History, Natural History & the Arts
In the days of our great grandfathers the occasional ancient coach and the heavy lumber wagon in which the freight transportation of the country was carried on were almost the only vehicles that rolled along the roads. The people did not own private carriages themselves.
When they traveled they took to the coach or rode on horseback, the latter being the more customary plan. [Read more…] about The American Coach & Carriage Industry in 1878
In August of 1931, many newspapers around the country published a human-interest story about a postcard mailed from Lake George that arrived at a Northville, NY address seven years later. Reportedly, the postcard departed the Lake George post office in 1924, but it circulated to several wrong destinations before reaching its journey’s end. [Read more…] about 1931: A Lake George Postcard Arrives Seven Years Later
For decades, the unofficial slogan of the United States Postal Service was: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” That phrase was chiseled over the entrance of the James A. Farley Building, a post office facility in New York City.
The spirit of that tagline was demonstrated one day when a pilot of the Lake George mailboat briefly interrupted his postal duties to rescue a boater in distress. [Read more…] about Lake George’s Mailboat & A Near Lightning Disaster
Western New Yorkers can always count on finding a little piece of home in the lobbies of historic buildings across the country and the world, including the Empire State Building, the Savoy Hotel in London, and the Bacardi Building in Havana.
It’s likely that the mail chute, which quickly conveyed letters from the highest stories of ever-growing towers to their lobbies for pick-up, is emblazoned with the eagle insignia and name of the Cutler Mail Chute Company of Rochester, New York. [Read more…] about Once Ubiquitous in Skyscrapers, Rochester’s Mail Chute Building Languishes
The founders established the post office before they had even signed the Declaration of Independence, and for a very long time, it was the U.S. government’s largest and most important endeavor — indeed, it was the government for most citizens.
This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind thirteen quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizen — a radical idea that appalled Europe’s great powers. [Read more…] about The Creation of the Postal Service & American Political Culture
An outspoken critic of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, Jewish photojournalist Gisèle [Gisela] Freund fled her native Germany in 1933 with Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Having settled in Paris, she obtained her PhD at the Sorbonne in 1936 and would become the most talented chronicler of the vibrant and multi-national bohemian community of artists and writers that made its home in Paris during the 1930s.
By 1939, Freund had photographed many of the greatest writers and artists of the twentieth century, amongst them Henri Matisse, Samuel Beckett, T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jean Cocteau, André Breton, Colette, André Malraux, Paul Valéry, Tennessee Williams, Peggy Guggenheim, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre. [Read more…] about The Battle for Ulysses in Paris & New York
There is a statue of Samuel Sullivan Cox in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park. The statue originally was near Cox’s home on East 12th Street but in 1924 it was moved.
A plaque accompanying the statue reads “Samuel Sullivan Cox, the Letter Carrier’s Friend, Erected in Grateful and Loving Memory of his Services in Congress by the Letter Carriers of New York, his Home, and of the United States, his Country.” [Read more…] about Manhattan’s Statue to Unrepentant Racist Samuel Sullivan Cox
Travel through the Saratoga County community of Corinth, NY, was difficult at best in the mid-nineteenth century. The Hudson River was navigable only a few months of the year. At a time when roads were rutted, muddy, or ice and snow covered the railroad offered the best form of reliable transportation for passengers and goods.
The Adirondack Railroad from Saratoga Springs to Hadley was completed at the end of the Civil War in 1865. The rail system helped spur industrial development in the area with the advent of dependable transportation. [Read more…] about The Railroad’s Impact on Life in Corinth, Saratoga County, NY
What follows is excerpted from “The New York Post Office in Olden Times, by W.B.,Taylor, a paper read before the New York Historical Society on October 7, 1851.
The first regulation providing for the transmission of letters by post in the Province of New York, bears [the] date 10 December, 1672, when Governor [Francis] Lovelace [ca. 1621-1675] established “a post to go monthly” from New York to Boston and back again. [Read more…] about The Establishment of Postal Service in New York
With the failure of President Herbert Hoover’s policies and the ensuing Great Depression, Americans were desperate for help. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s pragmatic New Deal programs aimed to help Americans back to their feet by providing them with jobs. Several innovative public arts program were designed to provide economic relief and jobs for all kinds of artists from sculptures to painters and performers. [Read more…] about ‘New Deal For Artists’ Opening Adirondack History Museum Film Series
In 1938, the U.S. Post Office sponsored National Air Mail Week, held from May 15 to 21, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the inauguration of Air Mail service, first launched by the Post Office on May 15, 1918. Carmel NY Postmaster Thomas Townsend served as chairman of the National Air Mail Observance Committee for Putnam County.
He fully embraced the celebration, which was aimed at boosting postal revenue during a time when the nation was emerging from the Great Depression and still reeling from the airmail contract scandal earlier that decade. [Read more…] about Putnam County Takes Flight: National Air Mail Week, 1938
It was September 1942, nine months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the start of America’s involvement in World War II (1941–1945). Mr. and Mrs. Frederick J. Martin of Saratoga County had not heard from their son, Fred (Bud) Martin, for many weeks.
Bud joined the Army in 1939 and was stationed at Port Townsend, Washington. Such loss of communication during the Second World War conjured up dreadful thoughts for parents of military personnel. [Read more…] about A Lost World War Two Letter Returned
Fred Ellmers’ first visit to Twitchell Lake came in the summer of 1914, or a year or two earlier. His marathon train trip began in Brooklyn and ended in Big Moose, where a buckboard transported him to Twitchell’s public landing, a two-mile boat ride taking him to the dock of Lone Pine Camp on the north end of the Adirondack lake in northern Herkimer County, NY.
His first words exiting the boat, were: “This is where I could spend the rest of my life!” [Read more…] about An Adirondack Lake’s ‘Mayoral Couple,’ Fred & Myra Ellmers
On February 27, 1861, Congress passed an Act that allowed privately printed cards weighing one ounce or less to be sent by the US Postal Service. That same year printer and stationer John Charlton in Philadelphia copyrighted the private postal card.
He later transferred the rights to his friend and inventor Hymen Lipman (who patented an integrated pencil and eraser in March 1858) who first produced cards with a decorative border and a small print reading “Lipman’s Postal Card. Patent Applied For.” They were soon referred to as “postcards.” [Read more…] about Kodak’s Pocket Camera, Lynching & The Song ‘Strange Fruit’
It was nearly three months after the USA entered World War I (1917–1918) and understandably Americans were nervous about sending troops to fight in Europe. So, it probably sounded like the horrors of war had come home when in the early morning of June 29, 1917, Bolton Landing residents Charles Hier and William Tobin were suddenly awakened by two explosions from the post office.
What the startled Bolton Landing citizens heard was not an artillery barrage. Rather, they were witnesses to “Bolton Landing New York’s Great Post Office Robbery of 1917.” [Read more…] about Bolton Landing’s Great Post Office Robbery of 1917
You might say that the history of our postal system began when Benjamin Franklin, age 31, was appointed Postmaster of Philadelphia by the colonial British authorities in 1737.
Not that there hadn’t been earlier embryonic attempts at mail service in the colonies, but Franklin was already the very successful proprietor of a print business and publisher of a newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette. His experience had taught him to be a meticulous record-keeper and a master of organization. So it’s hardly surprising that he shaped the Philadelphia mails into a swift and responsive enterprise. [Read more…] about Some History of the US Postal Service
On the afternoon of May 1, 1939, in the idyllic town of Rhinebeck, in Dutchess County, NY, a large and excited crowd gathered to witness President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) officially dedicate the new Dutch Colonial-style post office. Other esteemed guests included First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, and James Farley, Postmaster General. [Read more…] about The Rhinebeck Post Office: Bringing Art and History to Life
From the time slavery was introduced to the Colonies until it was abolished in 1865, enslaved people made ceaseless efforts to escape its reach. The flight to freedom, whether by foot, horseback, carriage, wagon or boat, was difficult and exceedingly dangerous. [Read more…] about USPS Issuing Underground Railroad Forever Stamps
On the October 2023 episode of Crossroads of Rockland History, we welcomed Frank Eberling and his brother Ray Eberling, New City, Rockland County, NY natives, for a discussion about the early days of New City and the wagon that their grandfather used to carry mail on New City’s Rural Free Delivery routes at the turn of the 20th century. [Read more…] about Crossroads of Rockland History Podcast Features Eberling Mail Wagon
It was late on Wednesday, January 19th, 1910, and Police Chief W. R. Bronner was making his evening rounds through the quiet village of Mohawk, in the town of German Flatts, Herkimer County, NY, making sure all was safe for both business and residents.
Somewhere near the intersection of Main and Washington streets, he encountered four men who engaged him in conversation as they all walked along. Before he could resist, he was relieved of his pistol, gagged, and brought into the Masonic Hall billiard room that the Yeggs had broken into earlier in the evening. Once inside, Bronner was bound with wire taken from pictures on the wall. [Read more…] about When The Yeggs Hit Upstate New York
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