- ANTONE PIERUCCI
- Posted On
This Week in History: The postage stamp
Well into the 1820s in America, sending a piece of mail or package over to the next town was often the most vexing of all problems – that is, if starting point and destination did not both happen to lie on a stage or post line.
Let’s pretend, for instance, that it’s the fall of 1828 and John Moses, carpenter from South Dewbury, Connecticut, is working on the construction of a new building in the nearby town of Bucksboro, some 40 miles from his home.
A chill has come over the land and Mrs. Moses, fearing her dear Johnny will be caught unprepared for these frigid temperatures, wants to send him his favorite knit scarf. How would she get it to him?
Bucksboro is miles off the stage line that ran through South Dewbury. Sending it by mail would be absurd, between having to travel to the nearest post office some ten miles in Dorchester and then paying more for the postman to go out of his way to get to Bucksboro.
After a morning of worry over the subject, Mrs. Moses wraps the knit scarf in some newspaper and sets out for the two-mile jaunt to the nearest tavern, where the local stagecoach regularly stops.
“Well yes ma’am, I can get it to him,” Thackery Ricketts, the stage-driver, admits reluctantly, as if carrying parcels wasn’t the most lucrative side business of his. “Of course, I can’t take it all the way to Bucksboro, but I can leave it over at the tavern at Burntree Corners, and they can send it over from there.”
“Well that’s a pregnant idea!” cries Mrs. Moses with delight, before a cloud crosses her face. “But how much will that cost?”
Squinting eyes appraise his latest customer. “Well, fifteenpence in advance is the regular fee for that distance,” Thackery says slowly.
“My goodness! That’s an awful lot.”
“Well now, let me see. Don’t go tellin’ nobody, but just for you, I’ll make it a shilling.” Delighted at having found a way to get the scarf to her dearest, Mrs. Moses hands the parcel over and returns home.
“Got anybody going to Bucksboro,” Thackery asks several hours later of the landlord of the “Dueling Arms Tavern” at Burntree Corners.
“Jedidiah heads over tha’ way with his wagon on Fridays,” the landlord says.
“Here, got a package for a fella named John Moses. He’s building a new building up there and his wife wanted him to have his scarf. My charges are paid, but no more,” Thackery informs the man before clambering back aboard his stage.
“Here, package for a John Moses, a wandering carpenter working on a new building in Bucksboro,” the landlord tells Jedidiah three days later, on Friday.
Since his destination is beyond Bucksboro, Jedidiah doesn’t have time to go looking for this John Moses character, so he drops the now well-travelled parcel off at the local tavern.
“Eighteenpence owed on it,” he informs the landlord after telling him who it’s for. The landlord, depending on how good a customer this John is, might add an additional shilling on top of the fee to cover his own “inconvenience.”
And so, assuming the knit scarf didn’t get lost on the way, John Moses would receive his wife’s token of love about a week later, and at a cost that in today’s age of free delivery would send most of us into a long twitter rant.
All of this was at no fault to the United States Postal Office—a venerable institution created by the Second Continental Congress in 1774 and further embellished in later years. In many cases in early America, the postman had to hack his way through overgrown paths and risk exposure to the elements in winter and summer. How would he have time to go out of his way to deliver a scarf to some carpenter in Bucksboro?
Well, over the decades, the network of postal routes expanded, following the growth of steamer lines and locomotives. But it took almost a century for the basic system of payments to change from charging collect to paying a flat fee up front.
A major step in that change was the issuing of the first United States postage stamp. The first of these now all-too familiar square pieces of paper went on sale in New York for the first time on July 1, 1847.
The subject of the first stamp was Benjamin Franklin, the Postmaster General for England in the years leading up to the Revolution (among having a few other notable achievements, I’ve been told).
Imagine how happy the Mrs. Moseses of the country were at this latest innovation. Now THAT was a pregnant idea.
Antone Pierucci is curator of history at the Riverside County Park and Open Space District and a freelance writer whose work has been featured in such magazines as Archaeology and Wild West as well as regional California newspapers.