Signed, sealed and delivered

In the early 1600s, the mail would be dropped off at the nearest tavern, where it was held until someone stopped by to pick it up. I imagine there were a lot of people who volunteered to pick it up. The United States Postal Service (USPS) was established on July 26, 1775, and everything changed.

Benjamin Franklin was the postmaster of Philadelphia. The “B. Free Franklin” post office building was once owned by Franklin. It is the only post office that does not fly the American flag because when Franklin was appointed, there was no American flag (yet). Franklin set up new and more efficient mail routes between the colonies. He cut the delivery time in half between Philadelphia and New York by using relay teams so the weekly mail wagon could travel both day and night.

People would often send large sums of money in the mail. But robbers didn’t stand a chance against 6 ft. tall Stagecoach Mary. Born into slavery, she was freed after the Civil War. In 1895, when she was in her early sixties, Mary obtained a contract to be a Star Route Carrier and used a stagecoach to deliver the mail. She was the first African-American woman to receive a Star Route contract. She had the reputation of being a hard-drinking, quick shooting, mail carrier with a wicked temper who carried both a rifle and a revolver. Nobody messed with Stagecoach Mary.

The Post Office no longer uses stagecoaches to move the mail, but they did use ponies for a while. The “Pony Express” traveled by relay teams and was the most effective way to communicate cross-country – until the telegraph came along.

Today, the Post Office uses planes, hovercraft, trains, trucks, cars, boats, ferries, helicopters, subways, bicycles, and feet. They also use mules. In Arizona, mules carry mail, food, and supplies, down a 9-mile trail to the Havasupai Indians at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. More than 10 mules are used each day, 5 days a week, along with one wrangler on horseback. Each mule can carry up to 200 lbs. and the weight is loaded equally for balance. It takes 3 hours to get down. On the way up, the wrangler untethers the mules and they follow the trail on their own.

Just a few weeks after the Parcel Post began, Jesse and Mathilda Beagle mailed their 8-month old son to his grandmother in Batavia, Ohio. The baby was just under the 11-pound limit for parcels. Rural carrier Vernon Lytle picked up the baby, put him in his mail wagon, and carried him to his grandmother’s house a few miles away. The postage was fifteen cents and the “parcel” was insured for $50.

A lot of famous people have worked for the Postal Service. Abraham Lincoln was the postmaster in New Salem, Ill. from 1833 to 1836 and in 1918, Henry S. Truman, our 33rd president, served as postmaster of Grandview, Mo. Walt Disney was a substitute carrier in Chicago. Before Sherman Helmsley, the actor, began “movin’ on up,” he worked as a clerk at the Philadelphia Post Office. Denzel Washington once worked at a post office sorting mail.

The USPS does not have an official motto. We’ve all heard that the USPS motto is “neither snow nor rain nor heat or gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” It seems this is a phrase taken from an ancient book by the Greek historian Herodotus and refers to messengers in the Persian Empire.