Histories like those in Alison Davis’s “Hampton Remembers”, which recorded the words of residents born at the turn of the century, remind us of the inventions their generation witnessed – automobiles, airplanes, telephones, electricity, refrigeration, indoor plumbing. Later generations haven’t seen as much significant progress in our lifetimes, though with the common place use of computers, we certainly have witnessed monumental changes in communications – remember the advent of email? Facebook? Instagram? Cell phones? We can now instantly connect with anyone, anywhere, with our fingertips; our country has come a long way since smoke signals. The bridge between these two realms: mail delivery, which evolved throughout the centuries “from foot, to horseback, stagecoach, steamboat, railroad, automobile, and plane.”
At the turn of this century, Norine Barrett wrote a series on the postal service in the Gazette, chronicling many of these changes. For those who haven’t lived here very long, Norine, who worked for the Hampton Post Office for 20 years, is the mother of Renee Cuprak, who delivered our mail to us for 30 years. The first in the series “Changes in the Postal Operations” explained the new system of Delivery Point Sequence, wherein mail is sorted in large cities with machines that, if unable to recognize the address, will return it to the sender, which, Norine admitted, “doesn’t seem like a big deal to most municipalities”, but in Hampton, “instead of the local postal employees figuring out who ‘Aunt Maisie, Hampton’ is, the piece of mail will never make it here for us to ponder over”.
The second in the series, “Post Office Jargon”, helped explain the phrases stamped on envelopes that were the consequences of Delivery Point Sequence when “Aunt Maisie, Hampton”, had previously been sufficient.
Subsequent articles detailed significant dates in postal history, starting in 1673 with the establishment of the first mail delivery routes which ran from New York to Boston. Boston Post Road is the oldest postal route in America, eventually evolving into the first highways, in our town, Route 6. Stage coaches transported the mail on the post roads, defined as “any road on which the mail traveled”, thus in 1823, Congress designated navigable waters as post roads, and in 1838, railroads were officially postal routes. Though viewed by some as “devices of Satan to lead immortal souls to Hell….traveling at the unconscionable speed of 15MPH”, mail service increased rapidly using trains for transport. Migration to the west, especially with the 1848 Gold Rush, accelerated the need for cross-continental delivery, Norine explained. Ships transported the mail from New York to Panama, where it crossed on trains, and was then transported on another ship to San Francisco. In 1858, a contract was issued to Overland Stage which took several months to travel 2800 miles from Missouri to San Francisco, using the Overland Trail, an alternate to the Oregon Trail.
One of the briefest, though most memorable of mail delivery’s eras, was the Pony Express which started in 1860. Newspapers advertisements declared: “Wanted – Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18. Must be experienced riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.” Along with these requirements, riders needed to swear on a Bible not to cuss, fight, or abuse the animals. Respondents became part of the Pony Express, “a 2000 mile route from St. Joseph Missouri to California, through a vast unknown land”. Horses also needed to be hardy, withstanding thirst in summer and cold in winter. Typically, a rider covered 100 miles every day, changing horses at relay stations every 15 miles, “transferring himself and his pocketed saddle cover to the new mount in one leap.” When the transcontinental telegraph system was completed in 1861 “the pony express became a legend”.
The last method of delivery, Air Mail, wasn’t until 1918.
Different measures led to rural America experiencing progress. In 1862, Railway Mail Service, which partnered railway companies with postal clerks, provided mail delivery to small towns where trains didn’t even stop, its final run in 1977. And while 1863 marked the start of Free City Delivery, Rural Free Delivery, the “RFD” familiar to some of us, wasn’t until 1902. Perhaps more than any other factor, RFD led to the development and improvement of roads. Until 1950, mail was delivered twice a day.
Other notable dates: the first postage stamps weren’t used until 1847. Prior to that, envelopes weren’t used. Letters were folded and addressed and picked up at the post office, where recipients could pay the postage. The first penny post card was introduced in 1873, Special Delivery in 1885, Parcel Post in 1913, and Express Mail in 1977. Zip codes weren’t established until 1963.
Since the appointment of the first Postmaster General, Benjamin Franklin, in 1775, methods of delivering mail have continuously progressed. “The postal system,” Norine wrote, “helped to bind the new nation together”, and was instrumental in building the highways, rail lines, and airways that spanned the continent.
Norine also wrote of the history of Hampton’s post offices. The first documented record is in 1795, a sub-station in Howard Valley. Mail was delivered there from Pomfret once a week by a carrier riding a donkey. In 1828, this post office was moved to a mill company store at the junction of Reilly and Windham roads, north of the bridge. This store burned in 1893, but remnants of the foundation and the mill can still be seen.
There was also a post office in the village. Daniel Buckley is recorded as its first postmaster in 1820. Mail was delivered once a week from a service carrier from Lebanon to this post office housed in a corner of the General Store. With the development of the railroads through Hampton in 1872, there were two other post offices. In “Hampton Remembers”, John Hammond recalled the one on Station Road: “When the railroad station became Hampton Station the post office up there remained Rawson until about 1909 or something like that, when they started the RFD and did away with it. It was in my house. My mother was the postmistress and she was a Rawson, it was the Rawson House. I was pretty near born in the post office. The post office was in one room – then you go through a doorway into a bedroom and that was where I was born!”
There was another Post Office at Clark’s Corners. Mr. Hammond relayed, “In the first place it was down in the old store, where Ambrose Fitzgerald lives now, then in Amos Stone’s where Mains is, then Olivers had it in the old Jonathan Clark house. Then they did away with the post office entirely and everything had to go through North Windham.”
In 1913 postmaster Austin Pearl purchased a small building, originally the office of Governor Chauncey Cleveland, and moved it from where it was located at the Governor’s house on the corner of Main Street and East Old Route 6 to a site north of the intersection of Main Street and Hammond Hill. In 1921, a small addition was built on to the General Store by store owner and post master Charles Burnham .
As with Norine and her daughter Renee, here in Hampton, postal service seems to run in the family.
I started working for my father, Austin Pearl, who was the postmaster, in 1915 when I was sixteen years old, and I worked in the post office most of the time till I retired in 1964. I was postmistress for 28 years, from 1936 on. My sister Mary was assistant postmaster and my brothers Will and Reuben were rural carriers. And to get the mail from the station there were what were called mail messengers and there were several of them down through the years. After my father was postmaster, Charles Burnham took over and then Jerome Keech and then I was appointed. Way back, the post office was in a corner of the store that Arthur Roberts had, and his father Thomas Roberts was postmaster. Then my father had what was Governor Cleveland’s law office. Postmasters had to furnish their own in those days so he bought it and moved it to not quite across from Reuben’s road and that was his post office. Later when I was postmistress it was in that little addition to the store…The mail messengers drove with a horse and wagon up to meet the train three times a day. The train only stopped one time, the morning mail, all the parcel post and stuff had to go then. And the other two times were catcher pouches which meant that the pouch was strapped in the middle and then hung from a crane where the mail clerk on the train would reach out with a long hook and pull the pouch in and throw off our pouch.
Evelyn Estabrooks from “Hampton Remembers”
Reuben delivered the mail for forty-five years. He drove most everything you can think of. He had to have his own vehicle – it wasn’t supplied by the post office. When he first started he used to go thirty-five miles. And he kept a horse – we had three horses—and he drove on down — you know where the old Fred Burnham place is. There used to be a barn across the road and he stopped there and took a fresh horse – we boarded a horse there all the time – and he’d take that horse and come all the way back up there to our barn – after he got through the mail it was put up here. Then the next day the third horse that hadn’t been driven was put on and the horse that went the day before stayed to home – and we swapped those three horses so no horse got too tired because travelling wasn’t very good.
Gertrude Pearl from “Hampton Remembers”
In 1960, William Pearl and his grandson Austin began construction on a new, modern building, what would become our current Post Office. Charlie Fox became the postmaster, bringing the neighborly ambience into the new building. The Post Office continued as a social place, a place where folks coincidentally met, and caught up with one another’s news.
From “Hampton Remembers”:
Will Jewett used to get the mail in the evening and I’d follow him up to the store and get my mail, especially the witch hazel check! Everybody’d stand around and maybe the stor’d be open and we’d wait for Mr. Jewett to sort the mail. A sociable time – everything is rushed now, y’know, no time for nothing!
Stanley Gula