Even if there was a system of postal riders in place, the sender still could not be certain that the letter would arrive safely. Travel required fresh horses, overnight stays, and hardship on the part of the rider in the event of flood, heat, or snow. Much of the territory, especially in the south, was wilderness. The idea of post offices and regularly scheduled arrivals and departures of a postal rider, as established in England, evolved slowly in the colonies. For there to be any guarantees that a letter would arrive at longer distances, senders had to hire a rider or entrust it to travelers going in the general direction. People would come in and "carried away not only their own letters, but all the letters belonging to people in the neighborhood." Letters or packages for persons far from a city would be given to a local magistrate or minister to distribute in his town. There the items were spread out on a table. In other American colonies, "every family sen a member on board for the purpose of receiving letters." Letters that went unclaimed were taken to a coffee–house or a tavern near the wharf that was heavily frequented by the community. He charged a penny for each letter but had to "answer all miscarriages through his own neglect in this kind." As early as 1639, one colonist, Richard Fairbanks, received and sent off letters from his Boston home. The introduction to the 1867 printing of Finlay’s journal describes early methods of distributing the mail. The Massachusetts Bay Colony led the way in establishing a postal system in America. View in National Archives Catalog A Neighborhood Event-Mail Handling in the Colonies Second, it serves as documentation of the antagonism that Finlay, a Crown appointee, encountered from American patriots in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War.īenjamin Franklin brought much-needed reform to the postal system in the American colonies when he became deputy postmaster in 1753. First, it provides a transition between the British postal system of the colonies and the U.S. Finlay’s journal is significant among the National Archives’ pre–federal records for two reasons. The original handwritten "Journal Kept by Hugh Finlay, Surveyor of the Post Roads on the Continent of North America" is in the National Archives. But Hugh Finlay made improvements that are documented in a journal kept between September 13, 1773, and June 26, 1774. ![]() The Crown’s postal system in the colonies ceased by Christmas of that year.Franklin often gets credit for beginning the first system of mail service along the eastern seaboard. ![]() The colonists began their own postal system, the Constitutional Post, in May 1775 with Franklin as the new postmaster general. American revolutionaries were destroying British postal routes throughout the colonies and viewed postage paid to the Crown as taxation without representation. But Finlay’s appointment was short–lived and nearly meaningless. He developed a "Dead Mail Office" for undeliverable letters and began a system of fast–sailing "packet ships" for the delivery of mail from abroad.įranklin was dismissed from his position in 1774 for his association with writings injurious to the Crown and replaced by loyalist Hugh Finlay. The emergence of Benjamin Franklin, first as Philadelphia’s postmaster in 1737, and then as deputy postmaster for British North America in 1753, brought much–needed reform to the postal system in the American colonies. ![]() Getting a letter to a neighboring town was difficult and involved, while trying to get one’s mail across the Atlantic to Great Britain might prove futile. Not even today’s octogenarians can imagine, however, the extent to which communications has improved since colonial times. Postal riders were an essential part of mail delivery in Colonial America and often faced harsh, injurious conditions.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |