Postal service helped build nation, remains important
If officially began in a tavern in Massachusetts. No, the bar wasn’t named “Cheers,” but looking back, a little rejoicing probably is in order.
In early colonial times, mail was an iffy proposition. Correspondents depended on friends, merchants and Native Americans to carry messages between the colonies. However to handle the growingly important mail traveling between the colonies and England, the first official notice of postal service in the colonies appeared in 1639.
The General Court of Massachusetts designated Richard Fairbanks’ tavern in Boston as the official repository of mail brought from or sent overseas in line with the practice in England and other nations to use coffee houses and taverns as mail drops.
Post offices and post routes began springing up throughout the colonies. In 1673, Gov. Francis Lovelace of New York set up a monthly post between New York and Boston, and William Penn established Pennsylvania’s first post office in 1683.
When the Continental Congress named Benjamin Franklin the first Postmaster General in 1775, the United States was a weak confederation of colonies scattered along the eastern seaboard. The founders of our nation realized the important role that mail would play in the development of our country, helping to bind the new nation together, support the growth of our commerce and ensure a free flow of ideas and information.
When the Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1789, it established a post office and the Office of the Postmaster General. George Washington appointed Samuel Osgood of Massachusetts as the first postmaster general under the Constitution. At that time, there were 75 post offices and about 2,000 miles of post roads.
In the years since, the United States and the Postal Service have grown and changed together. Mail delivery evolved from foot to horseback, stagecoach, steamboat, railroad, automobile and airplane with forays into the use of balloons, helicopters, pneumatic tubes and once even a guided missile. It was mail contracts that ensured the income necessary to build the great highways, rail lines and airways that eventually spanned our nation.
Today, the Postal Service delivers nearly half of the world’s mail, operates the largest non-military transportation fleet in the world and delivers some 200 billion pieces of mail each year. It fuels our nation’s economy, the pipeline for the $900 billion mailing industry, which employes 9 million persons and accounts for 8 percent of the gross domestic product in the United States.
It still binds our nation together, 8 million businesses and 250 million Americans strong, address by address, community by community and coast to coast.
The post office was an important building block in the development of our country. It’s just as important today.