Roberta McKern
“Why not write about post offices?” a volunteer asked. She had come across an article about the retirement in 1971 of Russell Avrit from the Foster Post Office. The “out with the old in with the new” party had been held, featuring cookies decorated to look like postage stamps including one with the Foster cancellation mark and another for air mail.
Like J.P. Harrang, who’d been one of the postmasters before him, Avrit also operated the general store housing the post office. In fact, he had built a new combination store and post office across from the location of the old one and also had interest in other real estate ventures.
Having served in the Navy before settling down in Foster, combining his naval history with that of post master, he’d spent thirty seven years with the Federal government. One of the more eventful years, aside from World War II and the Korean War, involved the Foster post office. Between June and October there were six break-ins at the store, but the big robbery occurred in 1966 when the contents of the safe, including Federal money, were stolen despite the need of the enterprising looters to break through three doors.
Like many postmasters, Avrit had the prime value of main street which let him see the changes to Foster as a watcher of integral importance.
In turning to the Museum’s files, we discovered there was more to be found about post offices, including a list of Linn County ones dating post offices and postmasters from 1851 up to 1971, the year Avrit retired. His was the last name on the Foster list. John P. Harrang had served Foster from 1918 to 1942, twenty four years, and the Museum has a photograph of him on display in its main room taken as he consulted with a young customer.
What’s in a name, we might ask about Foster. Further information tells us that the earliest desires were to call the new post office and community Cascade. Later George Geisendorfer and his wife, Jennie, wanted that name, too, for the area of the mineral springs up the Santiam River. There they developed a spa which kept Mr. Geisendorfer busy capping bottles of the effervescent tonic water for guests. But because a town named Cascade already existed, neither the people of the future Foster nor the Geisendorfers were allowed to keep that name. On the one hand, a Mr. Foster worked in a grist mill owned by Mr. Doty and his name was borrowed for naming the town. On the other, the Geisendorfers being more creative came up with Cascadia.
We have to think of our area. Located in the Sweet Home valley, it could have been called either Mossville or Buckhead after a rack of antlers associated with the local watering hole had not Bluford Moss, who was connected with both hamlets, stepped up to cast his vote for “Sweet Home.”
In two instances the name Foster was associated in designating post offices. The first involved the operator of Mr. Doty’s mill and the second one also involved a man named Charles A. Foster, but his name did not go to the post office. He put up that of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Garrison up the Willamette Valley Cascade Mountain toll road from Cascadia. Garrison had a short life span from 1892 to 1904 when its mail was redirected to Cascadia.
According to the list of Linn County post offices, those in small communities had a habit of appearing and disappearing. Some post office aspirants were just hopeful their hamlet would take off and grow. To have a post office promoted an area and brought in a certain amount of government money for the salaries of postal employees and mail carriers.
Better roads and especially improved transportation shortening the time and effort to move mail from one place to another spelled the demise of many little post offices and we still see contractions.
In the earliest days of settlement, as Lois Rice emphasized in an article she wrote about post offices in our area, little towns were located close together according to the distance an ox team could pull a load in the course of a day, often just six to seven miles. One account of a 6 mile journey from the Halsey train depot to Brownsville by horse drawn stage backs this up. It took an entire day, but it was in the rainy season with the need to pass through mud.
Speaking of Brownsville, we hear it was called “Kirk’s Ferry” but the Linn list says it was “Calapooia” instead when it got its first post office in 1851. Henry H. Spalding, the missionary who escaped with his family during the time of the Whitman massacre in old Oregon territory, served as an early Calapooia post master.
Some little post offices came and went like the wink of an eye. In close proximity to Sweet Home, Grass Ridge existed, Headed by J.L. and A.P. Nye, this post office lasted from January 1874 to February 1876. “Mealey” with Orange Judd Mealey as its postmaster went a little longer, from 1892 to 1898. About the time of its demise, William and Judd Mealey went to Alaska to seek their fortunes in the gold rush. William Mealey, the future “Poet of the Santiam” is well represented at the Museum.
As Cascadia and the Geisendorfer show, soda springs often played a role in the development of post offices. Near at hand is Sodaville which once hosted an academy besides having the first state park for those wanting to take the medicinal waters. The Geisendorfers, operated a thirty room hotel and barn big enough for eighty horses.
The Museum files also have a map of Linn County post offices showing a penchant for soda springs existed before Sodaville and Cascadia. Not far from the latter, Lower Soda and Soda Stone had brief recognition in the 1870’s as sites for post offices. Later Garrison became known as Upper Soda, however, by then the post office was gone.
Two post offices familiar regarding Quartzville and gold were Anidem and Whitcomb. With Anidem comes the name game. William Lawler called the post office with which he meant to legitimize his revival of gold mining operations in the Quartzville area “Anidem”, or “Medina” spelled backwards. So speculation holds he’d once lived in a town named Medina, but as we have learned, no, he was honoring a friend and financial booster, an international investor named Medina.
At the time Anidem was trying to take off, (it never quite did), George Whitcomb had his own operation at Whitcomb on Big Bottom to assist miners on their way to Quartzville with lodging and supplies. And he ran a short stage line, too. His post office days were marred by tragedy. As the postmaster, he opened up first in 1889, then closed in 1893, only to open once again in 1896 to close permanently in 1899, the year three of his four children died of diphtheria. He feared somehow the illness had been transmitted along with the mail.
In her article, Lois Rice gives tribute to those who carried the mail. As an example she gave Ed McClun, the low bidder on a $1,000 contract in 1914. Rural federal delivery had come in 1896. With his team of horses, Dan and Doll, he hauled mail, freight, passengers, cream, and express packages from Crawfordsville to Brownsville back to Crawfordsville on to Sweet Home and a return to Crawfordsville where he also kept relay teams. In 1916 an overland car replaced Dan and Doll and provided incentive for the McClun sons, Ben and Everett, to relieve their father.
But that was going modern. She described an earlier mail carrier between Lebanon and Sweet Home as riding his horse until it gave out, then tying it to a tree and continuing on foot. He returned on foot (shank’s mare) back to the rested horse to travel back to Lebanon. In times of mud, he and the horse began to resemble a centaur, rider and beast conjoined in a coat of gooey brown.
Because of the responsibilities involved many postal employees were respected for honesty and faithfulness. Looking at the Linn County list of post masters we can see women stepping into the role toward the end of the 19th century. Sweet Home received its post office in 1873 and a number of men and women served in it. Roscoe Van Fleet held the office from 1913 to 1920 when Alice Gilbert took over. Van Fleet acted as a teacher in the town’s first high school and as the organizer of its first brass band so Roy Elliott in Profiles of Progress remembered.
As the 1846 to 1971 list of post offices in Linn County shows, some post offices grew and prospered while others never got going like the post offices Rosa and Rachel. But considering the importance of a post office to any small town’s organization, a look at the history of post offices and post masters has to be interesting. In early days the increasing number of both marked the filling in of the countryside. But times have changed and so have means of communication. Centralization marks the decline of local post offices.
Instead of receiving a cookie decorated with the image of a defunct air mail stamp like Russell Avrit did in 1971, a retiring postmaster today might receive one with a “Forever” stamp image, but maybe there’s hope for post offices in that.