Post Office boxes. The expanded code enabled 

automated equipment to sort letters to the correct carrier at 

the delivery office. On October 1, 1983, price incentives for 

First-Class Mail bearing the ZIP+4 code were approved. 

By the end of 1984, 252 OCRs were installed in 118 major 

mail processing centers across the country and processed an 

average of 6,200 pieces of mail per workhour — a substantial 

increase from the 1,750 pieces processed using MPLSMs.

Sorting Letters Better

In 1988, the Postal Service approved its Corporate Automation Plan, which it considered the “cornerstone to 

achieving quality mail service at reduced costs.”78 Since 

letters accounted for the greatest amount of mail volume, 

the Postal Service first focused its efforts there. 

By 1989, multiline optical character readers (MLOCRs) 

had replaced single-line optical character readers. MLOCRs 

enabled equipment to read and barcode letters without a 

Multi-Position Letter 

Sorting Machine, 

circa 1974

Clerks keyed in sorting 

codes, separating 

mail into one of 277 

destination bins, in 

Merrifield, Virginia, circa 

1974. By September 

1970, 268 letter sorting 

machines had been 

deployed at 116 Post 

Offices nationwide; 15 

had optical character 

readers, enabling them 

to read and sort 

mail automatically. 

Automated equipment 

helped employees 

sort more mail, more 

quickly.

68 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY

Multi-Position Letter Sorting Machine

Watch a 1-minute film showing the operation of a Multi-Position 

Letter Sorting Machine (MPLSM), courtesy of the Smithsonian’s 

National Postal Museum via its YouTube channel, SmithsonianNPM.
ZIP+4 code. More prebarcoded letters began entering the 

mailstream in 1991, when the Postal Service began offering 

discounted postage rates for prebarcoded mail. Between 

1990 and 2000, the percentage of mail with customerapplied barcodes jumped from just 7 percent to 59 percent. 

Throughout the 1990s, the Postal Service deployed advanced facer-canceler systems (AFCSs), which could orient 

and postmark 30,000 pieces of mail per hour — nearly twice 

as many as the older Mark II facer-cancelers they replaced. 

To enable automated equipment to sort letters into 

delivery order, in 1990 the Postal Service lengthened the 

nine-digit ZIP+4 code with a two-digit “delivery point” 

(represented by a longer barcode). Existing equipment was 

retrofitted to sort mail into delivery order. In late 1991, the 

first delivery barcode sorters (DBCSs) were deployed, and 

by 1998, they had virtually replaced the old MPLSMs. 

In 2000, the Postal Service began to deploy state-of-the-art 

DIOSS (delivery barcode input/output subsystem) sorters, 

an upgraded delivery barcode sorter. With up to 302 bins to 

receive mail — five times more than the equipment it replaced 

— DIOSS provided a finer, more localized sort, reducing the 

number of handlings and speeding delivery times. 

The remote barcoding system, first tested in Tampa, Florida, 

in 1992, provided the Postal Service with a means to apply 

barcodes to mail that could not be read by automated equipment. Images of illegible addresses were sent automatically to 

a remote encoding center (REC), without the mail physically 

leaving the processing plant. If a computer at the REC could 

not decipher the address, an operator at the center read the 

address and keyed in enough information so the piece could 

be barcoded for proper sorting. The number of RECs, which 

were always intended to be temporary, peaked by 1997, at 55 

centers nationwide, but began declining just two years later, as 

more prebarcoded letters entered the mailstream and handwriting analysis software improved. Between 1997 and 2003, 

the percentage of machine-readable handwritten addresses 

jumped from less than 2 percent to about 80 percent. In 

2013, about 98 percent of handwritten addresses were machine-readable. By the end of 2014, only one REC remained 

in operation.

To increase efficiency in handling undeliverable-asaddressed letters, from 2004 to 2007, the Postal Service 

deployed the postal automated redirection system (PARS) to 

processing plants. PARS identified and redirected forwardable 

mail during processing, which reduced the number of times 

it needed to be handled. PARS also automated the processing 

of change-of-address forms, and generated revenue via 

electronic notification to mailers who subscribed to the 

address change service as well as hard copy notification to 

mailers who added an endorsement to their mail. 

Carrier Sequence Bar 

Code Sorter, 2004

The Carrier Sequence Bar 

Code Sorter, used from 

1995 to 2013, was similar 

to a Delivery Barcode 

Sorter (DBCS) but had 

a smaller footprint. An 

operator swept mail from 

the sorter’s output bins, at 

his left, to the feeder belt, 

at his right, for another 

pass through the machine. 

The output of the next 

pass was sorted to more 

specific neighborhood 

locations.

Carrier Sequence Bar Code Sorter

Watch a 2-minute video of the Carrier Sequence Bar Code Sorter in 

action, courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum via its 

YouTube channel, SmithsonianNPM.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 69
Processing Flats 

“Flat” mail — which includes large envelopes, catalogs, magazines, and newspapers — is one of the most labor-intensive 

categories of mail to process and deliver due to variations in 

size, thickness, and address placement.

In 1982, the Postal Service deployed its first flat sorting 

machine, the FSM 775. With four operators keying in part of 

the ZIP Code, the FSM 775 could sort about 6,200 flats per 

hour into 100 bins. The FSM 881, introduced in 1992, could 

sort about 10,000 flats per hour with four operators. In 1996, 

FSM 1000s were introduced to sort the 25 percent of flats 

that could not go through the FSM 881s, including newspapers, poly-wrapped material, and flats weighing more than 

20 ounces. 

The first fully automated flat sorting machine (AFSM 

100) was installed in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1999. Each 

AFSM could process 300,000 flats a day, almost three times 

as many as the equipment it replaced. Deployment of 

the AFSM 100s was completed in 2002, with 534 systems 

installed at 240 mail processing facilities nationwide. By 

2005, flats productivity had nearly doubled in processing 

facilities, with about 80 percent of flats processed on the 

AFSM 100. 

Meanwhile, flat sorting in delivery offices remained the 

same; letter carriers spent an average of three hours a day 

sorting their mail into delivery order. In the late 1990s, the 

Postal Service began to explore ways to sort flats into delivery order, and in 2006, a prototype flats sequencing system 

(FSS) was installed in Indianapolis for field testing. In 2007 

and 2008, FSS machines were installed for field testing in 

Dulles, Virginia, and in 2009, three additional cities began 

testing systems — Columbus, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; 

and Phoenix, Arizona. In 2011, the Postal Service completed 

the deployment of 100 FSS machines to 47 mail processing 

facilities nationwide. Each machine was capable of sorting 

16,500 flats per hour into delivery order. 

Operators Feed AFSM 100, 2005

Operators put stacks of vertically aligned flats 

(oversize mail) into feeders. The flats travel one at 

a time through feeders, OCRs, and buffers to the 

injectors, which insert the flats, one by one, into 

cartridges. Inside the AFSM 100, cartridges transport 

flats up an inclined conveyor (shown at far left) to 

output bins, where flats are sorted 

to specific geographic locations 

based on their barcode.

Processing Parcels

The Postal Service introduced small parcel and bundle sorters in 1988. The sorters used a conveyor system with four to 

six induction stations where operators faced and keyed mail 

based on ZIP Code. Then, conveyors transported the mail to 

specific bins for delivery or further processing. 

In 1992, the Postal Service began to deploy package 

barcode sorting systems to process prebarcoded parcels 

and to apply barcodes to parcels without them. In 2001, 

70 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
singulate, scan, and induction units were 

introduced. These units sent parcels, one by 

one, through a device that measured and 

weighed them, and then through a scanning 

tunnel that read the barcode. Parcels were 

then fed automatically onto the sorter at a 

rate of more than 5,000 per hour. 

From 2004 through 2007, the Postal 

Service deployed 74 automated package 

processing systems, which could process up 

to 9,500 parcels per hour. 

In 2010 and 2011, the Postal Service 

upgraded its aging small parcel and bundle sorters with new control systems and 

barcode and OCR technology. Induction 

stations were modified so that little or no 

keying was required by the operators who 

faced and placed mail on the conveyor belt 

for reading by the barcode reader/OCR. The 

upgraded units — called automated parcel 

and bundle sorters — processed an average 

of 4,500 pieces an hour versus 2,770 pieces 

before the upgrade.

In 2015 and 2016, the Postal Service 

installed 33 Small Parcel Sortation Systems, 

capable of sorting 4,500 packages an 

hour. In July 2016, it began testing a High 

Throughput Parcel Sorter in Denver, 

Colorado, which could sort 14,350 packages 

an hour.

Automating Mail Handling and 

Acceptance

The Postal Service also installed automated equipment to 

move containers of mail in processing plants, and to verify 

large customer-prepared mailings eligible for discounts. 

In 1997, the Postal Service started to deploy 100 robotic 

tray-handling systems to sort and load trays of letters to 

containers or pallets for transportation. In 2000 and 2001, 

the Postal Service deployed 100 gantry robots — automated 

arms running along overhead tracks distributing tubs and 

trays of mail. 

In 1998, the Postal Service began using automation 

barcode evaluator systems to help ensure that large mailings 

had clear, readable barcodes so they could be processed 

efficiently. In 2001, the Postal Service introduced the mailing 

evaluation readability lookup instrument (MERLIN) to 

further automate the labor-intensive process of verifying 

the eligibility of bulk mailings for discounts. In addition to 

Robotic Arm, 1999 

The Postal Service began integrating 

robotics into its mail handling in 1997.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 71
analyzing barcodes, MERLIN analyzed mail size and weight, 

and could produce the necessary reports for mail acceptance. Until 2009, MERLIN sampled all mailings of more 

than 10,000 pieces and some smaller bulk mailings. In 2009, 

the Postal Service completed deployment of Performance 

Based Verification, an automated process that uses mailers’ 

past performance to determine the frequency, sample size, 

and type of verification to perform on large mailings. 

In 2009, employees also began using handheld Intelligent 

Mail Devices to sample the Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) 

on individual mailpieces, trays, and containers of full-service mailings (see pages 74–75 for more information on 

Intelligent Mail). Meanwhile, the Electronic Verification 

System, introduced in 2006, allowed bulk parcel shippers to 

submit manifests and pay for postage electronically, eliminating the need for postal clerks to visit mailers’ plants and 

distribution centers to verify shipments. The manifests were 

randomly sampled for accuracy after the parcels entered the 

mail system. eInduction, launched in 2013, let large mailers 

deliver shipments of mail to processing facilities without 

having to fill out paper forms.

In 2014, the Postal Service began testing Seamless 

Acceptance, an automated process that validated postage 

payment of business mailings. Seamless Acceptance used the 

IMb, electronic mailing information, and active and passive 

barcode scans to confirm that business mailers paid the 

correct postage on large mailings.

Giving Customers Greater Access

Automated technology helped the Postal Service deliver more 

mail to more people by speeding up mail sorting and transactions in Post Offices, and letting customers serve themselves 

— whether at automated kiosks or personal computers.

In the 1990s, the focus was on speeding up retail transactions in Post Offices. Integrated retail terminals (IRTs), 

introduced in 1984, were computers with an integrated 

electronic scale that replaced calculators, manual scales, 

rate charts, and ZIP Code directories. They provided information to customers during a transaction and simplified 

postal accounting by consolidating data. Postage validation 

imprinters attached to the IRTs produced self-sticking 

postage labels with a barcode for automated processing. 

Bulk Mailing Made Easier

When it was introduced in 2001, MERLIN (mailing evaluation readability lookup instrument) computerized and 

greatly simplified the laborious process of verifying bulk mailings.

72 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Collaborating With Customers and Competitors

The Postal Service has a long tradition of working 

with customers to improve mail service. 

Mail Users Councils, renamed Postal Customer 

Councils (PCCs) in 1971, were first established 

in 1961 in 300 large cities. The councils’ initial 

focus was to improve mail service by encouraging postal customers to deposit mail earlier in the 

day or in staggered increments, to avoid delays in 

mail processing. Later, the councils served as open 

channels of communication for local business and 

postal executives to exchange ideas and information — from best mailing practices, to solving local 

challenges.

In 1965, the Mailers’ Technical Advisory 

Committee (MTAC) was created. MTAC consisted 

of representatives from mailing associations and 

other segments of the mailing industry, including 

publishers, advertising mailers, and envelope and 

greeting card manufacturers. Initially formed to help 

implement the ZIP Code, MTAC has since provided 

technical advice and feedback vital to the formation 

and implementation of many postal innovations. 

Special MTAC task forces and work groups have 

been formed as needed to study particular areas 

for improvement. Among other initiatives, MTAC 

suggested improvements to the ZIP+4 program, 

handling changes of address, the presorting and 

barcoding of mail, optical character recognition, and 

electronic payment for business mailings.

Consumer Advisory Councils, called Customer 

Advisory Councils prior to 2000, were established 

by 1989. The councils were comprised of citizens 

who volunteered to work with local postal management on issues of interest to their communities.

The Postal Service has also collaborated with 

some of its competitors to improve delivery operations. In 2001, the Postal Service formed a business 

alliance with FedEx, using FedEx’s air network for 

the air transportation of domestic U.S. Mail and 

allowing the company to place self-service collection boxes on postal premises. In 2004, the Postal 

Service contracted with United Parcel Service (UPS) 

for air transportation of U.S. Mail. 

The collaboration worked both ways — FedEx 

and UPS provided transportation services, while the 

Postal Service provided both with delivery services. 

In 1999, the Postal Service introduced Parcel Select 

service, which completed the “last mile” of delivery for parcel consolidators and private carriers. 

Parcel Select’s low rates made it economical for 

consolidators and private carriers to collect and 

sort parcels from high-volume shippers — such 

as mail order houses and online retailers — and 

deliver them to a postal facility close to the recipient’s home. From there, a postal carrier completed 

the “last mile” of delivery. The first private carrier 

to ally with the Postal Service in this hybrid service 

was Airborne Express, in 1999. UPS followed in 

2003, and FedEx came on board in 2004; they 

increasingly relied on the Postal Service to deliver 

packages the “last mile,” especially in rural areas. 

Parcel Return Service was developed to handle 

packages traveling in the opposite direction. It 

offered a convenient way for customers to return 

packages, even if they were delivered by another 

company. Using a prepaid postage label, customers 

could take the parcel to a Post Office or request 

pickup during normal mail delivery. Launched 

experimentally in 2003, it became a permanent 

service in 2006. In 2009, both UPS and FedEx gave 

their customers the option of returning packages 

with their mail carrier or at the Post Office.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 73
Package Pickup, 2017 

Starting in 2004, customers could request free 

pickup of their prepaid packages by going to 

usps.com.

In 1998, the Postal Service began replacing IRTs with POS 

(point of service) ONE retail terminals. By 2005, more than 

60,000 POS ONE terminals were installed in more than 

15,000 facilities nationwide. The deployment of POS ONE 

systems was completed in 2012. By providing state-of-the-art 

computer technology and connecting retail units through 

phone lines or satellite connections, POS ONE provided 

real-time information and faster, more efficient service. 

The Postal Service also increased customers’ access to 

postal products and services via personal computers. In 

March 1998, the Postal Service authorized tests of PC 

Postage. Developed and distributed by USPS-approved vendors, PC Postage produced digitally encoded, two-dimensional barcodes that postal customers could print directly 

onto envelopes or address labels. Users had access to postage 

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from their computer. 

In 2002, the Postal Service launched Click-N-Ship on 

its website, usps.com. Click-N-Ship let customers use their 

home or office computer to create, pay for, and print shipping labels for packages. In its first six months of operation, 

customers used the service to produce more than one 

million shipping labels. In 2004, an option to insure packages was added, and in 2006, a mailing list feature was added, 

which allowed users to create group mailing lists and store 

up to 3,000 addresses. The capacity of the address book increased to 5,000 addresses in 2012. From the outset, Priority 

Mail packages sent via Click-N-Ship received free Delivery 

Confirmation service. From May 2008 to January 2016, 

Click-N-Ship items received discounted postage rates.

The 2004 rollout of Package Pickup (originally called 

Carrier Pickup) brought the Post Office to the customer’s 

doorstep. By going to usps.com, customers could request 

free pickup of their prepaid packages. Two other innovative 

services also debuted in 2004: PostalOne! and Automated 

Postal Centers (APCs). PostalOne! gave business mailers 

a streamlined, web-based process for mail entry, payment, 

tracking, and reporting. APCs were kiosks that offered customers an alternative to counter service in busy Post Offices, 

providing self-service mailing with an integrated scale and a 

touch-screen menu. The Postal Service deployed 2,500 APCs 

nationwide in 2004.

The growing popularity of mobile technology led the 

Postal Service to launch a smartphone app for iPhone users 

in 2009, and for Android and BlackBerry users in 2011. The 

USPS mobile apps let customers check the delivery status 

of shipments, look up ZIP Codes, and find USPS locations. 

Since their initial launch, the apps have been upgraded 

with new features, including “Calculate shipping prices,” 

“Schedule a next-day pick-up,” “Scan shipping labels and QR 

codes,” and “Order supplies.”

Taking the concept of self-service even further, in 2012 

the Postal Service began testing “gopost” self-service parcel 

lockers in about a dozen locations in the Washington, D.C., 

area, with sites added in New York City the following year. 

gopost let customers receive and ship packages via automated, self-service parcel lockers located in convenient locations, such as shopping malls.

In 2014, the Postal Service launched MyUSPS.com, a 

dashboard that gave customers the ability to easily check the 

status of incoming packages at any time from a computer or 

web-enabled device, or to receive status text alerts on their 

phone. If a package was on its way, it automatically showed 

up in the MyUSPS.com dashboard.

Intelligent Mail

In the late 20th century, improvements in computing power 

revolutionized communications. Increased data storage 

capacity and transfer speeds drove down the cost and improved the ways in which technology could be used. While 

expanded use of the Internet and email diverted some 

74 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
physical mail from the mailstream, this same technology 

also created new opportunities for enhancing the value of 

the mail by capturing and providing information about its 

processing and delivery, both internally and to customers.

In 1999, the Postal Service launched Delivery 

Confirmation service to provide the date, time, and ZIP 

Code of delivery for Priority Mail and parcels to customers 

either online or via a toll-free number. More than 300,000 

handheld scanners were deployed to letter carriers to 

support Delivery Confirmation service. In 2001, the Postal 

Service added Signature Confirmation, offering customers a copy of the recipient’s signature. In 2006, the Postal 

Service began deploying new handheld scanners that took 

a digital image of the signature, which allowed customers 

to see it the same day.

In 2002, the Postal Service officially launched Confirm 

service, which provided tracking information to participating letter and flat mailers. Mailers printed an identifying barcode, known as a PLANET Code, on their mail. 

Automated equipment read the barcode and made information available to the mailer via the Internet on the time, 

place, and operation that handled the mail.

In January 2003, the Postal Service created the 

Intelligent Mail and Address Quality group to further 

develop information-rich mail. Among the group’s first 

tasks was to adopt for each type of mail one code that 

could uniquely identify each mailpiece and provide information on distribution and special services like Delivery 

Confirmation. The solution, finalized in 2005, was a 

barcode that used four vertical bar types rather than two. 

Initially called the 4-State Customer Barcode, but soon 

renamed the Intelligent Mail barcode, it encoded almost 

three times more information than previous codes. It consolidated information from both the POSTNET (routing) 

and PLANET (tracking) barcodes, with room for other 

services in the future. The new barcode was tested in 2005. 

Beginning September 1, 2006, Confirm service subscribers 

and address change service users were given the option of 

using the new barcode.

In May 2009, the Postal Service began offering large 

mailers two options for using the Intelligent Mail barcode 

on their mailings: basic and full-service. Under the basic 

option, mailers did not need to use unique barcodes on 

each mailpiece. Under the full-service option, mailers 

were required to use unique barcodes on mailpieces and 

containers of mail, and electronically submit postage statements and mailing documentation.

In 2010, about 30 percent of business mail contained 

Intelligent Mail barcodes. The next year, about 36 percent 

of business First-Class and Standard Mail qualified as 

full-service Intelligent Mail. 

In January 2012, Confirm service was replaced with 

IMb Tracing; new subscribers were required to use the 

Intelligent Mail barcode. Existing Confirm service subscribers were required to switch to the new code by 

January 2013. 

To hasten the adoption of the Intelligent Mail barcode, 

mailers were required to use it — under either the basic 

or full-service option — for automation price eligibility 

beginning in January 2013. n

POSTNET Barcode

With barcodes, mail can be sorted automatically. The first postal barcode, the POSTNET barcode, was 

introduced in 1982 and converted 5-digit ZIP Codes to a machine-readable format. In 1983, the ZIP+4 

code expanded the barcode to nine digits. In 1990, the barcode expanded again when the Postal 

Service added two more digits with exact address information. 

Intelligent Mail Barcode

The Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) was launched in 2006. The IMb could hold nearly triple the data 

of the POSTNET barcode — not just the delivery address, but also the sender’s address, mailpiece 

information, and information on extra services. In 2013, large mailers were required to use the IMb 

to qualify for postage discounts.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 75
21st CENTURY CHALLENGES AND CHANGE 

Since the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, technological advances both improved postal operations 

and services and increased competition and customer expectations. A decade of prosperity in the 1980s 

was followed by slower economic growth in the 1990s. The 

terrorist attacks of 2001 caused a tragic loss of human life 

and rippled out to affect many areas, including the economy. 

Mail volume fell from 2001 through 2003 — the first backto-back declines since the Great Depression. Although mail 

volume picked up from 2004 through 2006, since December 

2007, it has dropped precipitously. 

The drop in First-Class Mail — the most profitable 

class — has been even more pronounced, as more mail has 

shifted to electronic media. From 2000 to 2010, while overall 

mail volume dropped by about 18 percent, the volume of 

First-Class Mail fell by nearly 25 percent. Meanwhile, the 

Postal Service’s costs continued to rise, as growth in the 

number of U.S. households and businesses led to an increase 

in the number of delivery addresses each year. 

Service at Risk

In a March 2001 letter to the President, the Postal Service 

Governors stated that significant statutory reform was needed to continue to provide consistent, satisfactory, universal 

service to the American people. The economic assumption 

underpinning the 1970 Postal Reorganization Act — that 

continuing growth in mail volume and revenue would 

support the continued growth of the postal infrastructure — 

was no longer valid.

In April 2001, United States Comptroller General 

David Walker placed the Postal Service on the General 

Accounting Office’s (GAO) “high-risk” list because of the 

Postal Service’s significant financial, human capital, and 

structural challenges. Walker stated that:

The Service’s ability to provide universal postal service ... will 

be increasingly threatened unless changes are made, both within 

current law and to the legal and regulatory framework that 

governs the Service.79

The General Accounting Office, now the Government 

Accountability Office, asked the Postal Service for a comprehensive plan that addressed these concerns. In April 2002, 

the Postal Service submitted its Transformation Plan to 

Congress, outlining strategies to improve service, customer 

satisfaction, the workplace, and its financial health. 

On December 11, 2002, President George W. Bush 

issued an executive order establishing the President’s 

Commission on the Postal Service. The nine-member 

bipartisan commission was tasked with identifying the 

operational, structural, and financial challenges facing the 

Postal Service, and charting a course to build a healthy 

financial foundation. 

The commission issued its report, Embracing the Future, 

in 2003. The report called for the Postal Service to remain 

a public institution subject to broader oversight. It directed 

the Postal Service to focus on universal mail service as its 

core value, to be guided by the best business practices, to 

overhaul the postal network, to clarify the postal monopoly, 

and to maintain a culture of excellence. 

Postal Civil Service Retirement System Funding 

Reform Act of 2003

In November 2002, the Office of Personnel Management 

projected that the Postal Service would overpay its 

retirement obligations for postal employees and retirees 

enrolled in the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) by 

$71 billion.

Within months, Congress passed the Postal Civil Service 

Retirement System Funding Reform Act of 2003, which 

modified the way the Postal Service funded its obligations 

to the CSRS to prevent overfunding. The act also dictated 

how the Postal Service would spend its estimated savings: to pay down debt in 2003 and 2004, and to maintain 

postage rates in 2005. In 2006, the act required that the 

Postal Service’s estimated annual savings — about $3.1 

billion — be considered an operating expense of the Postal 

Service, to be held in escrow for future use as determined 

by Congress.

But the projected savings did not represent cash actually on hand. Although funds were available through 2005, 

by 2006, inflation and reduced revenue had whittled away 

the financial benefit of lower CSRS payments. To fund the 

escrow account, in 2005 the Postal Service requested an 

across-the-board increase of 5.4 percent in rates and fees, 

while warning that a biannual increase of 1 to 1.5 percent 

to fund this account might be needed in the future. The 

Postal Rate Commission and the postal Governors approved 

the request. On January 8, 2006, most postal rates and fees 

increased by about 5.4 percent — including the price of a 

First-Class stamp, from 37 to 39 cents — solely to fund the 

escrow account.

76 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Dealing With the Unimaginable

On September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the 

United States, killing thousands. The Postal Service 

helped keep the lines of communication open despite severe restrictions on commercial air operations 

during this tense time.

As the Postal Service dealt with these challenges, 

a photo editor in Boca Raton, Florida, died from 

inhalation anthrax on October 5, 2001, the first 

known case in the United States since 1976. A 

week later, a media employee in New York City was 

diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax after opening 

a letter addressed to an NBC news anchor. On 

October 15, 2001, a letter postmarked in Trenton, 

New Jersey, was delivered to the Capitol Hill office 

of a U.S. senator. The letter claimed to contain 

anthrax, which proved to be true. The Postal Service 

then went to work with other agencies to confront 

bioterrorism.

The Postal Service announced the formation of a 

mail security task force, headed by the Chief Postal 

Inspector; authorized its employees to wear protective gear; and considered ways to sanitize mail, including irradiating it with electron beams. The Postal 

Service also notified people at every mailing address 

about how to identify and handle suspicious letters 

and packages.

On October 21, 2001, Joseph P. Curseen, Jr., 

an employee at the Brentwood postal facility in 

Washington, D.C., which handled mail for Capitol 

Hill, was diagnosed with inhalation anthrax. That 

night, another employee, Thomas L. Morris, Jr., died 

from inhalation anthrax. The next morning, Curseen 

also died.

Postmaster General John E. Potter announced the 

sad news, then stated:

800,000 Postal Service employees are using 

everything they’ve learned, doing everything 

humanly possible, to keep the mail safe and 

keep it moving. And we’re determined not to let 

terrorists stop us.80

By October 27, anthrax spores had been detected 

in other locations. All told, at least five deaths and 

several cases of anthrax poisoning are known. In 

November 2001, the Postal Service began irradiating 

mail destined for Congress, the White House, and 

federal agencies in Washington, D.C. This practice 

was ongoing at the end of 2019.

In 2004, after multiple tests, the Postal Service 

began installing biohazard detection system (BDS) 

equipment at mail processing facilities nationwide. 

This equipment regularly collects and tests air samples 

near mail processing machines to help protect postal 

employees and customers. Deployment of 1,373 detection systems was completed in December 2005.

Fallen Colleagues, 

Remembered 

In 2003, the Brentwood 

Processing and 

Distribution Center in 

Washington, D.C., was 

renamed in honor of 

Thomas L. Morris, Jr., and 

Joseph P. Curseen, Jr., who 

lost their lives in October 

2001 after being exposed 

to anthrax while working 

Thomas L. Morris, Jr. at the facility. Joseph P. Curseen, Jr.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 77
The 2003 act also created another challenge for the Postal 

Service: it transferred the responsibility for funding military 

pensions of current and former postal employees to the 

Postal Service from the Department of the Treasury. This 

amounted to $27 billion in costs transferred from taxpayers 

to postal ratepayers.

Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 

2006

On December 9, 2006, after several years of discussion 

and study, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and 

Enhancement Act (PAEA).81 The act made more than 150 

changes to federal law concerning the Postal Service — the 

most sweeping changes since the Postal Reorganization 

Act of 1970. President Bush signed the act into law on 

December 20, 2006. 

The act’s most significant changes included the following:

n Market-dominant vs. competitive products; 

rate-setting: The act divided postal products 

into market-dominant and competitive categories. 

It restricted rate increases for market-dominant 

products, such as First-Class Mail, to a cap tied to the 

Consumer Price Index for 10 years, at which point 

the cap would be reviewed by the PRC. It specified 

that rate increases for competitive products, such 

as Express Mail, would not be capped, and that they 

would cover attributable costs and contribute to 

institutional costs.

n More powerful PRC: The act created the Postal 

Regulatory Commission (PRC) out of the Postal Rate 

Commission and increased the PRC’s regulatory 

powers. It gave the PRC subpoena power over the 

Postal Service, and the ability to levy fines if the Postal 

Service does not take remedial action when the PRC 

finds a complaint filed regarding rates, regulations, or 

service standards has merit.

n Military pension costs: The act returned the obligation to pay military pension costs amounting to $27 

billion to the Department of Treasury. 

n Retiree Health Benefits Fund: In lieu of the 

escrow requirement of the 2003 law, the 2006 act 

established the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits 

Fund and required the Postal Service to aggressively 

pay into the fund approximately $5.6 billion annually for ten years to pre-pay for future retirees’ health 

benefits. 

In January 2007, citing the new law as well as other 

encouraging developments, the GAO removed the Postal 

Service from its “high-risk” list. Less than a year later, the 

U.S. housing market collapsed. A global banking crisis followed, which put nearly every U.S. industry at risk and led 

to the worst economic recession since the Great Depression 

of the 1930s.

Digital 

Dilemma

Electronic 

transactions have 

contributed to a 

massive decline 

in First-Class Mail 

volume.

Between 2000 

and 2010...

...Internet usage nearly doubled, 

from about 41 percent of U.S. 

households in 2000...

...to 80 percent 

in 2010. By 2011 

the number of bills 

paid by First-Class 

Mail declined to 

less than...

...

per

50

cent.

78 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019

212.2

176.7 168.3

158.2 154.3

142.6 149.6

Pieces of Mail Handled, 2007–2019 (in billions)

Crisis and Crossroads

Month-after-month drops in economic activity signaled 

the start of the Great Recession in December 2007. 

Although the economy began to recover in 2009, high 

unemployment, low wages, lower or negative home equity, 

and the lasting effects of large stock market losses continued to undermine consumer confidence. Consumer 

spending shrank through 2010, and barely kept pace with 

inflation in 2011. The crippling of the economy resulted 

in falling mail volume, since more than 95 percent of mail 

was business-related. 

Mail volume plummeted from a peak of over 213 billion 

pieces in 2006 to just over 154 billion in 2015, a loss of 

nearly 28 percent. First-Class Mail — the most profitable 

class — fared even worse, plunging by more than 36 percent. 

Much of the drop in First-Class Mail volume was due to the 

diversion of mail to electronic media. Emails, text messages, online bill paying, and websites offered alternatives to 

traditional mail. The drop in First-Class Mail volume began 

even before the recession, in 2002, and continued even after 

the economy recovered. 

Even as mail volume and revenue shrank, the Postal 

Service’s costs continued to increase. About 80 percent of 

these costs were personnel-related and not easily reduced. 

About 38 percent of postal personnel costs were tied to 

federal benefits programs outside the Postal Service’s control. In addition, labor agreements protected most workers 

from lay-offs and decreases in wages or benefits. Further, 

in 2006 Congress directed the Postal Service to put more 

than $5 billion annually through 2016 into a savings fund 

administered by the U.S. Treasury, to pre-pay for future 

postal retirees’ health benefits. The Postal Service lost $5.1 

billion in 2007 and $2.8 billion in 2008.

In July 2009, the GAO placed the Postal Service on its 

“high-risk” list once again, and advised Congress that the 

Postal Service “must align its costs with revenues.”82 

In March 2010, after consulting with members of 

Congress, the Administration, numerous stakeholders, and 

three paid consultants — Accenture, the Boston Consulting 

Group, and McKinsey & Company — Postmaster General 

John Potter outlined a plan to save the Postal Service. 

Among other things, the plan called for: 

n Restructuring USPS retiree health benefits payments. 

n Eliminating Saturday delivery. 

n Establishing a more flexible workforce.

n Basing postage rates for market-dominant types of mail 

on both the demand for such products, and their costs, 

rather than capping prices at the rate of inflation. 

Potter asked Congress for the legislative changes needed 

to enact these reforms. Congress held hearings to discuss 

postal reform, but passed no legislation. Potter retired in 

2010 and was succeeded by his deputy, Patrick Donahoe, a 

35-year postal veteran. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 79
Donahoe took office during one of the most challenging 

times in the history of the organization. In June 2011, the 

GAO reported that the Postal Service’s financial condition 

and outlook were “reaching a crisis,” and that the agency 

“urgently” needed to restructure its networks and operations.83 The Postal Service worked aggressively to reduce its 

costs. In July 2011, it announced that it would study nearly 

3,700 small Post Offices for possible closure. In September, it 

announced that it would study more than 200 mail processing facilities for possible closure and also consider revising 

service standards for First-Class Mail. 

In response to concerns voiced by members of Congress, 

and to facilitate enactment of pending postal reform 

legislation, the Postal Service agreed to a temporary delay 

in closings and consolidations, with a specific deadline of 

May 15, 2012.

In February 2012, Donahoe released a 5-year business plan 

that identified various strategies by which the Postal Service 

could save an estimated $20 billion through 2017. The plan 

included a postal-sponsored healthcare program independent 

of other federal programs, ending the prefunding of retiree 

health benefits, transitioning to five-day delivery, and realigning mail processing, retail, and delivery operations to increase 

efficiency. The plan also included revising service standards 

(the number of days for mail to be delivered from one ZIP 

Code to another) and allowing more pricing flexibility for all 

market-dominant products. Major components of the plan 

required congressional action, since federal law prohibited 

their implementation. Testifying before Congress the next 

month, Donahoe bluntly stated: 

The Postal Service is at a crossroads. Our business model is 

broken. . . . If the Postal Service were a private company, we 

would be engaged in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.84

In 2013, the Postal Service updated its 5-year plan with 

new strategies to save and make money, including a postal-sponsored retirement plan for future employees, and 

expanding into non-postal products and services. 

Congress held hearings in 2013 to discuss the Postal 

Service’s financial crisis, but postal reform bills stalled in 

committee.

Cutting Controllable Costs

As mail volume continued to fall, revenue from postage 

declined. The Postal Service relied mostly on the sale of 

postage to fund its operations — it received no tax dollars 

for this purpose. Raising the price of postage to make up 

21st Century Innovation The Postal Service tested and introduced dozens of 

new services beginning in 2011, including:

Alternate Postage payment

Enabled consumers to send greeting cards and other 

correspondence without affixing postage (postage is 

paid by the business providing the stationery). 

Priority Mail Regional Rates Boxes

For businesses that ship regionally, offered the speed 

and convenience of Priority Mail shipping at more economical, zoned prices. 

Every Door Direct Mail

Enabled customers without a mailing permit to mail up 

to 5,000 mailpieces addressed to “Postal Customer” to 

specific delivery routes within a ZIP Code or city. 

Adult Signature service

Provided security by requiring the signature of an adult 

(21 years or older) at the delivery address with the option of restricting delivery to the addressee.

80 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
for budget shortfalls was not an option — not only was it 

prohibited by law, but it might have resulted in even more 

volume loss.

Instead, the Postal Service worked to reduce the costs 

within its control through a process called “network 

rationalization,” aligning mail processing capacity with 

declining mail volumes. The network that was needed to 

deliver 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 was not needed 

to deliver 156 billion pieces in 2014. The Postal Service 

simply could not afford to maintain excess capacity.

Through attrition, the Postal Service reduced its total 

workforce by 8 percent between 2010 and 2014, continuing 

a trend that began in 2000. Staff reductions in the early 

2000s were largely due to efficiencies gained from the automation of mail processing. Later, fewer workers were needed 

because Americans were sending less mail.

In May 2012, the Postal Service outlined a new strategy 

— the Post Office Structure Plan (POStPlan) — that would 

preserve the nation’s smallest Post Offices, but with reduced 

retail window hours to match customer use. The POStPlan 

called for evaluating about half of the nation’s Post Offices 

over a two-year period. From November 2012 to February 

2015, operating hours were reduced at 

nearly 12,600 Post Offices, about 47 percent 

of the nation’s total. The Postal Service estimated that these 

changes saved more than $236 million annually.

In July 2012, new overnight service standards for FirstClass Mail went into effect, which enabled the consolidation of mail processing facilities. The first 48 facilities were 

consolidated in July and August 2012. In fiscal year 2013, 

143 more processing facilities were consolidated, shrinking 

the network from 461 facilities in 2011 to 270 at the end of 

2013. The Postal Service saved not only on the cost of facilities, but also on personnel, equipment, and transportation. 

The Postal Service estimated that these cost-saving measures 

reduced its operational budget by about $865 million in 

fiscal year 2014 alone.

Innovating to Increase Revenue

In addition to cutting costs, the Postal Service continued to 

innovate to increase revenue, testing and introducing dozens 

of new services, including Every Door Direct Mail and 

flat-rate packaging for its speediest shipping service, Priority 

Mail Express (see “21st Century Innovation,” below).

The Postal Service also introduced new pricing incentives 

to encourage use of the mail. Beginning in 2009, the Postal 

Service offered “summer sales” to high-volume mailers to 

encourage mailing in the traditional 

Village Post Offices

Provided customers in small communities 

with retail locations for purchasing stamps 

and Priority Mail flat-rate products. 

Priority Mail Express Flat Rate 

Packaging

Offered the convenience of flat-rate shipping of Priority Mail Express items.

gopost

Provided access to self-service parcel lockers in convenient locations like shopping malls; market-tested 

beginning in 2012 in the Washington, D.C., area, and 

in New York City the following year.

Metro Post

Enabled participating retailers to offer their customers 

same-day delivery service for online purchases in metropolitan areas; market-tested in San Francisco beginning in 

2012 and in the New York City area beginning in 2014.

Sunday package delivery

Enabled delivery of a company’s packages in select 

cities on Sundays, following the signing of a negotiated 

service agreement.

Customized Delivery

Provided early-morning grocery deliveries in select 

locations; market-tested in San Francisco beginning in 

2014. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 81
Informed Delivery

Informed Delivery, 

tested in select locations 

beginning in 2014, 

offered customers 

a daily email with 

images of the outside 

of letter-sized pieces 

in their mail, before 

delivery. In 2017, 

Informed Delivery 

rolled out nationwide 

and package tracking 

information was 

added to the daily 

emails.

off-season. And in 2011, the Postal Service began offering 

promotions to large mailers who integrated innovative 

technologies onto their mail — such as a QR code linking 

to a mailer’s website and codes linking to augmented reality 

experiences. Making mail more interactive made it a more 

powerful messaging medium, and — it was hoped — more 

attractive to mailers.

Although total mail volume declined, package shipping 

increased due to the steady growth of eCommerce. Package 

volume grew by 21 percent from 2010 and 2013. To attract 

even more shippers, the Postal Service upgraded its Priority 

Mail lineup in July 2013. It redesigned its free packaging 

and offered improved features like free insurance, improved USPS Tracking, and day-specific delivery. From 

2014 through 2019, package volume grew by more than 

55 percent. But packages comprised less than 5 percent of 

total deliveries, and even their impressive growth was not 

enough to offset declines in other mail.

Need for Postal Reform Legislation

Despite aggressive cost-cutting and efforts to increase 

revenue, the Postal Service’s financial crisis deepened. In 

2012, the Postal Service reached its $15 billion borrowing 

limit with the U.S. Treasury, and began operating with a 

sometimes razor-thin margin of cash on hand. Due to lack 

of funds, from 2012 through 2016 the Postal Service defaulted on $33.9 of the $54.8 billion required by the PAEA for 

prefunding future retiree health benefits.

In 2015, Megan Brennan was appointed Postmaster 

General — the first woman to lead the organization in 

its 240-year history. A 29-year postal veteran, Brennan 

rose through the ranks from working as a letter carrier 

in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to becoming chief operating 

officer in 2010. Upon taking office as Postmaster General, 

Brennan reaffirmed both the Postal Service’s commitment to public service and its need to adapt to a changing 

America.

The Next Generation of Mailboxes 

Large Curbside Mailbox (at left) 

Delivery Box Locker (at right)

Between 2010 and 2014, package shipping increased by 31 percent. In 

2015, the Postal Service introduced a large curbside mailbox that was taller 

and more than twice as wide as the traditional curbside mailbox. This 

“next generation” mailbox was designed to accommodate more than 

70 percent of the packages sent through the mail. In 2015, the Postal 

Service also began testing “Delivery Box” lockers in Boston, Brooklyn, 

Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C. 

Available in three styles to suit 

different neighborhoods, Delivery 

Box lockers provided secure access 

to mail and packages in urban 

areas.

82 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Innovation and customer service were key priorities. The 

Postal Service continued developing Informed Delivery, a 

feature that offered users a daily email with images of the 

outside of letter-sized pieces in their mail, before delivery. 

And it launched Informed Visibility, which enabled large 

volume mailers to “see” their mail all the way to their customer’s door. The two initiatives harnessed available data to 

enrich the experience of both senders and receivers of mail.

Other key reforms required changes to federal law. The 

Postal Service continued working with Congress towards 

passage of postal reform legislation. Brennan collaborated 

with key stakeholders, including employee labor unions and 

large volume mailers, to identify reforms on which there 

was broad consensus. These included requiring Medicare 

integration for postal retiree health plans, calculating all retirement benefit liabilities using postal-specific assumptions, 

and providing additional product flexibility. 

Testifying before the House Oversight and Government 

Reform Committee in May 2016, Brennan described 

the Postal Service’s financial challenges as “serious but 

solvable.”85 In July 2016, a bipartisan postal reform bill 

advanced out of the House Oversight and Government 

Reform Committee but failed to make it to the floor before 

the end of the year. 

In February 2017, Brennan spoke again to the Committee. 

She told its members:

The Postal Service is a self-funding entity. We pay for our 

operations entirely through the sale of postal products and services 

and do not receive tax revenue to support our business. ...

During the last decade, we have responded aggressively to the 

challenges that confronted us. ... These efforts have resulted in 

cost savings of approximately $14 billion annually. ...

 Despite these achievements, our efforts have not been 

enough — and cannot be enough — to restore the Postal 

Service to financial health, absent legislative and regulatory 

reform. ...

Some of our most significant costs are fixed by law and 

are outside management’s control. Further, our ability to 

earn revenue to pay for those costs is constrained by law. 

This fundamental imbalance is the root of our financial 

instability.86

Mandated costs included six-day delivery to the entire 

nation, which grew by 1 million or more addresses each year, 

and the health benefits prefunding requirement imposed by 

the PAEA. Revenue growth, meanwhile, was constrained by a 

price cap tied to changes in the Consumer Price Index.

In March 2017, the Committee passed another postal 

reform bill with bipartisan support, but it failed to advance. 

That December, the PRC announced the results of its 10-

year review of the PAEA’s pricing system, finding that the 

system prevented the Postal Service from achieving financial stability. In 2018, postal reform bills were introduced 

in the House and Senate, but stalled. Meanwhile, President 

Donald Trump created a Task Force to study the Postal 

Service’s operations and finances, to help chart a course to 

financial stability. The Presidential Task Force ultimately 

concluded that comprehensive postal reforms were urgently 

needed. Brennan pledged to work with key stakeholders to 

find the best way forward.

Picking Up Packages, 2014

Between 2010 and 2019, the number of packages 

in the U.S. Mail more than doubled, but still 

comprised less than 5 percent of total deliveries.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 83
Recovering From Hurricane Katrina, September 2005

Two and a half weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Letter Carrier Deborah Johnson 

resumed deliveries in West Biloxi, Mississippi.

Delivering Despite Disaster

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” stops 

mail carriers, the saying goes. Sometimes, the challenges are 

greater. 

The nation faced one of its greatest challenges in August 

2005. Hurricane Katrina — one of the most destructive storms 

in United States history — devastated entire sections of coastal 

Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, and put 80 percent of 

New Orleans underwater. The storm claimed more than 1,800 

lives, left many more unaccounted for, and displaced more 

than one million people. 

Within days of the storm, the Postal Service joined with 

other agencies to coordinate the distribution of Social Security, 

pension, and benefit checks, which were due to be delivered 

at the beginning of September. The Postal Service set up temporary distribution centers and delivered more than 30,000 

checks before the centers closed in mid-September. 

The Postal Service urged displaced residents to file changeof-address forms so that their mail could be sent to them 

directly, bypassing stricken regions. By year’s end, the Postal 

Service had processed change-of-address forms from more 

than 520,000 households that had been displaced by Katrina 

as well as Hurricane Rita, which struck three weeks later. Due 

to intense national interest, the Postal Service provided an 

overview of change-of-address data to national news media, 

since this was the only reliable way to track the movement of 

evacuees.

Two other major storms, Dennis and Wilma, hit the 

southern United States during the 2005 hurricane season — 

the most destructive on record. All told, in 2005 hurricanes 

destroyed 17 postal facilities and damaged more than 500. 

Despite the devastation, postal employees delivered — 

handing out mail from trailers, recreational vehicles, and even 

tents, where street delivery was not possible. As letter carriers 

gradually returned to city streets, they were greeted with 

smiles, laughter, hugs, and tears. 

Every year, storms, floods, fires, and other natural disasters 

strike. Postal employees are on the front lines of relief efforts. 

They are among the first to restore service and support as fires 

are extinguished and waters recede. n

84 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Everyday Heroism

In 1901, John J. Comisky, a New Jersey letter 

carrier walking his route, saw a 12-year-old 

boy struggling for his life in the Passaic River. 

Comisky jumped into the river, brought the boy 

to shore, then continued delivering mail in his 

dripping-wet uniform. 

In 1922, Henry Druckman, a Brooklyn 

letter carrier, saved the life of a toddler who 

fell from a second-story window by running 

across a street and catching the boy in his 

mailbag.

In 1927, Charles M. Taylor, a railway mail 

clerk in St. Louis, pulled six women and children from a wrecked, submerged Pullman car.

In 1928, Paul F. Collins, an airmail pilot, tightly circled his plane around a burning house late 

in the evening of February 10, until the plane’s 

buzzing sounds woke up the family of eight 

inside, who escaped the fire.

In 1938, James R. Fox, a Kansas letter carrier, 

saved an 83-year-old woman from her burning 

house after an oil stove set it on fire.

In 1982, the National Association of Letter 

Carriers and the Postal Service formalized a 

long tradition of postal employees watching out

for their customers by establishing the Carrier 

Alert Program. Customers could register for the 

program, and letter carriers would report any 

suspicious incidents or accumulations of mail 

that might indicate the customer was unable to 

collect his or her mail because of illness or injury

Every year, hundreds of postal employees are

recognized as heroes, sometimes risking their 

own lives to save others in their community.

The Greatest Gift 

In 2012, Audrey Pollard, a postal clerk in New York, met the British man whose life she saved eight 

years earlier through the bone marrow donation program. Since 1997, the Postal Service has recruited 

more than 58,000 employees and family members to register as potential donors. More than 80 have 

become donors, helping to save the lives of critically ill patients worldwide.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 85
DIVERSITY PAST AND PRESENT 

Benjamin Franklin may be our most storied postal predecessor, but many Americans — men and women of all geographic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds — have made the Postal Service what it is today. 

Women served as Postmasters in the United States more 

than a century before they won the right to vote. African 

Americans worked as Postmasters, clerks, and carriers 

beginning in the 1860s — one hundred years before the 

Civil Rights Era opened up widespread opportunity in the 

American workplace. 

In the 20th century, postal employment helped launch 

many African Americans into the middle class. The benefits 

of postal employment rippled out to the community at large, 

as black postal employees not only often served as leaders 

in their communities, but also frequently helped lead the 

struggle for civil rights.87

In the early 21st century, the Postal Service continued to 

stand out as a leader in building a diverse workforce.

Here are sketches of five little-known postal pioneers, 

from an early woman Postmaster to the first known African 

American civilian employee of the federal government.

Mary Katherine Goddard, Postmaster, 1775–1789

Mary Katherine Goddard of Baltimore was the only known 

female Postmaster when Benjamin Franklin was named the 

first American Postmaster General in July 1775, making her 

the first known woman Postmaster in the United Colonies, 

the predecessor of the United States. 

For Goddard, postal work was a family affair. Her father 

was a Postmaster in Connecticut, and her brother William 

had served as Postmaster of Providence, Rhode Island. 

Both men were also newspaper publishers. Mary Katherine 

learned the printing trade in the 1760s while helping 

William run his shop in Providence. 

In the early 1770s, William Goddard moved to Baltimore, 

where he started the city’s first newspaper, The Maryland 

journal, and the Baltimore advertiser. Soon he began to 

travel extensively, going from colony to colony to promote 

his Constitutional Post, a postal system that would be independent of the British one. In 1774, Mary Katherine moved 

to Baltimore to run the print shop during her brother’s 

frequent absences. 

William Goddard’s proposed network of independent Post Offices ultimately formed the basis of the new 

American postal system. In 1775, Postmaster General 

Benjamin Franklin appointed William as surveyor general 

of the new system. Mary Katherine, meanwhile, was appointed Postmaster of Baltimore. 

Postmasters at that time were not salaried, but earned a 

commission on the postage they collected; rampant inflation and devalued currencies combined to make running 

the Post Office a losing venture. Mary Katherine paid the 

post rider and high office rents out of her own pocket, when 

necessary, to keep the office going and information flowing. 

In addition to printing the newspaper, she was the first to 

print the Declaration of Independence with the names of all 

A Diverse Workforce

Men and women of all geographic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds have made the Postal Service what it is today.

86 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
the signers; she also printed broadsides, books, and almanacs, which she sold in her shop along with stationery and 

dry goods. 

In 1789, newly appointed Postmaster General Samuel 

Osgood replaced Mary Katherine with a new Postmaster. It 

was customary for new political administrations to summarily replace previous appointees. More than 200 citizens of 

Baltimore petitioned Osgood to reinstate her, but he refused, 

claiming the right to exercise his own judgment. Goddard 

wrote to both President George Washington and the United 

States Senate to petition for reinstatement, but neither intervened on her behalf. She continued to run a bookshop in 

Baltimore until she retired around 1810, in her early 70s.

The Benavides brothers were legends in their own time, 

admired by fellow Army officers and the Governor of 

Texas himself. In 1863, the Texas state legislature officially 

thanked Refugio and Santos “for their vigilance, energy, 

and gallantry.”89 Even more telling was the continued 

loyalty of the men they led into battle, at a time when the 

desertion rate of Confederate troops in some companies 

neared 100 percent. 

After the war, Refugio Benavides continued to raise cattle 

in Laredo. In the 1870s he served as mayor once more, and 

for a time led a company of Texas Rangers, who protected 

the citizens of Laredo from cattle thieves and Indian raiders. 

He died in 1899 at the home of his son in Laredo.

Refugio Benavides, Postmaster, 1859–1861

Refugio Benavides of Laredo, Texas, great-greatgrandson of the town’s founder, was Postmaster 

of Laredo before serving with distinction as a 

Confederate Army captain during the Civil War. 

Benavides was born in Laredo in 1821. In the 

1850s, while in his mid-30s, he served as alderman, 

and then mayor. In July 1859, Refugio Benavides 

was appointed Postmaster of Laredo. Although 

his primary occupation was cattle rancher, as 

Postmaster, he or his sworn assistant oversaw the 

arrival and delivery of U.S. Mail to the entire community. Benavides served as the U.S. Postmaster 

until the outbreak of the Civil War. 

Following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 

1860, the majority of the political elite in Texas voted to join other southern states in seceding from 

the United States. During the Civil War, Refugio 

and his younger brothers, Santos and Cristobal, 

served fearlessly and with distinction. 

In May 1861, Santos, a Confederate Army captain, 

and his men were surrounded by Mexican bandits rumored 

to have Union support. Refugio raced 65 miles on horseback 

overnight on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, avoiding 

enemy lines and lookouts, to bring word to his brother that 

reinforcements were on their way. When reinforcements 

arrived, Santos led a charge against the enemy, and overwhelmed them in mere minutes. Colonel John Ford, the 

local Confederate Army commander, officially thanked the 

Benavides brothers for their “gallantry in expelling a foe from 

our territory,” and singled out Refugio for special praise.88

By the end of the war, Refugio and Cristobal were promoted to the rank of captain; their brother Santos was ultimately promoted to colonel and became the highest-ranking 

Mexican American in the entire Confederate Army.

Refugio Benavides with Fellow Confederate 

Officers, circa 1863

From left to right: Refugio Benavides, Atancio Vidaurri, 

Cristobal Benavides, and John Leyendecker. By the end of 

the Civil War, Refugio and Cristobal Benavides had been 

promoted to the rank of captain. Their brother, Santos, 

was promoted to colonel, making him the highestranking Mexican American in the Confederate Army.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 87
Vinnie Ream, Clerk, Dead Letter Office, 

1862–1865

Vinnie Ream, the first woman to receive a federal 

commission for a statue, was “discovered” while she 

was working as a clerk at Post Office Department 

Headquarters as a teenager during the Civil War. She 

was one of the first women known to have worked 

at postal headquarters — one of ten women hired to 

help process undeliverable letters in the Dead Letter 

Office in 1862. 

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Ream traveled with 

her family to Washington, D.C., at the beginning 

of the Civil War. To help support her family, she 

took a job as a clerk in the Dead Letter Office in 

1862 at the age of 15. Shortly thereafter, she met 

the sculptor-in-residence at the U.S. Capitol and, 

inspired, picked up a piece of clay and created a 

medallion of an Indian chief ’s head. The sculpture 

so impressed those who saw it that she soon began 

sculpting part-time, and had a stream of congressmen and generals sitting for their likenesses. 

Together, some of these men commissioned a bust 

of President Lincoln and convinced the president 

to sit for her. The president reportedly agreed when 

he learned she was a poor mid-westerner of humble 

origins, much as he had been. Ream’s completed 

bust of Lincoln was so realistic that in 1866 it led to 

a congressional commission for a life-size statue of 

President Lincoln, to be placed in the U.S. Capitol. 

Almost overnight, Ream went from being a 

$600-a-year unknown postal clerk to the recipient 

of a $10,000 federal commission. At age 18, Ream 

was the youngest artist and the first woman ever to 

receive such an honor. The awarding of the commission sparked heated debate in Congress, not only 

because of Ream’s age and gender, but because she 

had never before completed a full-size statue. 

To transfer her clay model to marble, Ream went 

with her parents to Europe, where she was welcomed by the leading artists of the day, entertained 

by Franz Liszt, and had an audience with the Pope. 

Her completed Lincoln statue was unveiled to great 

acclaim at the U.S. Capitol in 1871 in what Ream 

later called “the supreme moment” of her life.90

Over the next decade Vinnie Ream completed many other 

notable works, including a statue of Admiral Farragut located in Farragut Square in Washington, D.C. But marriage at 

the age of 30 largely ended Ream’s career, as she deferred to 

her husband’s wish that she quit work.

Vinnie Ream, late 1860s

In 1866, at age 18, Vinnie Ream became the youngest 

artist and first woman to receive a government 

commission for a work of art. Ream created the life-size 

statue of President Abraham Lincoln that stands in the 

Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.

88 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
William Cooper Nell, Post Office Clerk, 1863–1874

William Cooper Nell, a civil rights pioneer and the first published African American historian, holds another distinction — he is the earliest known African American civilian 

employee of the federal government, having been appointed 

a clerk at the Boston Post Office in 1863. 

Nell was born in 1816 into a middle-class family in 

Boston. He excelled in school and at the age of 14 went to 

work for William Lloyd Garrison, a prominent abolitionis

and printer of the newspaper The Liberator. In Garrison’s 

print shop, Nell advanced from errand boy to apprentice 

printer. Eventually he wrote articles for the newspaper, 

chronicling the challenges and achievements of Boston’s 

black community and, like his mentor, 

devoting himself to the emancipation 

of slaves and civil rights for African 

Americans. 

t 

An active member of the New England 

Freedom Association, Nell helped coordinate money, clothing, and housing 

for newly arrived fugitive slaves. He also 

helped found several Boston organizations 

that encouraged self-improvement of 

citizens through reading, discussion, and 

lectures. 

In the 1840s Nell went to Rochester, 

New York, where for nearly two years he 

collaborated with Frederick Douglass, a 

rising star in the abolitionist movement. 

Although the two men later fell out over 

tactics, Nell was the first printer and publisher of Douglass’ newspaper The North 

Star. 

In 1844, Nell and other leading black 

Bostonians petitioned the Boston School 

Committee to desegregate the city’s public 

schools. Having suffered from discrimination during his own school career, Nell campaigned tirelessly for school integration for 

more than a decade. Finally, in 1855, after 

11 years of petitions, appeals, and meetings, 

the Massachusetts state governor signed 

into law a bill prohibiting racial discrimination in public school admissions. Later that year, Boston’s 

African American community recognized Nell’s service in a 

moving ceremony, calling him the “champion of Equal School 

Rights” and presenting him with a gold watch and speeches of 

heartfelt gratitude in what Nell called the proudest moment 

of his life.91

The year 1855 was momentous for Nell for another 

reason. That year, his landmark 396-page book The Colored 

Patriots of the American Revolution was published in Boston, 

the first published history book researched and written by 

an African American. 

In early 1863, Boston’s Postmaster, John Palfrey, appointed

Nell as a clerk at the Boston Post Office — the first known 

appointment of an African American to a federal office. Like 

Nell, Palfrey had been an abolitionist and newspaperman 

as well as a published historian. Nell was the first of several 

African Americans appointed by Palfrey. 

Nell worked as a clerk at the Boston Post Office until his 

death in 1874. 

William Cooper Nell, undated 

William Cooper Nell — abolitionist, journalist, historian, 

and equal rights champion — was the first known 

African American civilian employee of the federal 

government. He was appointed a clerk at the Boston, 

Massachusetts, Post Office in 1863.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 89
William H. Carney, Letter Carrier, 1869–1901

William H. Carney, the first African American to earn the 

Medal of Honor, was also one of the first African Americans 

appointed as a city letter carrier. 

Carney was born a slave in Virginia in 1840; in the 

1850s, he escaped and joined his father in New Bedford, 

Massachusetts, a favorite destination of the Underground 

Railroad. 

In February 1863, soon after President Lincoln issued the 

Emancipation Proclamation, Carney enlisted in the first 

regiment of African American troops raised in the North — 

the 54th Massachusetts Regiment.

Five months later, the 54th participated in one of the 

most legendary battles of the Civil War — the Battle of Fort 

Wagner — from which Carney emerged a hero. On the 

evening of July 18, 1863, the 54th Regiment spearheaded 

an assault on Fort Wagner, which guarded the entrance to 

the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. As the troops 

advanced, they were mowed down by a barrage of shells 

and bullets from the fort. When a bullet struck the 54th’s 

flag-bearer, Carney threw down his gun and seized the flag 

before it fell to the ground, then moved to the head of the 

column. Holding the flag aloft, Carney made it to the ramparts as his fellow soldiers fell around him. On the ramparts, 

he stood almost alone among the dead and dying as the 

Confederate forces repulsed the 54th’s charge and closed 

Storming Fort Wagner, circa 1890 (left)

William H. Carney, circa 1900 

To Colored Men! Recruitment Poster, 1863 

William H. Carney, one of the first African American letter carriers, 

was the first African American to earn the Medal of Honor, for 

bravery displayed in battle during the Civil War.

90 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
in around them. Rather than dropping the flag and fleeing 

for his life, Carney wound the flag around its staff, avoided 

capture, and despite being shot multiple times, made it 

back to Union lines to deliver the flag safely to a member 

of his regiment. Before collapsing from his wounds, he 

reportedly told his comrades “Boys, the old flag never 

touched the ground.”92

Although the Union Army lost the battle, the heroism 

of the 54th Regiment inspired thousands of other 

African Americans to join the Union Army. Abraham 

Lincoln considered the support of these troops crucial 

to the Union’s ultimate victory. 

William Carney recovered from his wounds and 

was promoted to sergeant; he was discharged from the 

Army in 1864.

On November 16, 1869, Carney was appointed as 

one of the first letter carriers in New Bedford. He 

delivered mail for nearly 32 years and was a founding 

member of the New Bedford Branch of the National 

Association of Letter Carriers. He resigned from his 

letter carrier position in 1901 and died seven years 

later, in 1908. 

His valor at Fort Wagner was honored on May 23, 

1900, when he was awarded the Medal of Honor. 

The bravery displayed by Carney and the rest of the 

54th Massachusetts Regiment in the assault on Fort 

Wagner inspired the acclaimed 1989 movie Glory. n

Social Change in the Sixties

In the 1960s, changing attitudes led to more 

equality in the workplace and opened up new 

opportunities in the federal workforce for women, 

African Americans, and other minorities.

The racial segregtion of employee lockers, toilets 

and break rooms — which was still practiced in some 

cities — was abolished after campaigns by employee 

unions and civil rights organizations. 

Also, opportunities increased. Although women 

had served as Postmasters since the 1700s, and 

African Americans had served in a variety of positions 

since the 1860s, they had generally not been promoted to supervisory positions, and women were traditionally not considered for city letter carrier positions. 

In March 1961, newly elected President John F. 

Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, establishing 

the President’s Committee on Equal Employment 

Opportunity and declaring that it was the responsibility of the federal government to “promote and 

ensure equal opportunity for all qualified persons, 

without regard to race.”93 

In December 1961, Kennedy created the President’s 

Commission on the Status of Women, and in July 

1962 he directed that federal appointments and promotions be made “without regard to sex.”94

Kennedy’s orders and their implementation by the 

Post Office Department over the course of the 1960s 

opened the doors of opportunity and advancement for many postal employees.

Between 1962 and 1964, the percentage 

of supervisory jobs held by African American 

postal employees doubled, from 5 percent to 10 

percent. In 1966, African American Postmasters 

headed the nation’s three largest Post Offices — 

New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles — which 

together handled about 14 percent of the 

nation’s mail. Meanwhile, the number of women 

who served as city letter carriers rose from 104 in 

1960, to 370 in 1965, to 3,500 in 1968. By 1972, 

nearly 8,000 women delivered mail in U.S. cities. 

John R. Strachan, 1963 

John R. Strachan, a career postal employee and 

U.S. Army veteran, was promoted to Assistant 

Director of the Post Office Department’s New York 

Region in May 1963. He was later promoted and 

served for more than 10 years as Postmaster of 

New York City.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 91
PROTECTING THE MAIL

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which protects 

postal customers and employees from criminal attack 

and the mail from criminal misuse, traces its roots 

to Benjamin Franklin. While Postmaster of Philadelphia 

under the British postal administration, Franklin’s duties 

included “regulating several offices, and bringing the officers 

to account.”95

Extending Mail Service

The position of “surveyor” was created in December 1772, 

with Hugh Finlay named “Surveyor of Post roads on the 

Continent of North America” by the British Postmasters 

General.96 Finlay toured Post Offices from Maine to 

Georgia to evaluate service and suggest improvements. In 

1775, under the Second Continental Congress, William 

Goddard became the first surveyor of the American postal 

system. We date the beginning of the U.S. Postal Inspection 

Service to August 7, 1775 — the earliest recorded date that 

Goddard served as surveyor. Goddard established new 

Post Offices, arranged mail transportation contracts, and 

settled Postmasters’ accounts.

In 1782, the position of surveyor was abolished to save 

money; Postmasters General and their assistants acted in 

the capacity of inspectors through the 1790s. 

By 1801, the title “special agent” was used. In March 1801, 

a special agent was appointed to investigate delays in moving mail between Washington, D.C., and Kentucky. Six years 

later, another was hired to secretly investigate mail robberies 

in Tennessee.

In the 1820s, an Office of Instruction and of Mail 

Depredations was created, headed by a General Agent. His 

duties were to:

investigate, in person, cases of mail robberies and of missing letters; 

to correspond with district attorneys ... to examine mail routes, 

and the manner in which mail contracts are executed; to examine 

post offices; the characters and conduct of postmasters ...

and to communicate:

the decisions of the Postmaster General on questions ... 

concerning the construction of post office laws and regulations.97

By 1837, the Post Office Department’s four special agents 

were paying surprise visits to Post Offices, auditing accounts, 

and reporting on the general state of affairs. Twelve special 

agents were employed by 1843, and the Postmaster General 

attributed a decrease in mail thefts to their “vigilance ... in 

ferreting out and bringing to justice depredators.”98 In the 

1840s, special agents also were sent to Texas, Oregon, and 

California to superintend the establishment of new service. 

In October 1850, the Postmaster General outlined agents’ 

duties:

n Arresting and helping convict mail thieves. 

n Overseeing mail service. 

n Occasionally asking local business communities to 

provide suggestions for improvement.

n Keeping a daily journal of activities, to be transcribed 

twice a month and sent to the Department.99

By 1855, the Post Office Department employed 18 special 

agents — 3 at-large and 15 domiciled across the United 

States. Twenty-one agents served by 1861, including one 

assigned solely to the New York City Post Office, which 

handled more than three times the mail of the next largest 

Post Office. 

The Civil War brought new challenges. Special agents 

helped deliver mail to Union troops in the South and 

reestablished service as southern states returned to federal 

control. Finding individuals willing and able to serve as 

Postmasters in the South was difficult because, until July 

1868, all prospective Postmasters had to swear that they had 

not voluntarily aided the Confederacy or Confederate soldiers. The 1865 Official Register of the United States listed 33 

special agents, including five in charge of specific southern 

Post Offices.100

The number of agents grew with the Post Office 

Department and with congressional mandates to protect 

the mail and to protect the American public from obscenity, 

fraud, and lotteries conducted through the mail. 

Cleaning the Mailstream

In February 1865, Jacob Collamer, a U.S. senator from 

Vermont and former Postmaster General, told his fellow senators that the traffic in obscene books and pictures was “getting 

to be a very great evil.”101 An Act of Congress of 

92 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
March 3, 1865, provided that “no obscene book, pamphlet, 

picture, print, or other publication of a vulgar and indecent 

character, shall be admitted into the mails.”102 The law was 

broadened in 1872 to ban obscene envelopes and postal cards, 

and expanded further in 1873 when Congress passed the 

Comstock Act, named after Special Agent Anthony Comstock, 

a zealous anti-vice crusader. In addition to banning the mailing of obscene materials, the Comstock Act banned mailing 

any items or information relating to contraception or abortion, or receiving them with intent to distribute. 

In 1872, Congress also passed the first mail fraud statute 

to empower special agents to pursue swindlers, who previously had used the mails “with almost absolute impunity.”103

“Swindling circulars” enticed victims to buy counterfeit money, tickets for nonexistent lotteries, and miraculous “medicines” and devices. For a mere $5 (or three for $10), citizens 

could buy “THE MAGIC BELT! FOR RENDERING ONE’S 

SELF ‘INVISIBLE’” (“Go where you will, no living being can 

see you, nor in any way be aware of your presence”).104 In 

1876, Chief Special Agent P. H. Woodward noted that swindlers not only fleeced innocent victims by enticing them to 

send money through the mail, but tempted postal employees 

with an “easy conscience” to redirect money-filled envelopes 

addressed to known swindlers into their own pockets.105 In 

1875, out of 307 people arrested for violating postal laws, 115 

were postal employees. 

In 1880, the title “post-office inspector” replaced “special 

agent.” In recommending the change, Postmaster General 

David M. Key said: 

the duties of these officers are by no means confined to the 

detection and arrest of offenders ... most of their time is occupied 

in the inspection of the postal service, the examination of 

postmasters’ accounts, the investigation of the solvency of their 

bonds, the collection of debts ... and the general supervision of all 

officers and employees.106

 The Anti-Lottery Act of 1890 was the first federal law 

prohibiting all lottery-related mail. The act targeted the 

Louisiana Lottery Company, the only legal U.S. lottery at the

time, which earned profits of more than $10,000,000 a year, 

mostly via the U.S. Mail. Armed with the new law, inspectors

quickly shut down the lottery, whose business had been so 

vast that, within three months, revenue at the New Orleans 

Post Office dropped by one third and nine clerks had to be 

let go. 

During the Spanish-American War of 1898, several 

experienced inspectors oversaw temporary military Post 

Office stations serving the troops and investigated thefts 

Warning Consumers

Hoping to save the “credulous from being swindled,” 

in 1880 Anthony Comstock wrote Frauds Exposed; Or, 

How the People Are Deceived and Youth Corrupted.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 93
The De Autremont Train Holdup, 1923

On October 11, 1923, brothers Ray, Roy, and Hugh De Autremont held up 

a Southern Pacific train near Siskiyou, Oregon, because they mistakenly 

believed it carried $500,000 in gold. The brothers murdered the train 

engineer, brakeman, and fireman, and used too much dynamite to blow 

open the mail car, killing the railway mail clerk and destroying the mail. They 

fled the scene empty-handed, but left behind several incriminating clues. 

An extensive manhunt followed, with postal inspectors following clues as 

far as Central America, Mexico, Canada, and Alaska. All three brothers were 

caught in 1927, after being recognized from reward posters. “We literally 

plastered the United States with circulars,” one inspector recalled. “I knew it 

would be through those we would get the men.”107 All three brothers were 

convicted and sentenced to life in prison. 

Reward Circular, 1926

More than two million reward 

circulars were distributed — in 

English, Spanish, French, Dutch, 

German and Portugese — leading 

to the men’s capture in 1927.

Registered Mail Receipt, 1923 (at right)

Post Office records helped identify the criminals. Deep in the 

pocket of a pair of overalls found near the scene was the receipt 

for a letter that Roy De Autremont had mailed weeks earlier to his 

brother, Hugh, by Registered Mail. 

94 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
of soldiers’ mail. In 1898, inspectors also went to Alaska to 

reorganize the mail service there; the discovery of gold had 

led to avalanches of mail. 

In 1900, inspectors investigated postal fraud in Cuba, 

which was under U.S. military jurisdiction, and traveled 

to Puerto Rico and Hawaii to supervise the start of mail 

service in these new U.S. territories. In 1903, 40 inspectors participated in a sweeping internal investigation of 

irregularities in the awarding of contracts, which led to 

the removal or resignation of 17 Post Office Department 

officers and employees, including First Assistant Postmaster 

General Perry S. Heath and Superintendent of Free Delivery 

August W. Machen. In 1905, the Department had 216 inspectors; by 1911, the number had increased to 390.

Pursuing Rogues and Robbers

During World War I, the need for military postal facilities was decided by inspectors, who also investigated the 

loyalty of potential employees and possible violators of the 

Espionage and Sedition Acts. After the war and through the 

1930s, inspectors contended with an increase in mail robberies by armed gangs. Thefts became so numerous that, in 

1921, about 50,000 surplus military firearms were distributed 

to railway mail clerks. In 1921 and again in 1926, thousands 

of U.S. Marines guarded valuable mail at vulnerable points 

throughout the country, as identified by inspectors. Two of 

the most notorious train robberies were the botched robbery 

near Siskiyou, Oregon, in 1923, and a well-planned heist at 

Rondout, Illinois, in 1924. Inspectors doggedly investigated 

each case and eventually saw the thieves convicted. 

Meanwhile, inspectors continued protecting the public 

from evolving consumer fraud. In 1920, they investigated 

and helped convict Charles Ponzi, the father of illegal pyramid schemes, who filched millions of dollars from the public 

for supposed investments.108

During World War II, inspectors served as liaisons 

between civilian and military postal facilities, regularly 

inspecting both types of facilities to ensure prompt, secure 

handling of mail, investigating complaints of theft, and helping military authorities identify the guilty parties. 

In 1954, the title “postal inspector” was first officially used.

The 1950s saw a rise in illegal drug use — a significant 

factor in postal crime. By 1954, about half of all non-postal 

mail thieves in the New York City area were addicts who 

stole checks from mailboxes to finance their habits. Illegal 

drug use affected the Post Office Department on another front as well: in 1967, Postmaster General Lawrence F. 

O’Brien noted an increase in the use of mail to transmit 

illegal drugs.109 The Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 95
and Control Act of 1970 made it unlawful to use the mail 

“to transmit or facilitate the manufacture, distribution, 

disbursing, or possession” of illegal drugs; postal inspectors 

immediately seized the initiative in pursuing offenders.110

The Security Force, the uniformed branch of the Postal 

Inspection Service, was formed in 1970. Primarily responsible for protecting people and property and keeping the peace 

on postal property, Postal Police Officers, like other members 

of the Postal Inspection Service, also respond to natural and 

man-made disasters.

Protecting the Innocent

Since the passage of the Child Protection Act of 1984, postal 

inspectors have arrested about 6,000 suspects for using the 

mail in violation of federal child exploitation laws. In 1999, 

inspectors helped shut down Landslide Productions, Inc. of 

Fort Worth, Texas, the largest-known child pornography enterprise in history, which grossed $1.4 million each month 

from website subscriptions. Its founder was sentenced to 

1,335 years in prison. The company’s customer records 

sparked a two-year undercover sting operation called 

“Operation Avalanche,” with investigators contacting former 

website subscribers and arresting them if they accepted delivery of child pornography. Inspectors also investigated the 

exploitation of children through the mail by sexual predators they met online. 

The Inspection Service narcotics program stresses the 

safety of all postal employees and strives to protect them and 

customers from handling packages of illegal narcotics and 

trafficking proceeds. From 2010 through 2017, inspectors 

reported 14,838 arrests related to investigations of drug-trafficking via the mail and seized a total of about $157.1 million 

in illegal drug proceeds.

Mail fraud — “free” prize schemes, foreign lotteries, 

pyramid schemes, investment fraud, and work-at-home 

scams — has been around for generations, but two new 

Responding to Hurricane Irma, 2017

Postal inspectors play a key role in safeguarding postal employees, postal facilities, and the mail — including by 

leading emergency response teams following natural and man-made disasters. After Hurricane Irma struck Florida in 

September 2017, postal inspectors quickly secured the mail and other valuables at damaged postal facilities.

96 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
types of fraud emerged in the late 20th century: credit card 

fraud and identify theft. Hundreds of thousands of credit 

cards travel through the mail each day. Since 1992, the 

Inspection Service has partnered with major credit card 

issuers and other industry stakeholders to protect cards 

and cardholders against theft and help stem losses. 

The Inspection Service works to prevent fraud through 

community awareness and by publicizing prevention 

guidelines. In 2012, the Inspection Service launched a new 

fraud awareness effort, the Consumer Alert News Network. 

These consumer alerts, which are short videos aired during 

local television news broadcasts, feature inspectors discussing ongoing scams to help consumers avoid becoming 

victims. The Inspection Service funds the effort with fines 

collected from convicted fraudsters. The Inspection Service 

also partners with other federal, state, and local agencies 

in support of National Consumer Protection Week, which 

was launched by the Federal Trade Commission in 1998. 

This annual program raises awareness of fraud schemes and 

provides other information that helps customers become 

smarter consumers. 

The Inspection Service’s Mail Fraud Team helped arrest 

and successfully prosecute R. Allen Stanford, the former 

chairman of the Houston-based Stanford Financial Group 

and the mastermind of a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. Stanford 

convinced investors to purchase certificates of deposit 

and then misused most of the money. His victims mailed 

payments and believed the monthly statements he sent them 

accurately reflected their investments. In 2012, Stanford was 

sentenced to 110 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $5.9 

billion. The jury also directed that $330 million in recovered 

funds be returned to victims.

Inspectors respond rapidly to reports of suspicious items, 

such as unidentified substances in the mail and bombs in 

the mail or on postal property. In May 2012, a federal jury in 

Chicago convicted John Tomkins — the so-called “Bishop 

Bomber” — on 12 counts of mailing threatening communications and destructive devices. The Inspection Service’s hunt 

for Tomkins intensified in 2007, when his series of threatening letters escalated and he mailed two pipe bombs to 

investment firms. Fortunately, the bombs were not triggered 

to explode, and no one was hurt. 

Postal inspectors are also among the first on the scene 

following disasters, both natural and man-made. They secure 

buildings and enter damaged facilities to gather mail, money, 

and stamp stock. They also confirm the safety of employees. 

Postal inspectors continue to protect the Postal Service, its 

employees, and its customers from criminal attack, and the 

nation’s mail from criminal misuse. n

Reward Poster

Rewards for the arrest and conviction of 

postal offenders were offered as early as 

1805. The largest reward ever offered 

was $2.5 million for information leading 

to the arrest and conviction of the 

individual(s) who mailed anthrax in 2001. 

In 2008, a suspect was identified but 

committed suicide before being charged.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 97
The Office of Inspector General

The Inspector General Act of 1978 created Inspector 

General offices in 12 federal agencies following a series 

of public spending scandals. Their mission was to investigate and audit the programs and operations of agencies that, in many cases, had failed to supervise their 

own spending, to ferret out fraud and misconduct, and 

to help prevent and end the misuse of funds. The act 

granted the Inspectors General broad authority to: 

n Conduct audits and investigations. 

n Access all agency records directly, using 

subpoenas if necessary. 

n Request assistance from other government 

agencies. 

n Administer oaths when taking testimony. 

n Hire staff and manage their own resources.

n Receive and respond to complaints from agency 

employees, while protecting their confidentiality.

Inspectors General were not authorized to take 

corrective action themselves under the rationale that it 

would be difficult — if not impossible — for Inspectors 

General to review programs and operations objectively 

if they were directly involved in carrying them out. 

The Inspector General Act Amendments of 1988

created IGs in 39 additional government agencies 

and entities, including the Postal Service. Initially 

the Chief Postal Inspector served a dual role as the 

Inspector General, reporting to the Postmaster General. 

Congress further amended the Inspector General Act

in 1996, creating an independent Inspector General 

for the Postal Service, who reported to the Board of 

Governors. 

Recognizing the importance of a USPS OIG independent from management, Congress created the Postal 

Service’s independent Office of Inspector General to be 

its eyes and ears to detect and prevent waste, fraud, 

theft, and misconduct. Although funded by the Postal 

Service, the Inspector General is appointed by the 

nine presidentially appointed Governors of the Postal 

Service and reports twice a year to the Governors and 

to Congress. The USPS OIG’s independence allows it 

to more effectively perform its mission, “to increase 

the efficiency and effectiveness of USPS programs and 

operations, while eliminating and preventing fraud, 

waste, and abuse.”111

The Postal Service’s independent Office of Inspector 

General began with a single employee, Inspector 

General Karla W. Corcoran, who was sworn in on 

January 6, 1997. In one year’s time, the office hired 

109 employees and set up field offices across the 

country to audit and investigate Postal Service programs and operations. It also established a hotline 

number — 1-888-USPS-OIG — to receive allegations 

of waste, fraud, and abuse; the hotline received more 

than 14,000 calls in its second year. 

David C. Williams was sworn in as Inspector General 

on August 20, 2003, and served until his retirement in 

2016. The scope of his office increased in 2005 when 

allegations of postal employee misconduct including 

embezzlement, record falsification, workers’ compensation fraud, contract fraud, and on-duty narcotics 

violations were transferred from the Postal Inspection 

Service to the USPS OIG. On May 1, 2006, the USPS 

OIG took over the responsibility for investigating all new 

allegations of these types. On September 1, 2006, the 

USPS OIG also began investigating all new allegations of 

mail theft by postal employees. To handle its increased 

responsibilities, the USPS OIG hired more than 260 new 

investigators in 2006. 

By the end of 2006, its staff numbered 1,071 and 

included special agents (federal law enforcement 

officers authorized to carry firearms, make arrests, and 

investigate federal criminal violations), auditors (professionals trained in government audit and accounting 

standards), and others crucial to its mission. 

The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 

2006 increased the OIG’s responsibilities by directing 

it to report within six months on the Postal Service’s 

workplace safety and within one year on the fairness 

of the process by which nonprofit rate deficiencies 

were assessed and appealed. The act also required 

the OIG to regularly audit the data collection systems 

98 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
and procedures the Postal Service uses to analyze and 

report on its costs, revenues, rates, and service performance to the Postal Regulatory Commission.

In addition to detecting and preventing waste, 

fraud, theft, and misconduct, the OIG, in a series of 

white papers beginning in 2011, investigated areas 

for improvement, which included exploring potential revenue opportunities for the Postal Service in 

the digital age. The OIG also weighed in on subjects including Postal Service pension obligations 

and possible overfunding, budget treatment of 

the Postal Service by the Federal government, and 

other issues.

In 2019, OIG auditors issued 139 audit reports and 

management advisories accounting for more than $3.4 

billion in monetary impact. OIG investigators, meanwhile, completed 2,561 investigations, which lead to 

832 arrests and more than $1.5 billion in fines, restitution, and recoveries that went to the Postal Service.

Investigating Fraud

One mission of the Office of Inspector General is to 

investigate fraud, including workers’ compensation 

fraud. Most employees who receive workers’ compensation benefits do so because of legitimate job-related 

injuries. Nevertheless, a small percentage of postal 

employees abuse the system. The OIG investigates 

whenever fraud is suspected. 

For example, in 2006 OIG investigators received an 

anonymous tip that a letter carrier regularly exceeded the physical limitations under which he received 

worker’s compensation payments. On eleven separate 

occasions, OIG agents videotaped him playing golf at a 

local club. One day he was observed playing 36 holes 

of golf. Unaware that he had been videotaped, in an 

interview he told 

investigators 

that he could no 

longer play golf 

due to his back 

injury and merely 

walked around the 

golf course for exercise. Indicted on 30 counts of mail 

fraud and one count of making false statements, he 

entered a guilty plea and was sentenced to 30 months 

in prison and ordered to pay $71,514 in restitution.

In 2009, a former supervisor pled guilty to charges 

stemming from an investigation in which OIG agents 

observed her catching and reeling in numerous fish, 

carrying luggage, and driving a motor vehicle — all in 

violation of her medical restrictions. Previously, she had 

told the claims examiner that she could not lift or do 

anything with her arm, even on a good day. She was 

sentenced to 18 months’ probation and ordered to 

repay $10,000.

In 2012, a rural carrier was found guilty in federal court of making false statements and healthcare 

fraud. The carrier had filed a claim for an on-the-job 

injury to her back and had been placed on limited 

duty by her physician. OIG agents found that she had 

participated in at least 80 marathons and triathlons 

since claiming her injury. As a result of the investigation, her employment was terminated, saving the 

Postal Service more than $140,000. 

Investigation In Progress 

Special agents from the Office of Inspector General 

conduct surveillance in 2003.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 99
U.S. POSTAGE STAMPS

The Post Office Department issued its first postage 

stamps on July 1, 1847. Previously, letters were taken 

to a Post Office, where the Postmaster, clerk, or 

assistant would note the postage in the upper right corner. 

Postage could be paid in advance by the mailer, collected 

from the recipient on delivery, or paid partially in advance 

and partially on delivery. On April 1, 1855, prepayment of 

postage became mandatory; as of January 1, 1856, payment 

via postage stamps was required.

The First Postage Stamps

In 1837, Great Britain’s Sir Rowland Hill proposed a uniform rate of postage for mail going anywhere in the British 

Isles and prepayment by using envelopes with preprinted 

postage or adhesive labels. On May 6, 1840, the stamp that 

became known as the Penny Black, covering the one-penny 

charge for half-ounce letters sent anywhere in the British 

Isles, went on sale in British postal facilities. 

United States Postage Stamps

Alexander M. Greig’s City Despatch Post, a private New York 

City carrier, issued the first adhesive stamps in the United 

States on February 1, 1842. The Post Office Department 

bought Greig’s business later that same year and continued 

use of the stamps for carrier service in New York City. 

After U.S. postage rates were simplified in 1845, New York 

City Postmaster Robert H. Morris, among others, provided 

special stamps or markings to indicate prepayment of postage. These now are known as Postmasters’ Provisionals. 

On March 3, 1847, Congress authorized United States 

postage stamps. The first general issue postage stamps went 

on sale in New York City, July 1, 1847. One, priced at five 

cents, depicted Benjamin Franklin. The other, a ten-cent 

stamp, pictured George Washington. 

Until 1857, when stamp manufacturers began perforating 

sheets of stamps, clerks had to use scissors to cut the stamps 

from pregummed, nonperforated sheets. 

Stamp Firsts

In 1847, Benjamin Franklin and 

George Washington became the first 

people to appear on U.S. stamps, 

followed by Thomas Jefferson (1856) 

and Andrew Jackson (1863).

Martha Washington was the first 

American woman to appear on a 

U.S. postage stamp (1902). Admiral 

David Farragut was the first Hispanic

American so honored (1903); 

Pocahontas the first Native American

(1907); and Booker T. Washington 

the first African American (1940).

Issued July 1, 1847 Issued July 1, 1847

Issued March 1856

Issued July 1863

Issued December 1902 Issued April 26, 1907 Issued June 5, 1903

Images not shown at scale.

Issued April 7, 1940

100 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Only Franklin and Washington appeared on stamps until 

1856, when a five-cent stamp honoring Thomas Jefferson 

was issued. A two-cent Andrew Jackson stamp was added in 

1863. George Washington has appeared on more U.S. postage 

stamps than any other person.

Commemorative Stamps

Commemorative stamps honor important people, events, 

or aspects of American culture, and tend to be larger in size 

than regular issues of stamps, which are called definitives. 

In 1893, the first U.S. commemorative stamps, honoring that year’s World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, 

were issued. The subject — Columbus’s voyages to the 

New World — and size of the stamps were innovative. The 

stamps were 7/8 inches high by 1-11/32 inches wide, nearly 

double the size of previous stamps. 

Over the years, commemorative stamps have been produced in many sizes and shapes, with the first triangular 

stamps issued in 1997 and the first round stamp in 2000. In 

2017, the Postal Service issued its first stamps with special tactile features — the Have a Ball! stamps, printed with surface 

textures mimicking eight sports balls, and the Total Eclipse 

of the Sun stamp, printed with a heat-sensitive ink that, 

when touched, revealed an image of the moon. In 2018, the 

Postal Service issued Frozen Treats stamps, the first to feature 

scratch-and-sniff scents. Another first in 2018: select Art of 

Magic stamps appeared to show a rabbit popping out of a hat, 

thanks to lenticular printing.

The first stamp honoring an American woman was the 

eight-cent Martha Washington stamp of 1902. The first to 

honor a Hispanic American was the one-dollar Admiral 

David Farragut stamp in 1903. Native Americans were 

portrayed in a general way on earlier stamps, but the first 

to honor an individual was 1907’s five-cent Pocahontas 

stamp. In 1940, a ten-cent stamp commemorating Booker T. 

Washington became the first to honor an African American.

In 1959, the United States participated in its first joint 

stamp issue with another country when it released a 

five-cent stamp commemorating the opening of the 

St. Lawrence Seaway on the same day that Canada issued 

a stamp with the same design in its own denomination.

Other firsts include the 1993 29-cent stamp featuring Elvis Presley. The public was invited to vote for the 

“young” or the “older” Elvis for the stamp’s design. Youth 

triumphed, and the Elvis Presley stamp has been the 

best-selling U.S. commemorative stamp to date.

Sixteen stamps issued in 1893 in honor of 

Columbus‘s voyages to the New World 

were the first commemoratives. 

The first triangular stamps (1997) 

and the first round stamp (2000) 

were issued in conjunction with 

international stamp exhibitions. 

The Total Eclipse of the Sun stamp, 

issued in 2017, was the first U.S. 

stamp printed with heat-sensitive 

ink— when touched, it revealed an 

image of the moon. Issued March 13, 1997

Issued January 1893

Issued June 20, 2017

Issued July 7, 2000

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 101
Forever Stamps

Since 2011, all new commemorative 

stamps for the First-Class Mail one-ounce 

rate have been Forever stamps. They are 

not marked with a postage value because 

they will always be equal in value to the 

price of mailing a one-ounce letter by 

First-Class Mail.

Booklets

Stamp booklets were first issued April 16, 1900. They contained 12, 24, or 48 two-cent stamps. Parafinned paper was 

placed between sheets of stamps to keep them from sticking 

together. The books, which carried a one-cent premium 

until 1963, had light cardboard covers printed with information about postage rates. 

Coils and Vending Machines

The first coil (roll) stamps were issued on February 18, 1908, 

in response to business requests. Coils were also used in 

stamp vending equipment. 

The Post Office Department began experimenting with 

stamp vending machines in 1905, but in 1911 concluded 

that none of the models tested were entirely satisfactory. Meanwhile, in the next few decades, privately owned 

machines proliferated. Drugstore models sold stamps at 

a profit by charging, for example, a nickel for two 2-cent 

stamps. 

The Department began experimenting with stamp 

vending machines again after World War II, and rolled out 

its first model in 1948. Both coil stamps and imperforate 

sheets were produced for vending machines. Imperforate 

sheets received a variety of distinctive perforations and 

separations.

By 1961, the Department had about 4,500 stamp vending machines in service; at the same time, about 400,000 

privately owned machines were in use.

Nondenominated Stamps

The first nondenominated stamps (stamps without a printed 

value) in the United States were two Christmas stamps 

issued October 14, 1975. The Postal Service had requested 

a rate change from 10 to 13 cents and was unsure when 

the Postal Rate Commission would issue a recommended 

decision in the case. When the rate change was delayed, the 

stamps were sold for 10 cents.

A similar situation led the Postal Service to issue nondenominated stamps on May 22, 1978. They bore the letter “A”

rather than a denomination. The stamps were prepared in 

case of a shortage of stamps in the uncertain new denomination. They were sold for 15 cents for domestic use only. 

Nondenominated stamps with letter designations through 

“H” were issued in conjunction with postage rate changes 

through 1998.

The Postal Service’s Quick Service Guide 604a at 

pe.usps.com lists nondenominated stamps and postal 

stationery issued since 1975, along with their postage 

values.

Self-adhesives

The Postal Service originally developed self-adhesive 

stamps to make precanceled stamps more secure. 

Precanceled stamps are canceled across the face before being 

sold. In the late 1960s, as many as 20 percent of such stamps 

were soaked off envelopes and reused. Precanceled stamps 

skipped a processing step that often caught reused stamps. 

102 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Semipostals: Stamps for a Cause

Semipostals are stamps that sell for more than 

the cost of postage, with the difference going 

to a specific cause (less administrative costs). 

Semipostals have raised more than $1 billion 

since they were first 

issued in 1998.

With the 1974 Christmas issue, the Postal Service 

experimented with a self-adhesive precanceled stamp. It 

was believed that the tightly bonded self-adhesive would 

not permit stamps to be soaked off. Slits were also cut in 

the center of the stamps to foil attempts to peel them off. 

Unfortunately, the stamps cost three to five times more to 

produce than regular postage stamps, they could still be 

soaked off and reused, and stamps in the hands of collectors 

started to self-destruct.

In 1989, the Postal Service again experimented with 

self-adhesive stamps, this time with emphasis on customer 

convenience. The new self-adhesives had a water-soluble adhesive and were produced on coated paper, so the effects of 

the adhesive would not be destructive. Introduced nationwide in 1992, self-adhesive stamps quickly became popular 

with customers. By 2002, nearly all new U.S. commemorative stamp issues were self-adhesive.

Forever Stamps

On April 12, 2007, the Postal Service issued its first Forever 

stamp — a nondenominated, nonexpiring stamp intended 

for customers mailing a piece of First-Class Mail. Sold at the 

going rate of a First-Class stamp, a Forever stamp is always 

valid for the first ounce of First-Class postage. 

Forever stamps were initially intended to ease the transition for customers during stamp price changes. From 2007 

to October 2010, only one design was issued: the Liberty 

Bell Forever stamp. Due to their popularity, two additional 

designs were issued in 2010 — Holiday Evergreens Forever 

stamps on October 21, and Lady Liberty and U.S. Flag 

Forever stamp coils on December 1. 

Since 2011, all new commemorative stamps for the FirstClass Mail one-ounce rate have been Forever stamps. Since 

2014, all new stamps for the First-Class Mail one-ounce rate 

have been Forever stamps.

In 2013, a Global Forever stamp was introduced, offering 

a single price for any First-Class Mail international oneounce letter going to any country in the world — or for up 

to a two-ounce letter going to Canada. Beginning in 2015, 

Forever stamps were also issued for postcards, and for letters 

needing additional postage.

Semipostals

Semipostals are stamps for which the price exceeds the cost of 

postage, with the difference devoted to a particular cause. An 

act of Congress resulted in the Breast Cancer Research stamp, 

the first United States semipostal, on July 29, 1998, with 

proceeds above the cost of postage going to breast cancer 

research. Congress passed legislation extending the sale of the 

Breast Cancer Research stamp several times. It has been sold 

nearly continuously since it was first issued, and has raised 

approximately $90.7 million through November 2019.

The Postal Service issued the Heroes of 2001 stamp on 

June 7, 2002, with proceeds going to the families of emergency workers killed or injured in connection with the 

September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 103
As directed by Congress, the Heroes of 2001 stamp remained 

on sale through 2004 and raised more than $10.5 million. 

On October 8, 2003, the Postal Service issued the Stop 

Family Violence semipostal, with proceeds contributing to 

the nationwide fight against domestic violence. It was sold 

through 2006 and raised more than $3 million.

The Multinational Species Conservation Funds Semipostal 

Act of 2010 directed the Postal Service to issue a fourth 

semipostal, with proceeds going to international wildlife 

conservation. The Save Vanishing Species stamp was issued 

on September 20, 2011, and remained on sale through 2018, 

raising approximately $5.6 million. In December 2019, 

Congress passed legislation directing its return to sale.

 The first four semipostals were mandated by Congress. 

The Semipostal Authorization Act of 2000 authorized 

the Postal Service to issue semipostals in support of 

causes considered to be in the national public interest. 

On November 30, 2017, the Postal Service issued its 

first discretionary fundraising stamp, the Alzheimer’s 

semipostal, which raised $1 million through November 

2019. On December 2, 2019, the Postal Service issued 

its second discretionary semipostal, the Healing PTSD 

semipostal stamp.

Customized Postage

With Customized Postage, also known as photo stamps, 

customers could print personalized postage labels by 

combining their own images with USPS-approved coding 

technology indicating payment of postage. Following a 

successful market test in 2004, Customized Postage became 

available from USPS-authorized vendors in 2005.

Postal Stationery

The first printed stamped envelopes were issued July 1, 1853. 

They have always been produced by private contractors 

and sold at the cost of postage plus the cost of manufacture. 

With the exception of manila newspaper wrappers used 

from 1919 to 1934, watermarks have been mandatory for 

stamped-envelope paper since 1853. The watermarks usually 

changed with every four-year printing contract to help identify the envelope and paper manufacturers.

The first commemorative stamped envelopes were issued in 

conjunction with the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia 

in 1876. The “Centennial Envelope-Making Machine,” which 

made the envelopes that were sold on site, was one of the 

most popular displays at the exposition. Centennial envelopes 

could also be special-ordered from Postmasters nationwide 

from May 1876 until the exhibition ended that November. 

More than nine million envelopes were sold, including nearly 

700,000 at the exposition’s temporary Post Office branch. 

Postal cards, known today as stamped cards, carry preprinted postage, unlike privately produced postcards, which 

do not bear postage. 

Austria issued the first postal card in 1869. The United 

States Post Office Department issued its first postal card in 

Springfield, Massachusetts, on May 12, 1873, and in other 

cities the next day. The public responded enthusiastically. 

The New York Times reported that on the first day of issue, 

postal clerks in New York City sold 200,000 cards in two 

and a half hours. Nationwide, customers bought more 

than 31 million postal cards in the first two months. The 

cards were popular not only with individuals, but also with 

businesses and organizations. For example, banks mailed 

them to customers to acknowledge deposits; libraries used 

them to send overdue notices. The annual number of mailed 

postal cards peaked in 1950 at more than 3.4 billion. They 

remained more popular than postcards until the mid-1960s.

On May 27, 1966, the Post Office Department issued its 

first postal card with illustrations on the back (address) 

side, the Visit the USA international postal card. On July 

29, 1972, the Postal Service issued its first postal cards with 

pictures on the front, the Tourism Year of the Americas — 

’72 postal card set. 

In 1989, the Postal Service issued its first glossy picture 

postal cards with the release of two cards celebrating 

two Washington, D.C., landmarks: the White House (on 

November 30) and the Jefferson Memorial (on December 

2). On October 18, 1994, the first postal card sets with 

collectible artwork were issued, featuring the Legends of the 

West stamp images. 

On January 10, 1999, the Postal Service changed the term 

for postal cards to “stamped cards” and added a charge 

for the cost of their manufacture. In 2007, the term for 

stamped cards with collectible artwork was changed to “premium stamped cards”; they are sold at a higher price than 

regular stamped cards.

Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee

The Post Office Department’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory 

Committee was established March 21, 1957, to provide a 

breadth of judgment and depth of experience in various 

areas that influence the subject matter, character, and beauty 

of postage stamps.114 As announced in the Federal Register of 

Tuesday, March 26, 1957:

The Stamp Advisory Committee shall advise the Post Office 

Department on any matters pertaining to the subject matter, 

design, production and issuance of postage stamps.

104 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Postcard Mailed in 1905

Congress approved a special one-cent rate for postcards 

beginning July 1, 1898. Before then, postcards cost as 

much to mail as letters. Until March 1, 1907, postal 

regulations prohibited written messages on the address 

side of postcards.

The initial seven-member committee was appointed by 

Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield on March 26, 

1957. The first meeting of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory 

Commitee was opened by Postmaster General Summerfield 

on April 30, 1957. Those serving were Deputy Director of 

the United States Information Agency Abbott Washburn, 

along with three well-known philatelists — Franklin R. 

Bruns, Jr., Sol Glass, and Harry L. Lindquist — and three artists — Arnold Copeland, president of Westport Artists, Inc.; 

Ervine Metzl, president of the Society of Illustrators; and 

William H. Buckley, president of the New York Art Directors 

Club. Bruns served as the first chairman.

The artists were enthusiastic about using the skills of 

members from their groups to help design United States 

postage stamps. (The combined memberships of the three 

groups represented by the artists included an estimated 95 

percent of all commercial artists in the country.) All three 

artists played an important role in improving postage stamp 

designs by helping the Post Office Department transition 

to commercial artists instead of relying upon the Bureau of 

Engraving and Printing.

Today, the committee consists of members appointed by 

the Postmaster General, who also appoints the chairman. 

The members share a respect for philately and are experts 

on history, science and technology, art, education, sports, or 

other subjects of public interest.

The committee meets four times a year to review suggestions for new postage stamps. The Postal Service receives 

as many as 40,000 proposals each year and every proposal 

is considered. The committee’s primary goal is to select 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 105
subjects that are both interesting and educational for recommendation to the Postmaster General, who decides which 

stamps will be issued.

Besides recommending new subjects for commemorative 

stamps each year, the committee also suggests subjects for the 

extensive line of regular stamps. The committee considers the 

interests of stamp collectors as well as all citizens, and looks 

for subjects that will stand the test of time, be consistent with 

public opinion, and have broad national appeal. More information on the committee is available at about.usps.com.

Stamp Collecting 

Stamp collecting began almost as soon as the first postage 

stamp was issued in England in 1840. The first recorded 

collector was reportedly an English lady who advertised in 

The [London] Times in 1841 for a quantity of used stamps 

to use as wallpaper. In 1845, the British humor magazine 

Punch advised readers that “the cheapest way to furnish a 

room is to paper it with postage stamps . . . you will only 

require 33,542 to paper a small room.” 115

By the late 1850s, stamp collecting had spread to the 

United States. Although an article in the September 13, 

1860, issue of the Boston Daily Advertiser noted that the 

“elegant and curious ‘mania’” was “chiefly indulged by 

young ladies,” the earliest known U.S. collection is that of 

young New Jersey schoolboy David T. Latimer, who pasted 

35 three-cent George Washington stamps onto the inside 

front cover of his German language textbook circa 1856.

Stamp collecting grew more popular in the U.S. in 1861, 

when stamps were demonetized soon after the start of 

the Civil War. In June 1862, James Holbrook noted in his 

monthly United States Mail and Post Office Assistant that, 

as the old postage stamps were withdrawn from circulation 

and replaced with new stamps the previous summer, 

many persons were suddenly seized with a rage for collecting 

specimens of each denomination to preserve as curiosities.

Holbrook continued:

It is a well-known fact that a taste for the collection of rarities 

once formed... is not easily appeased.

He went on to describe the chaotic scene of collectors 

clamoring for new specimens near the entrance of the New 

York Post Office: 

The neighborhood of the entrance to the New York post-office has 

become a sort of exchange, where the amateurs and speculators 

in this singular business, (principally boys) daily congregate. 

The World’s Largest Stamp 

Gallery

On September 22, 2013, the William H. Gross 

Stamp Gallery — the largest stamp gallery in the 

world — opened at the Smithsonian’s National 

Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. The gallery 

showcases more than 20,000 objects in six thematic areas, including “World of Stamps,” “Gems 

of Philately,” and “National Stamp Salon.” It is the

only stamp gallery to feature stamps and mail in 

the context of American history. Among the items 

on display: a letter addressed to John Hancock 

postmarked July 4, 1776; stamps from the 

Kingdom of Hawaii before it became a U.S. state; 

and a cover postmarked on the moon in 1971.

The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, 

located next to Union Station, is open seven 

days a week from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., except 

December 25. Admission is free.

106 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
They muster in strong force on the arrival of a foreign mail, 

watch the recipients of letters from abroad, and besiege them 

with clamorous requests for stamps. We saw the other day a 

sailor belonging to one of the foreign ships of war in the harbor, 

who had just received a number of letters, beset by a crowd 

of urchins, whose urgent appeals he in vain endeavored to 

comprehend, and who was finally obliged to take flight to escape 

the bewildering importunities of his persecutors.

The term “philately” originated in 1864 with French collector Georges Herpin, who proposed it as a more attractive 

alternative to the earlier terms “timbromania” (“stamp madness”) and “timbrophily.” 

As the number of stamps increased, the scope of collectors 

narrowed. Whereas the first collectors could hope to procure 

one of every postage stamp ever issued, or stamps from every 

nation, soon collectors began to specialize, limiting their 

collections by country, time period, or topic. In 2009, the 

American Topical Association listed more than 500 popular 

stamp-collecting topics, from “abacus” to “zoos.”

Famous stamp collectors have included President 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who not only collected but 

also helped design stamps during his presidency, and John 

Lennon, whose stamp album is in the collection of the 

Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. 

Errors, Freaks, and Oddities

The printing of stamps is a complex process, during which 

any number of things can go awry. When misprints occur, 

stamp collectors call them “errors,” “freaks,” or “oddities.”

Stamps that have some major, consistent, unintentional 

deviation from the norm are considered “errors.” Types of 

errors include missing or wrong colors, wrong paper, wrong 

watermarks, inverted centers or frames on multicolor printing, inverted or missing surcharges or overprints, double 

impressions, and missing perforations.

Inconsistent or randomly appearing mistakes, such as 

misperforations or color shifts, are classified as “freaks.” 

“Oddities” are one-of-a-kind misprints, like folded stamps or 

stamps printed without ink, known as “albinos.” Since printing mistakes are expected, stamp shipments are carefully 

inspected to make sure no printing errors reach the public. 

Occasionally, a few evade the inspectors. When misprinted 

stamps are discovered, they are highly coveted by collectors.

One of the most famous errors was the 24-cent Curtiss 

“Jenny” stamp issued in 1918. This two-color stamp depicts 

a blue airplane surrounded by a red border, which required 

two separate passes through the printing press. Savvy collectors knew that each pass through the press increased the 

chance for errors, and were on the lookout for them. They 

were not disappointed — several sheets of the “Jenny” were 

accidentally inverted between passes, making it appear that 

the airplane was flying upside down. Only one sheet of 100 

stamps slipped past inspectors. It was sold to stamp collector 

William Robey on May 14, 1918, soon after the stamps went 

on sale. Robey purchased the entire sheet for $24, its face 

value, and quickly re-sold it for $15,000. In 2018, a single 

one of these stamps sold at auction for $1,593,000.

In 1962, at least four panes (200 stamps) of the 4-cent Dag 

Hammarskjöld issue were discovered with an inverted yellow background. Postmaster General J. Edward Day ordered 

40 million more of the stamps to be deliberately misprinted, 

thereby reducing the rarity and value of the originals. Day 

defended his controversial decision stating, “We are not in 

the stamp lottery business.”116

In 1994, a design error was discovered on the Legends 

of the West issue. The stamp that was supposed to depict 

bull roper Bill Pickett mistakenly had a portrait of Pickett’s 

brother, Ben. The Postal Service recalled the stamps before 

the official sale date, planning to destroy the errors, but 183 

sheets were inadvertently sold to the public. Postmaster 

General Marvin Runyon ordered 150,000 more of the 

erroneous sheets to be sold at face value by lottery to deflate 

their value. n

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 107
Making

Stamps

At right, top: Employees 

of the Bureau of 

Engraving and Printing 

gumming sheets of 

stamps around 1895. 

At right, below:

Employees coiling postage 

stamps in the 1920s.

Stamp Production 

at the Bureau of 

Engraving and Printing

At first, postage stamps 

were printed by private 

firms. In 1894, an 

agreement between 

the Postmaster General 

and the Secretary of the 

Treasury made the Bureau 

of Engraving and Printing 

the exclusive printer of 

postage stamps. 

108 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Modern Production

In 2001, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing 

printed 4.7 billion United We Stand stamps, which 

were sold in coils. At the same time, an additional 

2.25 billion of the stamps, sold in booklets, were 

made by private firms, which began printing 

stamps once more in 1979. The Bureau printed 

its last postage stamps in 2005. Since then, all 

postage stamps have been printed by private 

firms.

At right: An employee of the Bureau of Engraving 

and Printing inspecting uncut sheets of the United 

We Stand issue as they emerge from the press in 

2001. Below: United We Stand stamp coils, 2001.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 109
UNUSUAL DELIVERY METHODS

Motorcycle Mail, 1914

Two special delivery messengers 

in Portland, Oregon, pose on their 

“Flying Merkels” — belt-driven, twocylinder V-twin motorcycles. The use 

of motorcycles for mail collection and 

delivery in cities peaked in the 1920s. 

Four-wheeled automobiles and trucks, 

with larger capacities and protection 

from weather, soon became the vehicles 

of choice.

Pneumatic Tube Mail, circa 1915

From the 1890s through the early 1900s, mail zipped between postal facilities beneath the crowded streets 

of six U.S. cities. Letters were packed into canisters that were propelled by pressurized air through a system of 

underground pneumatic tubes. The canisters could hold up to 500 letters and hurtled through the tubes at 30 

miles per hour. The service fell from favor and was suspended in 1918 as motor vehicles became more efficient. 

Pneumatic tube service was resurrected in New York City and Boston in the 1920s; it ended in Boston in 1950, and 

in New York in 1953.

110 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
The Autoped, circa 1916

Special delivery messengers in Washington, D.C., circa 1916, model their brand-new 

Autoped motor scooters, made by the Autoped Company of Long Island City, New 

York. According to the August 1914 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine, “There 

are no pedals or cranks about the machine, which will maintain ... an average speed 

of 20 miles per hour over country roads, with a consumption of gasoline of but 

one gallon to the 100 miles.” The Autoped did not catch on, and production of the 

vehicle ceased in 1921.

Ski Mail, 1920

Mail carriers used whatever means necessary to get the mail through. This 

1920 Idaho carrier strapped up to 80 pounds of mail on his back and traveled 

on skis from Rocky Bar to Atlanta, Idaho. His 16-mile route was one of the 

most dangerous in the country. Between 1892 and 1913, seven carriers lost 

their lives in snow slides on the route. The body of a carrier who died one 

January was not found until the following June.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 111
Helicopter Mail, 1946

In October 1946, the 

Post Office Department 

conducted a 3-week 

experiment using 

helicopters to carry mail 

in the Chicago area. 

Chicago received regular 

helicopter service in 

1949. Helicopters also 

carried mail in Los Angeles 

and New York. Shuttle 

service from the roof of 

the Chicago Post Office 

ended in 1957 due to the 

increasing weight of the 

helicopters.

Mail by Bus, 1952

In 1941, Highway Post Offices (HPOs) made their first 

appearance when a route was established between 

Washington, D.C., and Harrisonburg, Virginia, serving 

more than 20 intermediate Post Offices. Highway Post 

Offices were similar in function to Railway Post Offices 

and were created in part due to the decline of mailcarrying trains. Like railway mail clerks aboard trains, 

clerks onboard HPOs sorted mail en route for transfer 

to Post Offices and connecting routes. The number of 

HPOs peaked in 1959, at 172. The increasing number 

of mechanized mail-sorting facilities in the 1960s and 

1970s gradually rendered hand-sorting of mail by 

traveling clerks obsolete. The last HPO rolled between 

Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio, on June 30, 1974.

Mule Mail, 1996

The contract mail route to the Havasupai 

Indian Reservation, Supai, Arizona, far 

below the southern rim of the Grand 

Canyon, is the last mule train delivery in 

the United States. Helicopters and mail 

drops are impractical here, so a mule 

train makes the 6- to 8-hour round trip 

5 days a week, bringing everything from 

food to furniture to the reservation.

112 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Missile Mail, 1959

On June 8, 1959, in a move that Postmaster General 

Arthur A. Summerfield heralded as being “of historic 

significance to the peoples of the entire world,” the 

Navy submarine USS Barbero fired a guided missile 

carrying 3,000 letters towards the naval auxiliary air 

station in Mayport, Florida.112 Racing along at up to 

600 miles per hour, the guided missile traveled more 

than 100 miles, from the deck of the submarine off 

the coast of Florida to the air station, in about 22 

minutes. “Before man reaches the moon,” Summerfield 

was quoted as saying, “mail will be delivered within 

hours from New York to California, to England, to 

India, or to Australia by guided missiles.”113 History 

proved otherwise, but this experiment exemplifies the 

pioneering spirit of the Post Office Department.

Mail by Hovercraft, 2003

In western Alaska, a hovercraft began carrying mail 

from the town of Bethel to remote villages along the 

Kuskokwim River in 1997. The hovercraft usually carries 

parcels and “bypass mail” — large items such as auto 

parts and pallets of groceries that bypass Post Offices. 

When bad weather prohibits flying, the hovercraft also 

carries First-Class Mail.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 113
DELIVERY IN CITIES: A VISUAL TIMELINE

Letter Carrier Uniforms

City letter carriers were first required to wear a uniform in 1868; the uniform was blue-gray with black trim. 

Carriers’ uniforms have changed over time to provide greater comfort, especially in hot weather. 

For a detailed history of the letter carrier uniform, go to about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/welcome.htm.

1888 Circa 1894 1926 Circa 1940

114 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Circa 1953 1967 1973 2001

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 115
Mail Collection Vehicles

Originally, horse-drawn wagons were used to transport mail in large cities. Automobiles were first tested for mail collection in cities in 1899; they were able to cover the same distance as horse-drawn wagons in less than half the time. 

The first contract for mail collection by electric-powered automobile was for service in Minneapolis from January 

1901 through June 1903. The first contract for mail collection by gasoline-powered automobile was for service in 

Baltimore beginning in October 1906. By 1911, “motor wagons” were being used in seven cities; by 1933, only 

two percent of postal vehicles in cities were horse-drawn.

Screen Truck, 1914

Columbia Automobile, 

circa 1906

Screen Wagon, circa 1900

116 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
The Post Office Department originally painted its motor vehicles red, white, and blue, but changed the color to 

vermilion red beginning in February 1913, then switched to green, red, and black in October of that year. By 1915 

the Department returned to a red, white, and blue color scheme for its vehicles.

Beginning in 1921, when most of the postal fleet consisted of trucks transferred from the War Department, 

postal vehicles were painted olive drab. The color scheme reverted to red, white, and blue in 1954, and then to 

white in 1979.

Chevrolet 3/4 Ton 

Truck, 1958

2 Ton Truck, 1997

Ford Model A Truck, circa 1930

On The Road Video

Watch On the Road, a 9-minute video chronicling the use of motorized vehicles to move 

mail in cities. Courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum via its YouTube channel, 

SmithsonianNPM.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 117
Sit-stand Truck, 1961

Long-life Vehicle (LLV), 1996

City Delivery Vehicles

Cushing Mailster, 1958

Willys Jeep, 1953

Although some enterprising letter carriers in Los 

Angeles used their own autos to deliver mail as early 

as 1912 — cutting their eight-hour workday down 

to four — the Post Office Department did not 

motorize city delivery routes until the 1950s, 

in response to unprecedented suburban 

growth. The Department had motorized 

more than half of its residential routes 

by 1969 with Jeeps, three-wheeled 

mailsters, and sit-stand trucks. 

Jeeps were in general use in the 

1970s and 1980s. Long-life 

vehicles — longer lasting, 

lighter, and roomier than 

Jeeps — were introduced in 

1987. In 2015, the Postal 

Service began deploying 

extended-capacity 

ProMaster delivery vans.

ProMaster Van, 2017

Letter carriers used ProMaster vans, introduced 

in 2015, for “park and loop,” when carriers 

park a vehicle and make door-to-door deliveries 

on foot; mail collection; package delivery; and 

relay drop-offs.

118 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Uniform Badges, 1887–1982

Letter carriers were required to wear a numbered 

badge on their hat, cap, or helmet beginning in 1887. 

When wearing a hat became optional in 1972, carriers 

were directed to wear a badge on their clothing in plain 

view. Since 1982, letter carriers have not been required 

to wear a badge.

1887–1922

Several other styles were worn prior to 1922.

1888–1922

Alternate style patented by C.J. Heller in 1888.

1922–1956

1956–1982

The words “Letter Carrier” replaced the city and 

state in 1956.

Uniform Emblem Patches, 1956–present

An emblem patch featuring the postal seal was added 

to the letter carrier uniform in 1956. The current patch, 

featuring the Postal Service‘s logo — an eagle’s head 

leaning into the wind — was introduced in 1995.

1956–1965

1965–1970

1970–1991

1991–1995

1995–present

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 119
POSTMASTERS GENERAL

Megan J. Brennan took office as the 

nation’s 74th Postmaster General on 

February 1, 2015. She was the first 

woman appointed to the position. 

Shown here is a list of Postmasters 

General and the names of those 

who appointed them. Appointments 

by the President were made with 

the advice and consent of the 

Senate. 

Dates prior to 1900 are the dates 

the Postmasters General were 

appointed or commissioned. Dates 

after 1900 are the dates they took 

office. 

Benjamin Franklin July 26, 1775 Continental Congress

Richard Bache November 7, 1776 Continental Congress

Ebenezer Hazard January 28, 1782 Continental Congress

Samuel Osgood September 26, 1789 George Washington

Timothy Pickering August 12, 1791 George Washington

Joseph Habersham February 25, 1795 George Washington

Gideon Granger November 28, 1801 Thomas Jefferson

Return J. Meigs, Jr. March 17, 1814 James Madison

John McLean June 26, 1823 James Monroe

William T. Barry March 9, 1829 Andrew Jackson

Amos Kendall May 1, 1835 Andrew Jackson

John M. Niles May 19, 1840 Martin Van Buren

Francis Granger March 6, 1841 William Henry Harrison

Charles A. Wickliffe September 13, 1841 John Tyler

Cave Johnson March 6, 1845 James K. Polk

Jacob Collamer March 8, 1849 Zachary Taylor

Nathan Kelsey Hall July 23, 1850 Millard Filmore

Samuel D. Hubbard August 31, 1852 Millard Filmore

James Campbell March 7, 1853 Franklin Pierce

Aaron V. Brown March 6, 1857 James Buchanan

Joseph Holt March 14, 1859 James Buchanan

Horatio King February 12, 1861 James Buchanan

Montgomery Blair March 5, 1861 Abraham Lincoln

William Dennison September 24, 1864 Abraham Lincoln

Alexander W. Randall July 25, 1866 Andrew Johnson

John A. J. Creswell March 5, 1869 Ulysses Grant

James W. Marshall July 3, 1874 Ulysses Grant

Marshall Jewell August 24, 1874 Ulysses Grant

James N. Tyner July 12, 1876 Ulysses Grant

David M. Key March 12, 1877 Rutherford B. Hayes

Horace Maynard August 26, 1880 Rutherford B. Hayes

Thomas L. James March 5, 1881 James A. Garfield

Timothy O. Howe December 20, 1881 Chester A. Arthur

Walter Q. Gresham April 3, 1883 Chester A. Arthur

Frank Hatton October 14, 1884 Chester A. Arthur

William F. Vilas March 6, 1885 Grover Cleveland

Don M. Dickinson January 16, 1888 Grover Cleveland

John Wanamaker March 5, 1889 Benjamin Harrison

Wilson S. Bissell March 6, 1893 Grover Cleveland

120 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
William L. Wilson March 1, 1895 Grover Cleveland

James A. Gary March 5, 1897 William McKinley

Charles Emory Smith April 21, 1898 William McKinley

Henry C. Payne January 15, 1902 Theodore Roosevelt

Robert J. Wynne October 10, 1904 Theodore Roosevelt

George B. Cortelyou March 7, 1905 Theodore Roosevelt

George von L. Meyer March 5, 1907 Theodore Roosevelt

Frank H. Hitchcock March 6, 1909 William H. Taft

Albert S. Burleson March 5, 1913 Woodrow Wilson

Will H. Hays March 4, 1921 Warren G. Harding

Hubert Work March 4, 1922 Warren G. Harding

Harry S. New March 5, 1923 Warren G. Harding

Walter F. Brown March 6, 1929 Herbert Hoover

James A. Farley March 6, 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt

Frank C. Walker September 11, 1940 Franklin D. Roosevelt

Robert E. Hannegan June 30, 1945 Harry S. Truman

Jesse M. Donaldson December 16, 1947 Harry S. Truman

Arthur E. Summerfield January 21, 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower

J. Edward Day January 21, 1961 John F. Kennedy

John A. Gronouski September 30, 1963 John F. Kennedy

Lawrence F. O’Brien November 3, 1965 Lyndon B. Johnson

W. Marvin Watson April 26, 1968 Lyndon B. Johnson

Winton M. Blount January 22, 1969 Richard M. Nixon

Appointed by the Governors of the United States Postal Service

Winton M. Blount July 1, 1971 

E. T. Klassen January 1, 1972 

Benjamin F. Bailar February 16, 1975 

William F. Bolger March 15, 1978 

Paul N. Carlin January 1, 1985 

Albert V. Casey January 7, 1986 

Preston R. Tisch August 16, 1986 

Anthony M. Frank March 1, 1988 

Marvin T. Runyon July 6, 1992 

William J. Henderson May 16, 1998 

John E. Potter June 1, 2001 

Patrick R. Donahoe December 6, 2010 

Megan J. Brennan February 1, 2015 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 121
STATISTICS: PIECES AND POST OFFICES

 Income and expenses listed for 1789 are for three months only.

Year 

Pieces of Mail 

Handled 

Number of 

Post Offices 

Total Operating 

Revenue 

Total Operating

Expenses

1789 ... 75 $ 7,510 $ 7,560

1790 ... 75 37,935 32,140

1795 ... 453 160,620 117,893

1800 ... 903 280,804 213,994

1805 ... 1,558 421,373 377,367

1810 ... 2,300 551,684 495,969

1815 ... 3,000 1,043,065 748,121

1820 ... 4,500 1,111,927 1,160,926

1825 ... 5,677 1,306,525 1,229,043

1830 ... 8,450 1,850,583 1,932,708

1835 ... 10,770 2,993,556 2,757,350

1840 ... 13,468 4,543,522 4,718,236

1845 ... 14,183 4,289,842 4,320,732

1850 ... 18,417 5,499,985 5,212,953

1855 ... 24,410 6,642,136 9,968,342

1860 ... 28,498 8,518,067 14,874,601

1865 ... 28,882 14,556,159 13,694,728

1870 ... 28,492 18,879,537 23,998,838

1875 ... 35,547 26,791,314 33,611,309

1880 ... 42,989 33,315,479 36,542,804

1885 ... 51,252 42,560,844 50,046,235

1890 4,005,408,000 62,401 60,882,098 66,259,548

1895 5,134,281,000 70,064 76,983,128 87,179,551

1900 7,129,990,000 76,688 102,353,579 107,740,268

1905 10,187,506,000 68,131 152,826,585 167,399,169

1910 14,850,103,000 59,580 224,128,658 229,977,225

122 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Year 

Pieces of Mail 

Handled 

Number of 

Post Offices 

Total Operating 

Revenue 

Total Operating

Expenses

1915 ... 56,380 $ 287,248,165 $ 298,546,026

1920 ... 52,641 437,150,212 454,322,609

1925 ... 50,957 599,591,478 639,281,648

1930 27,887,823,000 49,063 705,484,098 803,667,219

1935 22,331,752,000 45,686 630,795,302 696,503,235

1940 27,749,467,000 44,024 766,948,627 807,629,180

1945 37,912,067,000 41,792 1,314,240,132 1,145,002,246

1950 45,063,737,000 41,464 1,677,486,967 2,222,949,000

1955 55,233,564,000 38,316 2,349,476,528 2,712,150,214

1960 63,674,604,000 35,238 3,276,588,433 3,873,952,908

1965 71,873,166,000 33,624 4,483,389,833 5,275,839,877

1970 84,881,833,000 32,002 6,472,737,791 7,982,551,936

Effective July 1, 1971, the Post Office Department was transformed into the United States Postal Service, 

an independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States.

1971 86,983,000,000 31,947 8,751,484,000 8,955,264,000

1975 89,265,979,000 30,754 11,548,104,000 12,574,205,000

1980 106,311,062,000 30,326 18,752,915,000 19,412,587,000

1985 140,097,956,000 29,557 28,705,691,000 29,207,201,000

1990 166,300,770,000 28,959 39,654,830,000 40,489,884,000

1995 180,733,700,000 28,392 54,293,500,000 50,730,200,000

2000 207,882,200,000 27,876 64,539,900,000 62,992,000,000

2005 211,742,700,000 27,385 69,907,400,000 68,283,000,000

2010 170,859,000,000 27,077 67,052,000,000 75,426,000,000

2015 154,157,000,000 26,615 68,928,000,000 73,826,000,000

2019 142,570,000,000 26,362 71,154,000,000 79,879,000,000

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 123
History of Postage Rates

Rates for Domestic Letters, 

1792–1863

Rates listed were for a “single letter,” defined as consisting of one sheet of paper until July 1, 1845, and 

thereafter as weighing 1⁄2 ounce or less, regardless of 

Effective Date Distance Postage, in Cents

June 1, 1792 not over 30 miles 6

over 30 and not exceeding 60 miles 8

over 60 and not exceeding 100 miles 10

over 100 and not exceeding 150 miles 12.5

over 150 and not exceeding 200 miles 15

over 200 and not exceeding 250 miles 17

over 250 and not exceeding 350 miles 20

over 350 and not exceeding 450 miles 22

over 450 miles 25

May 1, 1799 not over 40 miles 8

over 40 and not exceeding 90 miles 10

over 90 and not exceeding 150 miles 12.5

over 150 and not exceeding 300 miles 17

over 300 and not exceeding 500 miles 20

over 500 miles 25

 February 1, 1815 all distances 50% increase 

(to pay for the War of 1812)

Rates for Domestic Letters, 1863–2019 

Effective Date

Postage, in cents

Per 1⁄2 Ounce

July 1, 1863 3

October 1, 1883 2

Effective Date 

Postage, in cents

Per Ounce*

July 1, 1885 2

November 2, 1917 3

July 1, 1919 2

July 6, 1932 3

August 1, 1958 4

January 7, 1963 5

January 7, 1968 6

May 16, 1971 8

March 2, 1974 10

December 31, 1975 13

Prior to the transformation of the Post 

Office Department into the United States 

Postal Service effective July 1, 1971, low 

postage rates were subsidized by Congress.

124 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
the number of sheets. “Double letters” were charged double. Not included in this chart are rates for 

ship and steamboat letters and drop letters (for local delivery), which were assigned different rates. 

The last rates listed were effective until July 1, 1863. 

Effective Date Distance Postage, in Cents

April 1, 1816 all distances increase repealed

May 1, 1816 not over 30 miles 6

over 30 and not exceeding 80 miles 10

over 80 and not exceeding 150 miles 12.5

over 150 and not exceeding 400 miles 18.5*

over 400 miles 25

July 1, 1845 not over 300 miles 5

over 300 miles 10

July 1, 1851 not over 3,000 miles 3 if prepaid, 

5 if not prepaid

over 3,000 miles 6 if prepaid, 

10 if not prepaid

April 1, 1855 not over 3,000 miles 3 (prepayment required)

over 3,000 miles 10 (prepayment required)

* increased to 18.75 by the 

 Act of March 3, 1825

Effective Date

Postage, in cents

Per Ounce*

May 29, 1978 15

March 22, 1981 18

November 1, 1981 20

February 17, 1985 22

April 3, 1988 25

February 3, 1991 29

January 1, 1995 32

January 10, 1999 33

January 7, 2001 34

June 30, 2002 37

January 8, 2006 39

Postage, in cents

Effective Date Per Ounce*

May 14, 2007 41

May 12, 2008 42

May 11, 2009 44

January 22, 2012 45

January 27, 2013 46

January 26, 2014 49

April 10, 2016 47

January 22, 2017 49

January 21, 2018 50

January 27, 2019 55

*Since September 14, 1975, additional ounces have been charged at a lower rate. Since July 15, 1979, a surcharge has been 

added for non-standard envelope sizes.

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 125
Rates for Stamped 

Cards and Postcards, 

1873–2019 

Postcards (privately manufactured 

cards) were charged letter postage 

rates until July 1, 1898. Since then, 

the rates for postcards have been the 

same as for stamped cards (produced 

by the Postal Service) except for the 

period from April 15, 1925, to July 1, 

1928. 

Until 1999, stamped cards were 

called postal cards. On January 10, 

1999, the Postal Service changed 

the term to stamped cards and 

added a charge for the cost of their 

manufacture. 

In addition to regular stamped cards, 

in 1994 the Postal 

Service began selling 

higher-cost stamped 

cards with collectible 

artwork, called premium stamped cards 

since 2007.

Rates for the 

Pony Express

From July 1, 1861, to 

October 26, 1861, the 

Pony Express operated 

under contract with the 

U.S. Post Office Department, speeding letters between St. Joseph, Missouri, and San Francisco, 

California, in about 10 days. During this time, the postage rate for letters sent via Pony Express 

was $1 per 1⁄2 ounce versus 3 or 10 cents for letters sent via regular mail, which took about 20 to 

26 days.

In its first 15 months of operation, the Pony Express operated as a more costly private express 

— charging $5 per 1⁄2 ounce when it began on April 3, 1860. The rate was cut in half on July 31, 

1860, and lowered to $2 per 1⁄2 ounce in April 1861.

Effective Date Postage, in Cents

May 12, 1873 1

November 2, 1917 2

July 1, 1919 1

April 15, 1925 1 for stamped cards, 

2 for postcards

July 1, 1928 1

January 1, 1952 2

August 1, 1958 3

January 7, 1963 4

January 7, 1968 5

May 16, 1971 6

March 2, 1974 8

September 14, 1975 7

December 31, 1975 9

May 29, 1978 10

March 22, 1981 12

November 1, 1981 13

February 17, 1985 14

April 3, 1988 15

February 3, 1991 19

January 1, 1995 20

July 1, 2001 21

June 30, 2002 23

January 8, 2006 24

May 14, 2007 26

May 12, 2008 27

May 11, 2009 28

April 17, 2011 29

January 22, 2012 32

January 27, 2013 33

January 26, 2014 34

May 31, 2015 35

April 10, 2016 34

January 21, 2018 35

126 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Rates for Domestic Airmail, 1918–1977

Airmail service began on May 15, 1918, between New York and Washington, D.C, via Philadelphia. By the 

end of 1920, routes had been established from New York to San Francisco. Airmail as a separate class of 

mail was officially discontinued on May 1, 1977, although it effectively ended in October 1975, when the 

Postal Service announced that First-Class postage — which was three cents cheaper — would buy the same 

or better level of service. By then, transportation patterns had changed, and most First-Class letters were 

already zipping cross-country via airplane.

There was no airmail rate from July 18, 1919, to July 1, 1924. During this time a small percentage of 

letters were flown at the First-Class rate of 2 cents per ounce.

Effective Date Postage

May 15, 1918 24 cents per ounce, of which 10 cents was for special delivery

July 15, 1918 16 cents first ounce and 6 cents each additional ounce, of which 10 cents was 

for special delivery

December 15, 1918 6 cents per ounce, without special delivery

July 1, 1924 8 cents per ounce, per zone (the zones were New York to Chicago, Chicago to 

Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Cheyenne, Wyoming, to San Francisco)

July 1, 1925 10 cents per ounce for overnight service from New York to Chicago, 8 cents per 

ounce daytime zone rate

February 15, 1926 Contract air routes

Under 1,000 miles: 10 cents per ounce*

1,000 to 1,500 miles: 15 cents per ounce*

over 1,500 miles: 20 cents per ounce*

 *plus 5 cents per ounce per zone if carried partly over government routes

Government routes

Daytime zone rate: 8 cents per ounce

New York to Chicago (overnight): 10 cents per ounce

February 1, 1927 10 cents per half-ounce, regardless of distance

August 1, 1928 5 cents first ounce, 10 cents each additional ounce

July 6, 1932 8 cents first ounce, 13 cents each additional ounce

July 1, 1934 6 cents per ounce

March 26, 1944 8 cents per ounce

October 1, 1946 5 cents per ounce

January 1, 1949 6 cents per ounce

4 cents for airmail postal cards and postcards

August 1, 1958 7 cents per ounce

5 cents for airmail postal cards and postcards 

January 7, 1963 8 cents per ounce

6 cents for airmail postal cards and postcards

January 7, 1968 10 cents per ounce

8 cents for airmail postal cards and postcards

May 16, 1971 11 cents per ounce

9 cents for airmail postal cards and postcards

March 2, 1974 13 cents per ounce

11 cents for airmail postal cards and postcards

December 31, 1975 17 cents first ounce, 15 cents each additional ounce

14 cents for airmail postal cards and postcards

Amelia Earhart Stamp

Issued July 24, 1963

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 127
POSTAL INSIGNIA

Seals1829 – 1837

Mercury, a post rider, and now the eagle have symbolized the 

U.S. postal system at various times. In 1782, Postmaster General 

Ebenezer Hazard used the figure of Mercury, messenger of the 

gods, in his official seal. Mercury’s feet, helmet, and staff had 

wings, and he was encircled by an inscription that read, in Latin, 

“Seal of the Office of the General Messenger.” By 1824, the 

inscription was changed to read “Seal of the Genl Post-Office 

Department,” Mercury’s right hand was raised, and he was 

standing on top of a globe. By 1829, “America” was written on 

the globe.

1837 – 1970

Amos Kendall, in his May 1, 1837, Order of the Postmaster 

General, moved away from classical, divine imagery when he 

directed that the official seal of the Post Office Department 

portray “a Post Horse in speed, with Mail-bags and rider, 

encircled by the words ‘Post Office Department, United States 

of America.’” The energy and effort of a human on a gallant 

horse served as the seal of the Post Office Department from 

1837 through 1970. 

esent 1970 – Pr

When President Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act

into law on August 12, 1970, the bald eagle became the center 

of the Postal Service seal. The eagle was poised for flight on a 

white field, above red and blue bars framing the words “U.S. 

Mail,” which were in black. The ochre border featured the 

words “United States Postal Service” on three sides and nine 

five-pointed stars at the base. (The number of stars had no 

special significance.) 

esent

Logo

1993 – Pr

On October 12, 1993, Postmaster General Marvin Runyon 

unveiled a new corporate logo: an eagle’s head in white, leaning 

into the wind, on a blue background. The 1993 corporate 

logo became a registered trademark on September 12, 1995. 

However, the logo has not replaced the 1970 postal seal as the 

official seal of the United States Postal Service.

128 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
Inscriptions

Contrary to popular belief, the United States Postal Service has no official motto. However, a number 

of postal buildings contain inscriptions, the most familiar of which appear in New York City and 

Washington, D.C.

At the former New York City Post Office, at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street, these words appear:

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift 

completion of their appointed rounds. 

These words were adapted from a translation of the works of Herodotus, who chronicled the wars 

between the Greeks and the Persians around 500 B.C. The Persians operated a system of mounted 

postal couriers who performed with great fidelity. 

Another inscription can be found on the former Washington, D.C., Post Office, at Massachusetts Avenue 

and North Capitol Street, now the site of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum:

Messenger of Sympathy and Love

Servant of Parted Friends

Consoler of the Lonely

Bond of the Scattered Family

Enlarger of the Common Life 

Carrier of News and Knowledge

Instrument of Trade and Industry

Promoter of Mutual Acquaintance

Of Peace and of Goodwill 

Among Men and Nations

The original words were penned by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, former president of Harvard University, and were 

changed slightly by President Woodrow Wilson before being inscribed on the building. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 129
RESEARCH SOURCES

See also U.S. Postal Service Publication 119, Sources of 

Historical Information on Post Offices, Postal Employees, Mail 

Routes, and Mail Contractors, listed in the bibliography and 

available online at about.usps.com.

American Philatelic Research Library 

100 Match Factory Place

Bellefonte PA 16823-1367

stamps.org/services/library

The American Philatelic Research Library, the library of 

the American Philatelic Society, is the largest public philatelic library in the United States. The library publishes a 

quarterly journal, Philatelic Literature Review. 

Historian

United States Postal Service 

475 L’Enfant Plaza SW 

Washington DC 20260-0012

about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history

The historian maintains Postmaster Finder, the Postal 

Service’s national historic record of Postmasters by Post 

Office, online at about.usps.com/who-we-are/postmasterfinder. 

The historian can also provide guidance in researching specific aspects of postal history. Upon request, the historian’s staff 

can provide the names and appointment dates of Postmasters 

who have served at particular Post Offices, Post Office establishment and discontinuance dates, and the dates of any Post 

Office name changes. Response time varies with the number 

of requests received. The historian also manages the Postal 

Service’s Library, which contains a collection of historical material including the Annual Report of the Postmaster General

since 1789, Postal Laws and Regulations since 1794, the United 

States Official Postal Guide from 1874 to 1954, and the Postal 

Bulletin since 1880. (Exact titles vary.) The collection is open 

to the public by appointment. Back issues of some of these 

publications, digitized by the U.S. Postal Bulletin Consortium, 

are available online at uspostalbulletins.com.

Library of Congress

101 Independence Avenue SE

Washington DC 20540-0002

loc.gov

The Library’s Geography and Map Division has early post 

route, railroad, and other historical maps. Some of these maps 

have been digitized and can be viewed or downloaded from 

its website. Visit loc.gov, and search for “map collections.”

National Archives and Records Administration

700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington DC 20408-0001

archives.gov

The National Archives houses postal records prior to 

1971. Some of the records most useful in researching local 

postal history have been reproduced on microfilm, including National Archives Microfilm Publication M1131,

Record of Appointment of Postmasters, October 1789–1832; 

Publication M841, Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 

1832–September 30, 1971 (available on ancestry.com); and 

Publication M1126, Post Office Department Reports of Site 

Locations, 1837–1950. For more information on these and 

other records, write to the National Archives or visit its 

website.

National Personnel Records Center

National Archives and Records Administration

ATTN: Archival Programs

Post Office Box 38757

St. Louis, MO 63138-0757

archives.gov/st-louis/civilian-personnel

The National Personnel Records Center has personnel 

records for many postal employees whose service ended 

after 1910. Researchers should provide as much identifying 

information as possible about the former employee and his/

her place and dates of employment. The Center also houses 

rural route cards, filed by Post Office, which provide details 

on rural routes and carriers prior to 1971. Note: To request 

the personnel records of an employee whose service ended 

after 1951, write to the National Personnel Records Center, 

Annex; 1411 Boulder Boulevard; Valmeyer, IL 62295-

2603. For more information, visit archives.gov/st-louis/

civilian-personnel.

130 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
National Postal Museum 

Smithsonian Institution

2 Massachusetts Avenue NE

MRC 570 PO Box 37012

Washington DC 20013-7012

postalmuseum.si.edu

The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum offers exhibits 

tracing the history of the postal system in the United States. 

It houses nearly six million postal-related items — mostly 

stamps, but also postal stationery, greeting cards, covers 

and letters, mailboxes, postal vehicles, handstamps, metering machines, patent models, uniforms, badges, and other 

objects related to postal history and philately. The museum’s 

library, with more than 40,000 volumes and manuscripts, is 

open to the public by appointment. In 2013, the William H. 

Gross Stamp Gallery — the largest in the world — opened at 

the museum.

Postal History Foundation Museum and Library

920 North 1st Avenue

Tucson, AZ 85719-4818

postalhistoryfoundation.org

The Postal History Foundation operates a museum with 

displays of postal artifacts, and also the Slusser Memorial 

Philatelic Library, which has more than 30,000 publications, 

photographs, maps, and other items relating to philately and 

postal history. The library’s archival collections focus on the 

postal history of Arizona and the American Southwest.

Railway Mail Service Library

117 East Main Street

Boyce VA 22620-9639

railwaymailservicelibrary.org

The Railway Mail Service Library has artifacts, mail route 

schedules, schemes of mail distribution, and publications 

relating to the railway mail service/postal transportation 

service. The library is open by appointment but handles 

most requests by mail. 

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 131
NOTES

1 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington, 

DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), 2:208.

2 Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, June 28, 1804, in The Writings 

of Thomas Jefferson, Volume XI, edited by Albert Ellery 

Bergh (Washington, DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial 

Association, 1907), 33.

3 The year of Neale’s grant is given according to the current, 

Gregorian calendar. Neale’s grant was dated February 17, 1691, 

under the old, Julian calendar.

4 William Goddard’s petition to the Continental Congress, 

September 29, 1774, in the collection of the National Postal 

Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

5 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington, 

DC: Government Printing Office, 1905), 2:57.

6 George Washington to John Jay, July 18, 1788. Letter. From 

Library of Congress, The George Washington Papers at the 

Library of Congress, 1741–1799, Series 2: Letterbooks 1754–

1799, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html 

(accessed February 25, 2003).

7 Ebenezer Hazard to Jeremy Belknap, September 27, 1789, in 

Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. III, 

Fifth Series (Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 

1877), 192.

8 United States Statutes At Large, Volume 1, page 70 (1 Stat. 70).

9 1 Stat. 178 and 1 Stat. 218.

10 1 Stat. 232.

11 1 Stat. 354.

12 Ebenezer Hazard to the Continental Congress, November 14, 

1776, in American Archives, Fifth Series, 3:681 (New York, 

NY: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972) (originally by Peter 

Force, Washington, DC, 1853).

13 Ebenezer Hazard to Rev. John Witherspoon, November 14, 

1776, in ibid., 681–682.

14 Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, according 

to the current, Gregorian calendar. He was born on January 6, 

1705, under the old, Julian calendar.

15 Benjamin P. Thomas, “Lincoln the Postmaster,” Bulletin of the 

Abraham Lincoln Association (Springfield, IL), No. 31, June 

1933, 7–8. 

16 17 Stat. 283.

17 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, The Henry Reeve 

Text as Revised by Francis Bowen, Now Further Corrected and 

Edited with Introduction, Editorial Notes, and Bibliographies by 

Phillips Bradley (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 1:317. 

18 12 Stat. 704.

19 1 Stat. 236.

20 5 Stat. 735.

21 2 Stat. 805.

22 3 Stat. 220.

23 3 Stat. 767.

24 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1835, in Public 

Documents Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States, 

First Session of the Twenty-Fourth Congress, Begun and Held at 

the City of Washington, December 7, 1835, and in the Sixtieth 

Year of the Independence of the United States, Volume 1, 

Number 1 (Washington, DC: Gales & Seaton, 1836), 394.

25 In 1847, Congress authorized the Secretary of the Navy to 

enter into contracts with private companies for the construction and operation of mail-carrying steamships. The plan was 

for the steamships to be convertible to warships if the need 

arose. Congress’ intent was to simultaneously upgrade the U.S. 

naval fleet, provide mail service to California, and subsidize 

American steamship companies so they could better compete 

with England’s successful Cunard line.

26 11 Stat. 190.

27 New York Times, June 25, 1857, 4. 

28 Walter B. Lang, editor, The First Overland Mail: Butterfield 

Trail, St. Louis to San Francisco 1858-1861 (unknown binding, 

1940), 129.

29 U.S. Post Office Department, History of the Railway Mail 

Service; A Chapter in the History of Postal Affairs in the 

United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 

1885), 28.

30 Ibid., 41.

31 5 Stat. 738. 

32 U.S. Post Office Department, Proposals for Carrying the Mail in 

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 

and Connecticut (Washington, DC: C. Alexander, Printer, 

1853), 164–166.

33 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1859, 16.

34 Ibid., 1860, 2.

35 Circa 1930 U.S. Post Office Department memorandum, files, 

USPS Historian.

36 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1862, 32.

37 In 1879 eligibility for free city delivery was extended to include 

any town with at least 20,000 residents within its corporate 

limits or any Post Office with at least $20,000 in annual revenue, 

and in 1887 to include any town with at least 10,000 residents 

or Post Office with at least $10,000 in annual revenue. In 1948 

the population requirement was dropped to 2,500 as long as 

the area served was at least 50 percent improved with houses. 

In 1972, “750 possible deliveries” was added as an alternative 

minimum population requirement (Postal Service Manual Issue 

41, October 16, 1972).

38 12 Stat. 703.

39 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1922, 24.

40 Ibid., 1950, 28.

41 A small percentage of rural customers have received triweekly 

service, getting mail every other day. Also, a few cities have chosen to receive mail on Sunday instead of Saturday. For example, 

Loma Linda, California, with a large Seventh-Day Adventist 

population that observed the Sabbath on Saturday, received 

mail on Sunday instead of Saturday until April 23, 2011.

42 Commission on Postal Service, Report of the Commission 

on Postal Service, Volume 1 (Washington, DC: Government 

Printing Office, 1977), 6.

132 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY
43 94 Stat. 2607.

44 Committee Chairman Edwin A. Neiss to Postmaster General 

Will H. Hays, Aug. 24, 1921, vertical files, USPS Corporate 

Library. 

45 U.S. Post Office Department, Supervision of City Delivery Service

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1930), 8. 

46 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1891, 84.

47 Ibid., 86.

48 Ibid., 1902, 129.

49 Ibid., 1897, 112–114.

50 Ibid., 1901, 122. Locks on rural mailboxes have always been 

optional; initially carriers used master keys to open locked 

boxes. Since May 28, 1981, rural carriers have delivered mail 

into locked boxes through slots.

51 Ibid., 1902, 101.

52 Ibid., 1929, 26. 

53 National Archives Microfilm Publication M1126, Post Office 

Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950, Roll # 264, 

application to establish the Keyser’s Ridge Post Office in 

Allegany County, Maryland, dated February 23, 1850, on form 

printed in 1840s. The same language also appears on the application to establish the Pipe Creek, Bandera County, Texas, 

Post Office, dated August 26, 1873 (ibid., Roll # 565). 

54 Ibid., Roll # 580, application to establish the Burleson, Johnson 

County, Texas, Post Office, dated November 21, 1881. 

55 Ibid., application to establish the Donald, Johnson County, 

Texas, Post Office, dated July 21, 1892. 

56 First Report of the United States Board on Geographic Names, 

1890–1891 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 

1892), 2.

57 Ibid., 5.

58 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1896, 43.

59 Postal Operations Manual, POM Issue 9, July 2002, Updated 

with Postal Bulletin Revisions Through October 30, 2017, part 

123.413e, http://blue.usps.gov/cpim/ftp/manuals/pom/pomtc.

pdf (accessed December 28, 2017). 

60 37 Stat. 539.

61 The weight limit for parcels going to nearby addresses was 

increased to 20 pounds on August 15, 1913, and on January 1, 

1914, the weight limits were increased to 50 pounds for parcels 

to nearby addresses and 20 pounds for parcels traveling further. 

On July 1, 1915, the size limit was increased to 84 inches. 

Beginning on March 15, 1918, weight limits were increased 

to 70 pounds for parcels to nearby addresses and 50 pounds 

for parcels traveling further. The weight and size limits of all 

parcels, regardless of destination, were raised to 70 pounds and 

100 inches on August 1, 1931. 

62 U.S. Post Office Department, The Postal Bulletin, No. 11925, 

April 9, 1919.

63 William C. Hopson to Second Assistant Postmaster General, 

April 11, 1921, Air Mail Service Personnel Files, Record Group 

28, National Archives and Records Administration.

64 Hopson to Duard B. Colyer, Air Mail Service, September 4, 

1920, Air Mail Service Personnel Files, Record Group 28, 

National Archives and Records Administration. 

65 D. B. Colyer, News Letter. Week Ending September 26, 1925, Air 

Mail Service, Omaha, Nebraska, September 26, 1925, Record 

Group 28, National Archives and Records Administration.

66 Hopson to Colyer, May 1, 1925, Air Mail Service Personnel 

Files, Record Group 28, National Archives and Records 

Administration. 

67 Rita Lloyd Moroney, “Above and Beyond,” The Encyclopedia 

of Aviation and Space Sciences (Chicago: New Horizons 

Publishers, Inc., 1967), 77.

68 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “The Freedom of the Human Spirit 

Shall Go On,” Address at the Dedication of National Gallery 

of Art, March 17, 1941. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley,

The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.

edu/ws/index.php?pid=16091 (accessed February 5, 2007). 

69 Sometimes referred to as the “Zone Improvement Plan Code.”

70 Post Office Department Release Number 264, October 

13, 1959, “Statement by Postmaster General Arthur E. 

Summerfield.”

71 U.S. House. Hearings, Committee on Appropriations. 

Subcommittee on Departments of Treasury and Post Office 

and Executive Office of the President. 90th Congress, 1st 

session, 27 February 1967 (Washington, DC: Government 

Printing Office, 1967), 5.

72 Ibid., 27.

73 Towards Postal Excellence: The Report of the President’s 

Commission on Postal Organization (Washington, DC: 

Government Printing Office, 1982), iii. 

74 Ibid., 34.

75 Ibid., 33.

76 84 Stat. 719.

77 In 1970, when the Board was established, the first nine 

appointments were for staggered terms of one to nine years. 

Subsequent appointments were made for a full nine years or, 

when vacancies occurred, for the remainder of the unexpired 

terms.

78 United States Postal Service, Comprehensive Statement on 

Postal Operations, 1995, 28.

79 David M. Walker, U.S. Postal Service: Financial Outlook and 

Transformation Challenges (GAO-01-733T, May 15, 2001), 

2. Testimony. From United States General Accountability 

Office, Reports and Testimony, http://www.gao.gov/new.items/

d01733t.pdf (accessed September 15, 2006).

80 USPS News Link, October 30, 2001, files, USPS Historian.

81 Public Law 109-435; 120 Stat. 3198.

82 United States Government Accountability Office, GAO09-958T, August 6, 2009, U.S. Postal Service: Restructuring 

Urgently Needed to Achieve Financial Viability, Highlights.

83 United States Government Accountability Office, GAO-11-

759T, June 15, 2011, U.S. Postal Service: Dire Financial Outlook 

and Changing Mail Use Require Network Restructuring, 

Highlights.

84 Statement of Postmaster General/CEO Patrick R. Donahoe 

before the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal 

Service & Labor Policy, United States House of Representatives, 

March 27, 2012, http://about.usps.com/news/testimony/2012/

pr12_pmg0327.pdf (accessed January 15, 2013).

85 Statement of Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan before 

the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform, 

United States House of Representatives, May 11, 2016, 

http://about.usps.com/news/testimony/2016/pr16_pmg0511.pdf

(accessed September 9, 2016).

THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 133
86 Statement of Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan before 

the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee 

Hearing “Accomplishing Postal Reform in the 115th Congress 

— H.R. 756, the Postal Service Reform Act of 2017,” February 

7, 2017, http://about.usps.com/news/testimony/2017/pr17_

pmg0207.pdf (accessed December 29, 2017). 

87 Information on postal employees who were also civil rights 

leaders is available in the paper “African-American Postal 

Workers in the 20th Century” at http://about.usps.com/whowe-are/postal-history/african-american-workers-20thc.pdf, 

and the book There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African 

American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and 

Equality, by Philip F. Rubio (Chapel Hill, NC: The University 

of North Carolina Press, 2010).

88 Cited by Jerry D. Thompson in Vaqueros in Blue & Gray 

(Austin, TX: State House Press, 2000), 22–23.

89 Ibid., 24.

90 Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle, ed., The Congress of Women 

Held in the Woman’s Building, World’s Columbian Exposition. 

Chicago, U.S.A., 1893, Volume II (Chicago, IL: W. B. Conkey 

Company, Publishers, 1894), 608, http://books.google.com

(accessed October 27, 2014). 

91 Triumph of equal school rights in Boston. Proceedings of 

the presentation meeting held in Boston, December 17, 1855 

(Boston, MA: R. F. Wallcut, 1856), 2, 4, www.hathitrust.org

(accessed February 20, 2015).

92 Luis F. Emilio, History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of 

Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863–1865 (Boston, MA: 

The Boston Book Company, 1894), frontispiece, http://books.

google.com (accessed October 27, 2014). 

93 John F. Kennedy, “Executive Order 10925 – Establishing the 

President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity,” 

March 6, 1961. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The 

American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/

ws/?pid=58863 (accessed December 3, 2010). 

94 John F. Kennedy, “Memorandum on Equal Opportunity for 

Women in the Federal Service,” July 24, 1962. Gerhard Peters 

and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://

www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=58863 (accessed May 30, 

2007). 

95 The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New York, NY: 

Washington Square Press, Inc., 1965), 160.

96 The Hugh Finlay Journal, Colonial Postal History, 1773–1774

([s.l.]: U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, Inc., c1975), 1.

97 House Report No. 103, 23rd Congress, 2nd Session, 

“Examination of the Post Office Department,” February 13, 

1835, 194; letter from Postmaster General William Barry, 

May 5, 1830, American State Papers: Post Office Department, 

1:256.

98 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1843, 4. 

99 “History of the Inspection Service,” Post Office Inspection 

Service Survey, 1954, August, 10–11, and September, 9-10.

100 The five Post Offices were located at Savannah, Georgia; Old 

Point Comfort, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; Mobile, 

Alabama; and Natchez, Mississippi.

101 Congressional Globe, Senate, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, 661 

(1865).

102 13 Stat. 507.

103 P. H. Woodward, Guarding the Mails; Or, The Secret Service of 

the Post-Office Department (Hartford, CT: J. P. Fitch, 1882), 442.

104 “Mail-Bag Mysteries: How our Country Cousins are ‘Taken 

in and Done for’ — Some Ingenious Swindles,” The New-York 

Times, June 11, 1871, 6.

105 Woodward, 421–422.

106 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1879, 17.

107 “Says Poster Snare Got De Autremonts,” The New-York Times, 

July 6, 1927, 16. See also ibid., April 24, 1927, XX4, and The 

Washington Post, September 23, 1928, M6.

108 Ponzi promised a 50 percent return on investments from 

profits made redeeming international reply coupons bought 

cheaply in war-torn Europe for their greater value in U.S. currency. He continued seeking investors even after he learned 

the coupons could not be redeemed for cash. Only his earliest 

investors profited, because they were paid from funds collected from later investors. 

109 Annual Report of the Postmaster General, 1967, 65.

110 United States Postal Inspection Service Annual Report, 1972, 14.

111 United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, FiveYear Strategic Plan, FY 2004-2008. From Office of Inspector 

General, http://www.uspsoig.gov/sp_0408.pdf (accessed 

March 3, 2006).

112 U.S. Post Office Department, Release No. 149, [June 8, 1959]. 

113 U.S. Post Office Department, Release No. 23, January 23, 1959.

114 The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee was established by 

the Postmaster General’s Order # 56304.

115 Reprinted in The New World; a Weekly Family Journal of 

Popular Literature, Science, Art and News, February 8, 1845, 

86, American Periodicals Series Online, www.proquest.com 

(accessed April 20, 2011).

116 “The World of Stamps: Postmaster’s Decision: The Why of 

Philately,” The New York Times, November 25, 1962, 169. 

134 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beecher, Henry W., and Anthony S. Wawrukiewicz. U.S. Domestic 

Postal Rates, 1872–1999, Revised Second Edition. Portland, OR: 

CAMA Publishing Company, 1999. 338 pp.

Bruns, James H. Great American Post Offices. New York, NY: John 

Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998. 274 pp. 

— Mail on the Move. Polo, IL: Transportation Trails, 1992. 224 pp.

— Motorized Mail. Iola, WI: Krause Publications, 1997. 253 pp.

Butler, Ruth Lapham. Doctor Franklin, Postmaster General. Garden 

City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1928. 200 pp.

Chapman, Arthur. The Pony Express: The Record of a Romantic 

Adventure in Business. New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1932. 

319 pp.

Corbett, Christopher. Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and 

Lasting Legend of the Pony Express. New York, NY: Broadway 

Books, 2003. 268 pp. 

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THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY 137
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS

138 THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE AN AMERICAN HISTORY

Introduction ............................................................1

Colonial Times ........................................................2

The Postal Service Begins ......................................4

The Growth of the Postal Service .........................8

Moving the Mail ...................................................12

Reaching Out to Everyone ..................................26

The 20th Century .................................................38

Postal Reorganization ..........................................60

The Automation Age ...........................................68

21st Century Challenges and Change .................76

Diversity Past and Present ...................................86

Protecting the Mail ..............................................92

U.S. Postage Stamps ..........................................100

Unusual Delivery Methods ................................110

Delivery in Cities: A Visual Timeline .................114

Postmasters General ..........................................120

Statistics: Pieces and Post Offices .....................122

History of Postage Rates ...................................124

Postal Insignia ....................................................128

Research Sources ................................................130

Notes ...................................................................132

Bibliography .......................................................136

Chronology of Events ........................................138