19th Century Post offices

The Curriers of Canaan were a family of merchants. From various histories of Canaan and Grafton County, we know that Horace worked in his father's store, and then partnered with James Wallace until Wallace died in 1853. In the 1850 Canaan census, Horace is listed as a merchant. In the 1860 census, he is listed as a gentleman. Did he retire after Wallace died? Was he in poor health? He died in 1866, at age 48.

All of the Curriers lived near each other. Nathaniel Currier lived about six houses away from Horace and Emma in 1860. Nathaniel died in 1863 and his son Horace died 3 years later. Emma Currier never remarried. She had six children, and the youngest was only 3 when his father died. She stayed in the same house until she died in 1888. You have to wonder how these widows managed to feed and clothe their families after their husbands died. Emma's oldest child was a girl, Jennie, who was 17 at the time of her father's death.

In the 1870 Canaan census, Frank Currier is listed as a merchant in the census, and his brother Henry, 14 years younger than Frank, is listed as a clerk in a dry goods store. Henry lived near Frank. It seems that Frank might have lived in Nathaniel's house. On the census list, he is about the same number of houses separated from Emma as Nathaniel was, although it is harder to figure this out than you might think. It is very surprising how much the names change in the neighborhood. In fact, the Curriers are the only names that stay the same through the decade. It seems that people were so much more mobile back in the 1800's. We moved to our neighborhood twenty years ago, and excepting the people who have died, the neighborhood has stayed the same. This is true with the neighborhood my parents live in as well. If you saw a census list from their neighborhood, many of the names would still be the same as they were in the 1960's. With so many people moving in and out, it is hard to really be sure that Frank lived in Nathaniel's house.

Frank Currier married Ella Minton when he was 51 and she was 26. They had a daughter, Helen, who was born the year they got married, and a son, John, six years later. In 1879, Frank became the postmaster in Canaan. Often general storekeepers served in the capacity of postmaster as well. The general store was in the center of town, and served as the hub of the village, making it the obvious place for the post office.

In 19^th century America, the postal service was the second oldest federal department and employed the most people of any government agency. The postal service was founded in 1775. At the beginning of our country, there were 30 post offices between Williamsburg, Virginia and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Mail service was important during the American Revolution. The committees of correspondence, groups of citizens in every state planning our rebellion against Great Britain, communicated with each other through the mail.

At the end of the 1700's, when the United States was newly formed, the federal government contracted with stagecoach companies to carry the mail. This was controversial. Some people thought that federal money shouldn't be used to subsidize companies that transported private individuals. President Washington thought it was a good idea. He thought anything that encouraged travel and communication between the states should be encouraged. The postal service also paid for the roads between post offices to be maintained. These roads were called post roads. The post roads still exist today. Many people felt that maintaining the post roads was an inappropriate use of federal funds, since these roads were used primarily for private purposes.

In the beginning, mail services were used mostly for business and government purposes. As we saw in the story of Simeon Ide, everyone in the early United States was interested and involved in politics. Newspapers were the political vehicle of the day, and they were distributed through the mail. Newspaper printers delivered fresh newspapers to their subscribers through the mail, and people read those newspapers and then passed them on to others through the mail. It wasn't long before clever newspaper readers began to send clandestine personal messages on the newspapers they were sending to friends and relatives in the mail. They might write a tiny message somewhere in a margin, or black out some letters on a headline to send a message, or send a coded message in the address.

As the American economy and government grew, professionals became increasingly comfortable using the mail as a way to conduct business, and they began to use the mail to conduct personal correspondence as well. Before 1845, Postal rates were based on the number of sheets in the envelope and the distance the item was going. Mail cost 8¢ per sheet under 40 miles, 10¢ a sheet 40 – 90 miles, 21¢ a sheet 91-150 miles, on up to 25¢ a sheet over 500 miles. Letter writers would sometimes fill up a sheet of paper, then turn the paper sideways and write more going a different way to save on postage. The postmaster used wax and a stamp to seal envelopes at the post office. Because there were so few post offices, many people relied on personal carriers, sending letters by friends who might be traveling to a city where a letter recipient lived. People who were travelling also carried letters to the nearest post office, to be sent to another city where they might languish for months before someone came to get them. The recipient of a letter paid for the letter, not the mailer. As more and more people used the postal service, more post offices were opened. In 1828, there were 7,530 post offices nationwide.

In 1845, the Postal Department began basing rates on the weight of an item, with a rate for 300 miles or less, and a rate for over 300 miles. In 1855, any letter weighing half an ounce could be sent up to 3,000 miles for 3¢. This encompassed most of the United States at that time.

Britain began using postage stamps before the United States. In 1847, Congress passed an act authorizing the printing of United States postage stamps. The first American stamps were a 5¢

stamp depicting Benjamin Franklin and a 10¢ stamp depicting George Washington. These stamps weren't perforated. The postmaster had to cut out the number of stamps a customer wanted, and each individual stamp had to be cut out to be used on a letter. The Postal Department introduced perforated stamps in 1857.

 

With the cheaper, more standardized rates, average people could use the mail, and it became a national pastime. At the same time the postal service modernized, two events occurred to make mailing letters even more popular. "Western Fever" took hold in Vermont and New Hampshire. Many Northern New Englanders left their homes to seek their fortunes in the new midwestern states, or to the gold fields of California. William Allen Wallace himself went to the gold fields of California when, as a young man, he couldn't stand the dull life of constant hard work in Canaan. He didn't make his fortune in the gold fields, but he ended up staying in California to become one of the first schoolteachers in Los Angeles. That proved to a miserable experience, and he returned to Canaan. Apparently this was the end of his wanderlust, because he stayed in Canaan the rest of his life.

Emigrants who left New Hampshire and Vermont for the gold fields in California, or to make a new life in the midwest wrote letters back home to maintain ties with their families. Thanks to the postal improvements of 1845 and 1855, families could afford to stay in touch across the continent, and could be reasonably well assured that their letters would reach their destinations.

During the Civil War, soldiers and their families exchanged record numbers of letters. Often the soldiers and their families were well aware that these letters documented history. Fathers and husbands instructed their families to save the letters, and wives diligently saved the mail they received from their husbands on the battlefields. Several of these collections of letters have been published in books. David Henkin, in "The Postal Age" writes that 180,000 letters a day were sent or received by soldiers in the Civil War. The list of Canaan residents who served in the Civil War is too long to include here, but it would certainly be worth pursuing another time. Suffice it to say that the Canaan post office would certainly have been busy with correspondence between Canaan residents and their loved ones serving in the Civil War.

By 1879, when Frank Currier became Postmaster in Canaan, letter writing was a common pastime. If you didn't know how to write a letter, you could buy a book that gave you templates for writing letters for various purposes.

Letters began with standard lines: "I take my pen in hand and write that I am in good health, and pray that you enjoy the same blessing." Penmanship was taken very seriously. Husbands and parents who received letters from their children or wives would often critique the letters and send them back for corrections. Letter writers were encouraged to write first drafts of letters before sending the final version. Many courtships were conducted through mail, and probably parents of these young people complained about how ridiculous this practice was, the way they complain about people starting relationships today through Facebook.

Frank Currier was Postmaster in Canaan for 10 years. He died in 1889. Ella lived with her daughter Helen, who never remarried. Helen lived in the same house she grew up in, and died in 1968 at age 94. In every census, Helen is never listed as having a job, so she must have lived off an inheritance. Helen's brother John was married and was a carpenter in Canaan.