USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume II > Part 44
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This connection between the newspapers and the Post-Office was originally due to the franking privilege enjoyed by aff postmasters. Until 1845 nearly the entire mail for postmasters was carried free, and for many years half the postage collected from newspapers went to the postmasters. The Act of 1825 gave the postmasters but one daily paper postage free, or a half-dozen weeklies; but the same Act enabled newspaper publishers to exchange their papers postage free. The Act of 1845 restricted the privileges of the larger Postmasters, and in 1863 all postmasters' private mail was placed on the same footing as other citizens'. Since then the postmasters have not had any advantage over private publishers; but the country postmaster and the country weekly appear to be naturally connected. Bailey was the last to combine the Boston Post-Office with newspaper publishing; his immediate suc- cessors were given to literature. Nahum Capen, who served under Buchanan, was appointed on June 4, 1856, and John Gorham Palfrey, who served under Lincoln and Johnson, was appointed on March ?! , 1861, and took charge of the office April 11, 1861.
C'apen was a publisher, who drifted into writing; Palfrey is the illus- trious historian of New England. Capen was born on April 1, 1804, at Canton, Mass. ; became a member of Marsh, Capen & Lyon, Boston publishers; edited the Massachusetts State Record from 1847 to 1851; wrote quasi-philosophical books upon the United States and the His- tory of Democracy, besides essays upon international copyright and reminiscences of Spurzheim and Combe ; he died on January 8, 1886, in Dorchester. William B. Smith was Capen's Assistant-Postmaster.
Terry & Pierce
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Palfrey is one of the imperishable names. He was born in Boston on May 2, 1296, and died at Cambridge on April 26, 1881. Ile is the only Boston Postmaster who ever held a seat in Congress, having been elected in 1846 as a Whig. Previously he had been a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, professor of sacred literature and an over- seer at Harvard College, editor of the North American Review in its grand days, and Secretary of the Commonwealth from 1841 to 1817. He had published Lectures on the Jewish Scriptures and Antiquities, Evidences of Christianity, the elements of a rabbinical grammar, and many discourses upon Harvard College history and politics; but it is as the historian of New England that his name is honored throughout the world of letters. On April 13, 1864, William L. Burt was appointed Postmaster at Boston in the place of Palfrey; then the present Postal District came into being: the age of newspapers and literature in the Boston Post-Office was succeeded by an age of affairs and expansion.
When Nathaniel Greene became Postmaster in 1529, Boston had about 60,000 inhabitants scattered over little more than 3,000 acres, a good part of which was hardly occupied. When Burt was appointed in 1864, the territory of Boston had been increased by eneroachments upon the water, and the population had risen to about 215,000; but Roxbury, Dorchester, Charlestown, West Roxbury and Brighton were independent post-offices and municipalities; and Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop, though since added to the Boston Post-Office, continue to be independent cities or towns. The era from 1829 to the establishment of the Postal Distriet was marked by internal growth. Commerce prospered ; in 1810 Enoch Train began his famous line of Liverpool packets, and in the same year the first Cunard steamship arrived in Boston. Up to 1848 the Cunarders made Boston their only American port, and for some years Boston was the chief post-office of the country for foreign mails. But gradually the supremacy was transferred to New York, so that when Burt was appointed Postmaster, Boston commerce and steamship connections had greatly dwindled, the civil war helping to increase the loss. The work of the Post-Office, however, though mainly internal, and perhaps because it was mainly internal, did not dwindle. The number of Post- Offices was increased. When Greene became Postmaster in 1820, the United States had about 8, 000 Post-Offices, the present Postal District of Boston but ten. On June 1, 1823, the country had about 33,000 post-offices, and the present Postal District of Boston not less than
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twenty-four: Boston, Brighton, Brookline, Cambridge, Cambridgeport, Charlestown, Chelsea, Dorchester, East Cambridge, East Somerville, Harrison Square, Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, Mount Auburn, Neponset, North Brighton. North Cambridge, North Somerville, Revere, Roslin- dale, Somerville, West Roxbury, West Somerville, and Winthrop. East Boston and Roxbury had already been changed to Boston Stations, and two additional Stations had been established at South Boston and South End. Far greater were the changes in the postal administration and in the reliance of the public upon the postal service.
The great Post-Office Act of 1836, still in force, and the greatest monument left by Amos Kendall, placed the auditing of all postal accounts in the control of the Treasury Department, thus checking the extraordinary powers vested in the Postmaster-General, who has ever since acted under specific appropriations. In 1845 the half-ounce was made the standard for letter postage in the place of the single sheet. and the word packet, originally applied to ship letters or commercial letters of at least three or four single sheets, was transferred to mail boats or steamers carrying the mails. President Taylor's Postmaster- General, upright John Collamer, first suggested the request envelope or the useful custom of writing senders' addresses on all mail mat- ter. Our first postage stamps, one for five cents, one for ten, were issued in 1844, and became immediately popular. Stamped envelopes followed in 1853, but the payment of postage in stamps did not exceed the payment in money until 1855-56. Prepayment in stamps became compulsory in 1822. At an early date Boston became a large market for the private sale of all sorts of postage stamps.
President Fillmore's Postmaster-General, Nathan Kelsey Ilall, in- duced Congress in 1851 to make three cents the standard postage for clomestie letters; he established the foreign mail service as a distinct branch of the Post-Office Department, and he made an attempt at com- piling the postal history of the country. But while domestic postal affairs underwent great expansion and many improvements, the foreign mail service remained uncertain and costly. In 1852 the postage on domestic letters weighing a half-ounce or less was three cents, but double the rate when carried more than three thousand miles. The postage on daily papers was from $1 to $6 a year, according to distance: on weekly papers from twenty cents to $1. 20. Letter Carriers received a cent for every letter they delivered and half a cent for every news- paper. Postage on foreign letters mailed in Boston was as follows: to
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the United Kingdom, twenty-four cents; to Bremen, twenty cents by the Bremen line, but twenty-one cents by American packets; to Ham- burg, twenty-one cents by American packets and twenty-five cents by the Bremen line; to Brazil, via Falmouth, eighty-seven cents; to Port- ugal, via Southampton, sixty-three cents; to Spain, seventy-three cents; to Australia, thirty-seven cents by private ship, fifty-three cents via Southampton, and seventy-three cents via Marseilles; to Sweden, thirty-nine cents; to St. Petersburg, twenty-four cents; to Canada, ten and fifteen cents, according to distance; and to Mexico, thirty-five or forty-five cents, the dividing line being a distance of 2,500 miles. The sums spent by the government for carrying the foreign mails, especially from 1850 to 1860, were enormons, and have not since been exceeded. This confusion in the foreign mails of the country continued until the Postal-Union Treaty of Berne, which was signed on October 9, 1824, and finally made all civilised countries a postal unit, governed by one law or one mind-perhaps the greatest achievement in the history of international law, if not the fullest demonstration that all nations of men are made of one blood.
On July 1, 1855, the Registry system went into operation, but did not immediately rise into importance. The year 1858 should be remem- bered, perhaps, as the most extravagant in the history of the Post-Office Department. The total earnings of the service throughout the country were $4,486,692.86; the Department expended $12, 122, 420.01, not counting $885.322.20 expended by the Navy Department for ocean mail transportation. In fact, the Treasury paid $5, 634, 245.20 out of general funds for postal purposes, not counting the cost of post-office buildings owned by the Government. In the same year the Boston Post-Office yielded but $?2, 125.96, in surplus of commissions; and all Massachusetts produced a net revenue of only $130,396. 21. In Connecticut expenses exceeded postal receipts; the entire Post-Office receipts in Arkansas were $35,126.54, the expenses $241,589.09. The letter carriers in Boston handled 1,430,488 pieces of mail matter, in- cluding but 34,984 out-of-town letters; for this service the people of Boston paid $13, 199.58. In the same year Boston sent 316, :41 letters by the New-York, Chagres and California line of mail steamers, 116, 213 newspapers, and collected 831,396.30 in postage on business done by the line named. But in the country at large the postal business was conducted most extravagantly, leading Postmaster-General Holt to call loudly for "retrenehment and reforms," a phrase since made popular
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in a different field. It was this same eminent Postmaster-General who established the first night mail between Boston and New York by rail; the mail left both places at & p.M. This service began in 1860.
More than one-fifth of its present annual receipts the Boston Postal District expends for the free delivery of mail matter to all persons within the Postal District. This interesting and extremely popular service has a history dating back to 1863, when it was first authorised by Congress. It appears to rest upon the rule that free delivery should be established wherever the postage on local matter suffices to pay for free delivery. This service began at Boston in 1863 with thirty-two Letter Carriers, who received pay at the rate of $?2, 360 a year. But Letter Carriers paid by the recipients of mail matter were authorised as early as 1639, when Fairbanks was made Postmaster at Boston. The public paid one penny or two cents for every letter delivered by Carrier ; the great Post-Office Act of 1836 continued this rate, but allowed Car- riers also to collect mail matter for despatch on receipt of two cents for cach letter. For delivering papers or pamphlets they received a half cent per piece. These receipts of the Carriers were delivered to the Postmaster, who paid the Carriers. The Act of 1851 allowed the Letter Carriers to deliver or receive letters for less than two cents a piece; and under this Act all public ways in Boston became post routes. The first year, 1851-52, the Letter Carriers at Boston handled :48, 950 pieces, for which the sum of $7,476.35 was received. The total number of pieces handled at the Boston Post-Office was returned at 8, 912,504 letters and 666, 241 papers, the latter including 442,682 papers carried free for publishers. No wonder, Boston had more daily papers then than it has today.
For 1852-53 the Boston Letter Carriers were reported to have handled 841,370 pieces, for which the persons in interest paid $8,541.29. The service, then, was extremely cheap, but not popular. In 1854 the Car- riers delivered or received 921,418 pieces, the fees being $8, 828. 28. while the Carriers in Baltimore handled 930, 256 pieces, the fees being $14,434.02. For the same year the Boston Post -Office received a " sur- plus of commissions" amounting to $15, 923.29, against $392.68 in Philadelphia. Indeed, an era of lavish extravagance had set in, and continued until drowned in the terrors of the civil war. Those were the years when the Collins line of steamers received $858,000 annually for twenty-six trips from New York to Liverpool and back, under a contract with the Navy Department. In 1891 the entire cost of our
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foreign mails was less than $600,000; and nearly twice that sum was received back in the form of postage. The principal economy practised was experienced by the chief postmasters, who received annually $2,000 each. For 1855 the net revenue of the Boston Post-Office, being the gross receipts less office expenses, was $149,318.02. In that year the Postmaster at Charlestown had the same salary as the Postmaster at Boston, while the net receipts of the Charlestown office were $3. 038. 29. The money went mainly for transportation. In 1856 the Postmaster- General reported the entire earnings of the postal service throughout the country at $6,920,821.66; and the sums paid for transportation of the mails at $6, 165, 639. 12, which does not include the ocean mail ser- vice paid by another Department. The Letter Carriers throughout the country received $162, 915.59; the Post-Office clerks, $158, 080.80.
Ten years later, the country had forty-six Free-Delivery Post-Offices, with 863 Carriers, the cost being $589, 236. 11, and Boston stood third in the list of cities, as far as the cost of free-delivery is concerned. New York and Philadelphia led; but Chicago was shortly to outgrow Bos- ton. Like so many improvements in the postal service, the Free-De- livery system is due to Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General under President Lincoln. He introduced also the Money-Order system, which has been in operation since July 1, 1861; and, in a measure, he was the author of the railway mail service. But Montgomery Blair owed some- thing, as does the country, to Joseph Holt, President Buchanan's Post- master-General, who cried a halt to postal extravagance, when it was his misfortune, in 1860, to report postal receipts at $8,518,061.40, and expenses at $19, 110, 182. 15. Besides maintaining the Post-Office De- partment, as distinct from the postal service, and all public buildings used as Post-Offices, the Treasury in 1860 paid out of general funds, obtained by loans or taxes, the sum of $11. 154, 162.54 to keep the United-States Post-Office solvent. Yet in the face of such facts the the Postmaster-General of 1868 wrote in his annual report: " The idea that the Post-Office Department [meaning the postal service] can be self-sustaining, in the present condition of the country, is absurd. It cannot be, and ought not to be for fifty years to come." A better age was to come with John A. J. Creswell, President Grant's great Post- master-General from 1869 to 1511.
It was this eminent man that created the Boston Postal District. He compiled the great consolidated Post-Office Aet of 18;2, which is still the law of the land, and he ranks easily with the best postal officers in
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our whole history. It was he who had the fortune of sending our first mail to the Pacific by an all rail line; and by one stroke of the pen, on June 25, 1873, he discontinued the independent Post- Ofices at Cam bridge, Cambridgeport, Charlestown, Chelsea, Dorchester, East Cam bridge, East Somerville, Harrison Square, Mattapan, Mount Auburn, North Cambridge and Somerville, and made them Stations of the Bos- ton Post Office, like East Boston, Roxbury, South Boston, and Station A or South End, the only Stations then connected with the Boston office. Thirty five Carriers were to do the Free Delivery work from the new Stations. This sudden annexation was largely due to Postmaster Burt and to the annexation fever then prevalent in Boston. Roxbury had been annexed in 1868; Dorchester in 1820; Charlestown, West Roxbury and Brighton were to follow in 1821. But Brookline, Cam- bridge, Somerville, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop have remained in- dependent municipalities. It is thus at nearly the same time that Boston became a great city in area as well as population ; that it be- came a great Postal District; and that the Postal Union transformed the civilised world into one postal unit, with one mind and one law. The character of the Boston Postal District is unique. But for Post- master Burt and Postmasters-General Creswell and Jewell, it would not have been formed.
Postmaster General Creswell's order annexing all Post-Offices at Charlestown, Somerville and East Somerville, Cambridge and Porches- ter to the Boston Post Office, was issued on June 20, 1873, to take effect on July 1, 1835. Postmaster General Marshall Jewell's order, annex- ing all West Roxbury, Brighton, Revere, Winthrop, West Somerville and North Somerville, took effect on June 1, 1815, Brookline was added to the District on July 1, 1883, as if to commemorate the fact that in its early days Brookline had been a part of Boston and Suffolk County. This Postal District is unique in the United States. Its chief effect is to give free delivery to Revere, Winthrop, Mattapan, and the remotest points in Brookline, But for their close connection with the Boston Post Office, they might still be without that advantage. In area the District is the second largest in the country, covering about sixty- three square miles, while the Philadelphia Free Delivery area (in 1892) was nearly eighty square miles. In net receipts (gross revenue, less office expenses) the Boston Postal District is exceeded by New York and Chicago; in gross revente, by New York, Chicago, and Philadel- phia; in population, by New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Brook-
THE POSTAL SERVICE.
lyn. In postal activity, Boston is not surpassed by any great American city, comparing receipts per head of population on the same basis, For New York does much postal work for its great suburbs; and neither in Philadelphia nor in Chicago is free delivery co-extensive with the municipalities. In the city of Chicago there are scores of independent Post-Offices.
The carly history of nearly all Boston Stations, once independent Post-Offices, has elements of abiding interest. The first Postmaster at Cambridgeport was Luther Stearns Cushing, the author of " The Law and Practice of Legislative Assemblies." The second Postmaster at Roxbury was Ebenezer Fox, whose " Revolutionary Adventures" were published after he had retired from the Post Office and from other earthly troubles. From 1899 to 1839 the Postmaster at Charlestown was Arthur Williams Austin, an ardent Jeffersonian, who made the University of Virginia his residuary legatee. In 1835 be published a Memorandum concerning the Charlestown Post-Ofice, which shows how the offices were fought for during the reign of Jackson. Austin states that in five years, up to July, 1831, his Post-Office yielded him but $1,325.10, or $265,0% a year. Later in life he was Collector of the Port of Boston. The first Postmaster at Chelsea was Horatio Alger, father of the famous story teller. From 1839 to 1888 William S. Keith had charge of the office at West Roxbury; and the office at Winthrop, es tablished in 1858, has never changed its immediate chief. The Sta- tions, like the main office, have been singularly free from calamities and scandal; they have generally enjoyed the confidence and respect of the community they served.
For this high character of the postal service in Boston, the credit, if any, is due no less to the singularly highminded community than to persons engaged in the service. The wishes of the Boston Postal Dis- triet were met by the national Government, by the Postmasters at Bos- ton, and by their numerous subordinates. The public wanted only what was right and honorable and useful; they received it. A community not proudly demanding the best, is not likely to get it. Postmaster William Lathrop Burt, who was appointed on April 13, 1867, witnessed the annexation of Roxbury, Dorchester, Charlestown, West Roxbury, and Brighton to the municipality; and is the true father of the present Postal District. A Harvard graduate in the class of 1800, and a law- ver by profession, he combined executive vigor with boldness. He took a leading part in obtaining for Boston the present Post Office
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building. His Assistant-Postmaster was Henry S. Adams. If any of the early Boston Post-Office records had been preserved, they were de- stroyed in the great Boston fire of 18;2, the Post-Office in the Exchange building being destroyed on November 10. Postmaster Burt retired in 1816, leaving the record of an administration unsurpassed for energy and excitement. He died in 1882. On October 16, 18;1, President Grant laid the corner-stone of the present Post-Office; a year later came the great fire, which swept away so many precions records, including those of the Post-Office; then followed a great struggle for more room in and around the new Post-Office building, which had barely escaped destruction (see Boston City Documents, 1813, No. 55. ) In 1875 the completed part of the new building was occupied. The entire pile was not completed until 1885.
The administration of Edward Silas Tobey, who was Postmaster from January 1, 1826, to November 30, 1886, was very quiet. He inherited a great office and a great district ; it was his special mission to system- atise and perfect the service. He began with about one hundred and fifty Letter-Carriers; he ended with about three hundred. Notwith- standing the reduction of the postage rates, the receipts of the office rose in 1886 to 81,551,451.39, the net revenue being nearly a million. The Postmaster's salary was raised from $4,000 to $6,000. The new Civil-Service law had no better friend than Postmaster Tobey, nor had the cause of temperance and benevolence. In the cause of universal peace Postmaster Tobey continued the interesting work begun by Post- master Noah Worcester, of Brighton. Mr. Tobey was born on April 5, 1813, at Kingston, Mass. For many years he was actively engaged in the shipping trade. In 1866 he was a member of the Massachusetts Senate. He died on March 30, 1891, at Brookline.
His successor in the Boston Post-Office was General John Murray Corse, who served from October 1, 1886, to March 31, 1891. General Corse was born on April 26, 1835, at Pittsburg, Pa. ; was graduated at West Point in 185%, and served with distinction in the war for the Union, his brilliant defense at Allatoona leading to popular fame, and incidentally to the equally popular "Hold the fort, for I am coming." After the war General Corse was Collector of Internal Revenue at Chicago. His administration of the Boston Post-Office was highly suc- cessful. The number of Letter-Carriers rose to more than five hundred; the gross receipts of the office to more than two million dollars. Un- like many postmasters, General Corse became deeply interested in the
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entire postal service as a business enterprise, and was apparently the first to collect materials for a history of the office. To an unusual de- gree he had the special admiration of the civil-service reformers. His successor was Thomas Norton Hart, who had been Mayor of Boston in 1889 and 1890. His term began April 1, 1891. He was born on Janu- ary 20, 1829, at North Reading, Mass., and had been a successful merchant before he entered upon his public career. General Corse died April 22, 1893. On July ,1, 1893, Jeremiah W. Coveney became Postmaster at Boston.
POSTMASTERS AT BOSTON,
WITH -CHRONOLOGICM. NOTES ON THE POSTAL SERVER ...
1639 .- Richard Fairbanks, appointed by Massachusetts. Last men- tioned in 1654 5.
1043-4 .- Fee for Postriders regulated by Massachusetts.
1611 .- John Hayward, appointed by Massachusetts. He died Decem-
ber 2, 1681.
1684 .- Attempt to establish American Posts for the benefit of the Duke of York.
1691-2, February 17 .- Patent for the American Post-Office issued to Thomas Neale.
1692, April 4. - Andrew Hamilton is appointed American Postmaster- General.
1693. - Hamilton appoints Duncan Campbell Postmaster for Boston and Massachusetts. Massachusetts passes the great Post-office Act.
1202. - Duncan Campbell dies. John Campbell appointed Postmaster of New England by Andrew Hamilton.
1:03. April 26. - Postmaster-General Hamilton dies, and is succeeded by his son, John Hamilton.
1404. -- Postmaster Campbell issues the first number of the News-Letter. 1111 .- The Neale patent terminated by the 9 Ann. c. 10.
" -The Boston Post-Office destroyed by fire.
1:18 .- Postmaster Campbell removed by the London authorities, who appoint Philip Musgrave in his place. Postmaster-General Hamilton appoints William Brooker, who starts the Gazette. 1:20. - Philip Musgrave. lle died in May, 1225.
1:25-1:26. - Thomas Lewis.
1:26-1432 .- Henry Marshall.
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Herman Moll's postal map of America published in London.
14:0. Postmaster-General Hamilton removed. Alexander Spotswood appointed Postmaster General for British America and the British West Indies.
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