US Postal Service
244 years ago, on 26th July 1775, the U.S. postal system was established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general.
Franklin put in place the foundation for many aspects of today’s mail system.
During early colonial times in the 1600s, few American colonists needed to send mail to each other; it was more likely that their correspondence was with letter writers in Britain.
Mail deliveries from across the Atlantic were sporadic and could take many months to arrive. There were no post offices in the colonies, so mail was typically left at inns and taverns.
In 1753, Benjamin Franklin, who had been postmaster of Philadelphia, became one of two joint postmasters general for the colonies. He made numerous improvements to the mail system, including setting up new, more efficient colonial routes and cutting delivery time in half between Philadelphia and New York by having the weekly mail wagon travel both day and night via relay teams.
Franklin also debuted the first rate chart, which standardized delivery costs based on distance and weight.
In 1774, the British fired Franklin from his postmaster job because of his revolutionary activities. However, the following year, he was appointed postmaster general of the United Colonies by the Continental Congress. He held the job until late in 1776, when he was sent to France as a diplomat.
He left a vastly improved mail system, with routes from Florida to Maine and regular service between the colonies and Britain.
President George Washington appointed Samuel Osgood, a former Massachusetts congressman, as the first postmaster general of the American nation under the new U.S. constitution in 1789, and by then, there were approximately 75 post offices in the country.
Today, the United States has over 40,000 post offices and the postal service delivers 212 billion pieces of mail each year to over 144 million homes and businesses in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, the American Virgin Islands and American Samoa.
The postal service is the nation’s largest civilian employer, with over 700,000 career workers, who handle more than 44 percent of the world’s cards and letters, getting the mail delivered, rain or shine, using everything from planes to mules!
I found a couple of shows about our mail service. The first is from our old friends, Fibber McGee and Molly, who are celebrating the 179th Anniversary of the US Post Office, and the second is from the series Inheritance, called Mail Had Wings and tells the story of the birth of Air Mail!
Happy listening my friends,
