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City carriers, 1888
Uniformed letter carriers pose with their satchels in Newark, New Jersey, in 1888. The carrier shown at center is likely Louis A. Sears. According to an 1893 article in The New York Times, Sears was the first letter carrier in Newark to use a bicycle to deliver the mail. African Americans delivered mail in cities by 1869, just six years after the start of free city delivery.
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City carriers, 1888
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City carriers, 1888
Employees pose in front of Station S of the Brooklyn, New York, Post Office, in 1888. This station, now named Bushwick, still serves Brooklyn residents. Post Office stations and branches are units of a main Post Office that provide a range of services. The earliest known station was established in New York City on January 1, 1837.
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City carriers, 1888
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City carriers, ca. 1894
Employees pose in front of Station H of the San Francisco, California, Post Office, circa 1894. In the early 1890s, San Francisco’s letter carriers made four daily deliveries. The city’s neighborhoods were served by ten Post Office stations, including Station H, near the corner of Laguna and Hayes Streets.
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City carriers, ca. 1894
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Special delivery messengers, ca. 1890
Special delivery messengers stand with their bicycles outside the Saint Louis, Missouri, Post Office, circa 1890. Special delivery service, which provided for immediate delivery of mail for an extra fee, was first offered in 1885. Its usage peaked in 1943; the service was terminated in 1997. In fiscal year 1890, special delivery messengers delivered 23,177 pieces of mail in Saint Louis. On average, deliveries took 21 minutes from the time the mail reached the Post Office or station.
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Special delivery messengers, ca 1890
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Special delivery messengers, ca. 1890
Special delivery messengers lounge outside the Saint Louis, Missouri, Post Office, circa 1890. Boys as young as 13 were employed as messengers; they waited at the Post Office in between deliveries. Special delivery messengers were required to buy their own uniform and bicycle and were paid per delivery. In the 1890s, they earned 8 of the 10 cents charged for the service.
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Special delivery messengers
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City carrier, ca. 1908
City carrier delivers a letter to a customer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, circa 1908. Initially, city carriers hand-delivered mail to customers. If a customer did not answer the carrier’s knock, ring, or whistle, the mail stayed in the carrier’s satchel until the next trip. By 1912, new customers were required to provide mail slots or receptacles, but as late as 1914 city carriers spent up to an hour a day waiting at doors where there was person-to-person delivery. Beginning in March 1923, mail slots or receptacles were required of all city customers.
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City carrier, ca. 1908
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Rural carrier, 1908
Rural carrier delivers mail on Rural Route #1 out of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Post Office in 1908. Beginning in 1902, rural customers were required to use standardized mailboxes. Before then, everything from lard pails and syrup cans to old apple, soap, and cigar boxes served as mailboxes.
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Rural carrier, 1908
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City carriers, 1917
Following the successful performance of two women as letter carriers in Washington, D.C., in November 1917, First Assistant Postmaster General John C. Koons asked the postmasters of eight of the largest U.S. cities to conduct 15-day tests of women as letter carriers to prepare for possible wartime necessity due to manpower shortages. In December 1917, dozens of women delivered mail experimentally in cities like Chicago, New York, and Saint Louis, including the three women pictured here in New York City – from left to right: Miss Eleanora Regan, Mrs. Josephine Norton, and Mrs. Viva R. Hawley.
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City carriers, 1917
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Village carrier, ca. 1920
Miss Genevieve Baskfield was appointed a village carrier in Zumbrota, Minnesota, in 1919 at the age of 18. She resigned in 1924 shortly after her father, who had been the town’s postmaster, left office. Village delivery was a service similar to city delivery, offered in small towns from 1912 to about 1960. More than one hundred women are known to have served as village carriers, mostly appointed from 1918 through 1920, when about five percent of the nation’s 943 village carriers were women.
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Village carrier, ca. 1920
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Star route carrier, 1920
Star Route Carrier Frank E. Stevens poses on skis with an 80-pound pack of mail on his back in 1920. Stevens carried mail on the Rocky Bar to Atlanta, Idaho, mail route – one of the most dangerous in the country. From 1892 to 1913 seven carriers on the 16-mile route lost their lives in snowslides. The body of a carrier who died one January was not found until the following June.
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Star route carrier, 1920
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City carrier, ca. 1923
A city carrier poses with parcels of laundry in front of his mail truck, circa 1923. In 1923, one postmaster estimated that 2 percent of parcels delivered by his carriers consisted of laundry. College students, especially, found it economical to mail dirty clothes home and have them mailed back clean. The typical “laundry bag” was a canvas-covered cardboard box 4½ by 12 by 20 inches, weighing six to seven pounds. In 1923, the weight limit for a single parcel was 50 or 70 pounds, depending on how far it was going.
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City carrier, ca. 1923
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City carriers, 1956
City carriers in Mobile, Alabama, in 1956, sort letters into delivery order before going out on their routes. Hand-sorting of all letters into delivery order, called “casing the mail,” continued until the 1990s, when many carriers began receiving letter mail already sorted by automatic equipment. In 2007, carriers still hand-sorted about 14 percent of letters and 40 percent of flat mail (larger pieces).
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City carriers, 1956
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Postmaster General and city carriers, 1963
Postmaster General J. Edward Day and two city letter carriers pose in front of Mr. ZIP, a cartoon character who promoted the use of the ZIP Code, in 1963. The five-digit code, introduced that July, was added to addresses to help the Post Office Department sort more mail more quickly. Coupled with automation equipment later in the 1960s and 1970s, the ZIP Code helped employees keep up with rising mail volumes. Between 1960 and 1980, mail volume rose by 67 percent.
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Postmaster General and city carriers
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Postmaster and letter carriers, late 1960s
Postmaster John R. Strachan and a group of city carriers pose on the steps of the New York City Post Office in the late 1960s in front of a banner promoting the use of ZIP Codes. ZIP Codes were resisted at first by some customers, who were still getting used to dialing area codes for long-distance telephone service. Strachan, wearing an overcoat and glasses near the handrail in this photo, was appointed postmaster in 1967. He was New York City’s first African-American postmaster.
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Postmaster and letter carriers
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City carrier, 1975
A city carrier gathers letters from a collection box in Falls Church, Virginia, in 1975, calling to mind the famous inscription on the old New York City General Post Office: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
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City carrier, 1975
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Star route carrier, 1976
Star Route Carrier Moses Walters poses in front of the Stella, Kentucky, Post Office in 1976. Walters carried mail on mule- and horseback between Hager and Stella, Kentucky, and also delivered mail to customers of the Stella Post Office who lived along Cow Creek. Around his neck hang bags called “pokes,” one for each family on his route. Walters reportedly carried mail for more than 50 years and made the 10-mile roundtrip between Hager and Stella six days a week, rain or shine. He retired in 1977 when the contractor he worked for gave up the mail contract. The Stella Post Office closed in 1985.
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Star route carrier, 1976
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City carrier, 1989
A letter carrier with dog-repellant clipped to his satchel pauses for a photograph in 1989. Carriers were first issued the pepper-based spray, called HALT, in 1964, when carriers reported more than 7,000 dog bites. In 2006, there were fewer than half as many reported dog bites – 3,184 – while the total number of carriers had increased by more than 85 percent. Children, not letter carriers, are the most frequent dog bite victims.
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