THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE

More Than 

Two Centuries 

of Service

For more information, 

visit “Who We Are: Our History,” at 

about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/welcome.htm.
The history 

of the United States Postal 

Service® is an ongoing 

story of enormous depth 

and breadth, rooted in 

a single, great principle: 

every person in the United 

States — no matter who, 

no matter where — has 

an equal right to secure, 

reliable, and affordable 

mail service.

For more than two 

centuries, the Postal 

ServiceTM has delivered 

on this promise, uniting 

a diverse nation while 

continually embracing 

change.

1775 Benjamin Franklin appointed first Postmaster 

General by the Continental Congress

1847 U.S. postage stamps issued

1855 Prepayment of postage required

1858 Street letter boxes introduced

1860 Pony Express began its 18-month run

1863 Free city delivery began 

1864 First Railway Post OfficeTM established and 

domestic money orders introduced

1873 U.S. postal cards issued

1874 General Postal Union (now Universal Postal 

Union) established

1893 First commemorative stamps issued

1896 Rural free delivery began

1913 Parcel Post

® began

1918 Scheduled airmail service began

1927 Scheduled international airmail service began

1943 Postal zoning system began in largest cities

1950 Residential deliveries reduced to one a day

1963 ZIP CodeTM inaugurated

1965 OCR scanner (ZIP Code reader) deployed

1970 Express Mail

® began experimentally

1971 United States Postal Service® began operations

1982 Last year Postal ServiceTM accepted public 

service subsidy (taxpayer dollars)

1983 ZIP+4

® Code began

1992 Self-adhesive stamps introduced nationwide

1998 U.S. semipostal stamp issued

2002 Click-N-ShipTM launched

2007 ForeverTM stamp issued

2009 Free usps.com iPhone app offered

2011 Every Door Direct Mail

® introduced

Chronology of Events

Cover and inside front cover images courtesy of Library of Congress (LOC).

1900 76,688 $102,353,579 $107,740,268 7,129,990,000 93.4 ---- ----1910 59,580 224,128,658 229,977,225 14,850,103,000 161.5 ---- ----1920 52,641 437,150,212 454,322,609 ---- ---- ---- ----1930 49,063 705,484,098 803,667,219 27,887,823,000 227.1 ---- 254,5631940 44,024 766,948,627 807,629,180 27,749,467,000 210.8 ---- 266,0761950 41,464 1,677,486,967 2,222,949,000 45,063,737,000 297.8 ---- 363,7741960 35,238 3,276,588,433 3,873,952,908 63,674,604,000 355.1 ---- 408,9871970 32,002 6,472,737,791 7,982,551,936 84,881,833,000 417.5 ---- 548,5721980 30,326 18,752,915,000 19,412,587,000 106,311,062,000 469.3 ---- 536,3731990 28,959 39,654,830,000 40,489,884,000 166,300,770,000 668.6 117,000,000 760,6682000 27,876 64,540,000,000 62,992,000,000 207,882,200,000 738.7 134,500,000 787,5382010 27,077 67,052,000,000 75,426,000,000 170,859,000,000 553.4 150,900,000 583,908

Number of

Number of Pieces of Mail Number of Career

Year Post Offices Income Expenses Pieces of Mail per Capita Delivery Points Employees

(addresses)
...THAT

LOC

women have always served as Postmasters? 

Mary Katherine Goddard was Postmaster of Baltimore, 

Maryland, when Benjamin Franklin was named 

the first American Postmaster General in July 1775, 

making her the first woman Postmaster in the United 

Colonies, predecessor of the United States. 

Did You Know...?

...THAT the Pony Express was not operated by the Post Office Department, but 

by a private company? It ran for 18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861, and 

operated under contract as a U.S. Mail route during only its final four months. The 

express was discontinued when the transcontinental telegraph line was completed.

...THAT William Carney, the first African American 

to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor, was also 

one of the first African Americans appointed a city letter 

carrier? Carney was awarded the medal for his service during the Civil 

War at the Battle of Fort Wagner. In 1869, Carney was appointed one of the first letter 

carriers in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He served in the position until 1901. 

...THAT Roswell Beardsley was the longest-serving 

Postmaster? He was Postmaster of the North Lansing, New York, 

Post Office for over 74 years, from 1828 to 1903, serving under 

20 Presidents and 34 Postmasters General.

...THAT William Cooper Nell, the earliest known African-American civilian 

employee of the federal government, was a postal employee? He served as a clerk at 

the Boston Post Office from 1863 until his death in 1874.

...THAT although it was against postal regulations, several children were “mailed” 

in the early years of Parcel Post? In 1913, Jesse and Mathilda Beagle sent their 

8-month-old son to his grandmother, who lived a few miles away, via U.S. Mail. 

Baby Beagle was just under the 11-pound limit for parcels. His parents paid the rural 

carrier 15 cents’ postage and insured their “parcel” for $50. 

...THAT the last dogsled route in Alaska, from 

Gambell to Savoonga, was converted to an airplane 

route in 1963?

...THAT in 1916, the Postal Service transported nearly 40 tons of bricks through the 

mail? To save money, W. H. Coltharp had 15,000 bricks mailed from Salt Lake City to 

Vernal, Utah, in 50-pound packages, to help build the 

Bank of Vernal. Soon afterwards, postal officials revised 

regulations to prohibit such large mailings. 

LOC

LOC
To foster travel and commerce, from 1785 to 1845 the Post Office Department 

favored stagecoaches when awarding mail transportation contracts, as directed by 

Congress. Stagecoaches carried passengers and freight in addition to U.S. Mail. 

When railroads were established in the 1830s, the Department quickly embraced 

them. Due to railroads’ greater speed and reliability, the transit time from New York 

to New Orleans was reduced from about 18 days in 1835 to just over two days in 

1885. From the 1870s to the 1950s, railroads were the primary mode of mail transportation, with trains zipping mail from station to station. 

Mail aboard trains not only traveled faster — it traveled smarter. An army of postal 

workers called “railway mail clerks” rode the rails in specially equipped cars called 

Railway Post Offices. From 1864 to 1977, railway mail clerks expedited delivery by 

sorting mail en route as it rumbled to its destination. To save even more time, clerks 

exchanged mail at smaller Post Offices “on the fly” without the train stopping. Clerks 

would toss out one pouch of mail and, seconds later, scoop up another pouch — filled 

Moving the Mail

Airmail Pilot, 1920s; 

Loading Airmail, 

ca. 1925; Railway 

Clerks, ca. 1929

Effective Date Rate in cents

July 1, 1863 3

October 1, 1883 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

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

May 14, 2007 41

May 12, 2008 42

May 11, 2009 44

January 22, 2012 45

January 27, 2013 46

January 26, 2014 49

Before 1863, postage rates for 

letters were based both on the 

number of sheets or weight of a 

letter and the distance it traveled.

Until 1971, rates were set by 

Congress and bore no relation 

to costs. Congress appropriated 

funds to make up for annual 

shortages in postal revenue.

In 1970, Congress transformed 

the Post Office Department into 

the United States Postal Service 

and gave it a self-funding mandate, directing that postal operations be financed from postal 

revenue. 

Since about 1980, postage 

rates for First-Class Mail® have 

remained more or less constant 

in real terms. For example, the 

rate in 1981, 18 cents, equaled 

the rate in 2013, 46 cents, after 

adjusting for inflation. 

In 2007, the Postal Service issued its first Forever stamp. Since 

2011, all First-Class Mail commemorative stamps have been 

Forever stamps. They will always 

be equal in value to the current 

First-Class Mail one-ounce price. 

Price of a Postage Stamp for First-Class Mail Since 1863

Letter “From Caroline Weston to Deborah Weston; Friday, February 1, 1839,” courtesy of the Trustees of the Boston 

Public Library/Rare Books under a CC BY 2.0 license, www:flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/2653241094.
n Before postage stamps were introduced, Postmasters marked “PAID” on letters 

if postage was paid in advance, as on the 1839 letter below. Usually, Postmasters 

marked the amount due on letters, because until prepayment was required in 

1855, postage was generally paid by the recipient. 

n People rarely used envelopes before July 1845, when two sheets of paper cost twice 

as much to mail as one. An envelope would have counted as an extra sheet.

n In 1847, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington became the first people 

to appear on U.S. stamps, followed by Thomas Jefferson in 1856, and Andrew 

Jackson seven years later. Washington has appeared on more U.S. stamps than any 

other person. 

n The first woman, Hispanic, Native American, and African-American individuals 

honored on U.S. postage stamps were Martha Washington, David G. Farragut, 

Pocahontas, and Booker T. Washington. 

n The Elvis stamp, issued in 1993, has been the best-selling commemorative 

stamp to date. Since then, the Postal Service has issued triangular, round, and 

holographic stamps.

n Stamp collecting in the U.S. has been traced back to around 1856, when David 

Latimer, a New Jersey schoolboy, pasted 35 three-cent George Washington stamps 

in his German language textbook. 

n In 2013, the William H. Gross Gallery — the largest stamp gallery in the world — 

opened at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. Images 

of every U.S. postage stamp are online in the National Postal Museum’s AragoTM 

database, at arago.si.edu.

n The American Philatelic Research Library, at stamplibrary.org, is the largest 

philatelic library in the United States.

Stamped for Success

Letter marked “PAID,” 

1839; Franklin and 

Washington stamps, 

1847; Elvis stamp, 1993

with the town’s outgoing mail — 

that was hanging track-side from a 

special crane. Clerks used a steel rod 

called a “catcher arm,” attached to 

the side of rail cars, to “catch” specially-designed mailbags.

 In 1918, the Post Office Department took to the sky. But whereas with railroads 

the Department had always contracted with private companies, when airmail started, 

there was no aviation industry. So the Department created one — building airfields, 

using its own pilots, planes, and mechanics and fine-tuning flight instruments and 

navigational aids on the ground. By the end of 1920, airmail routes had been established from New York to San Francisco. Although at first mail was flown only during 

daylight, the transit time was still nearly a day faster than the cross-country all-rail 

time. Beginning in 1924, airmail was flown day and night, taking New York mail to San 

Francisco in about a day and a half. In 1926, the Department began contracting out 

airmail service, and by the end of the next year all airmail was carried under contract. 

Many U.S. air carriers — including Delta, American, and United — owe their existence 

partly to airmail contracts they were awarded in the 1920s and 30s. 

Stagecoach Ticket, 1843

Mail Catcher, 1913

LOC
number of rural carriers climbed from 

fewer than 500 in 1899 to more than 

32,000 just six years later. 

Rural delivery eased social isolation by 

bringing mail directly to farms; before, 

getting mail required a lengthy trip into 

town. In 1909, one customer claimed that in his community, rural delivery had “cut 

down the cases of suicide and insanity among farmers’ wives fully 50 percent.” Rural 

delivery also spurred road improvement, since passable roads were required for service. 

On New Year’s Day 1913, carriers began delivering packages weighing up to 11 

pounds via a new service called Parcel Post. The weight limit increased to 20 pounds 

that same year and soon rose even higher. Previously, four pounds had been the limit. 

Rural delivery, Parcel Post, and the Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs were the 

original “shopportunity.” The effect on the national economy was electric. Three hundred million packages were mailed in the first six months of Parcel Post service. The 

first year, Sears filled five times as many orders as it did the year before. 

LOC

Before 1863, postage paid only for the delivery of mail from Post Office to Post Office. 

That year, Congress authorized the establishment of free city delivery. Within a year, 

free delivery had been established in 65 cities nationwide. By 1880, 104 cities were 

served, and by 1900, the service had spread to 796 cities. 

Initially, mail carriers hand-delivered mail to customers. By 1912, new customers 

were required to provide slots or mailboxes, and in 1923, all customers were required 

to do so.

Free home delivery in the countryside — called “rural free delivery” or RFD — began experimentally in 1896 at a few offices in West Virginia; within a year, routes were 

operating in 29 states. The popular service was made permanent in 1902. The 

Delivering the Mail

City Mailbox, 1920s; 

Motorcycle Mail, ca. 1911; 

City Carriers, 1917

LOC