Part 7

To trace up the postal history of the colonies to the glorious epoch of our independence would be to give a history of trade and commerce, science and art. To these do every thing useful and ornamental in the New World owe its existence. It is true the postal department was at the early age of colonial history but a minor consideration. The system was a limited one, and consisted in having post-roads and post-riders. Even here the latter were to be seen “like angels’ visits, few and far between.” We can draw one of these from a picture seen in our boyhood days. It was in the good old State of Pennsylvania, not many miles from the city of Philadelphia, and while trudging on our way to the village school, this living picture presented itself. A tall, gaunt man sat on a tall, gaunt horse; he came riding slowly up the road,—this was not, as now, a fast age: his hair was partly gray, and fell in tow-looking ringlets down and around his long, sinewy neck. Over the horse’s back was swung a large, well-filled pair of saddle-bags. He was the post-rider. He had started from the main post of the county, established in Norristown, to others in directions diverging from the main road. He stopped his horse, and, raising his tall form, resting his feet on a pair of old rusty stirrups, he shouted out, in a voice of mimic thunder, “Look here, Jim: take this letter to your mother, ’mediate; for that is written on the back; and as you pass Mrs. Stroud’s, hand her this newspaper. Do this, Jim, and I’ll give you sixpence next pay-day.” Such was the post.

Connected with this little incident there is a somewhat curious coincidence. Little did the writer think then, while acting as “an incipient post,” he should in after years find himself in a position in the Philadelphia post-office, acting first as a carrier, and then as clerk, and whose early vocations in life were in no manner identified with public men and public institutions. But what will not revulsions in trade, politics, and governments effect! Equally strange, too, that forty years after the little incident of the “old post” he should meet in the same office the son of that same Mrs. Stroud mentioned above, acting in a similar capacity. Truly may it be said that “_coming events cast their shadows before_ us on our boyhood’s wayward path.” But this is a digression.

Expresses and regular messengers were employed by the colonists, and horses were kept in constant readiness to start on a moment’s notice with letters or packets, for the government as well as individuals. There was no established postal system but that which the exigencies of the times created. The post-riders, or rather government messengers, ran frequent risks. Captain Hutchinson started July 4, 1665, sent by the Governor of Massachusetts with letters constituting him a commissioner to treat with the Narragansetts. The “letter system” failed to conciliate the tribe, as they had openly declared for Philip; and here we have another illustration of the fact that in cases of war and rebellion the “sword is mightier than the pen.” The colonial forces marched into their country and compelled them to sign a treaty, which, however, was only considered binding as long as the forces sent against them were present.

In 1676, however, the colonial court established a post-office in Boston, appointing John Heyward postmaster. Heyward followed the system as established in England, and placed posts and made routes to the extent of the commercial interest of the State. This gave general satisfaction to those who were interested in this mode of communicating with men connected with them in trade, as also to others who had friends and relations scattered throughout what was then a thinly-populated State.

In the year 1700, Col. J. Hamilton, of New Jersey, and son of Governor Andrew Hamilton, first devised the post-office scheme for British America, for which he obtained a patent and the profits accruing. Afterwards he sold it to the crown, and a member of Parliament was appointed for the whole, with a right to have his substitute reside in New York. The statute of Anne, in 1716, placed the postal department under the immediate control of the crown.

The first regular post-office established in the colonies by Parliament was in 1710. By its provisions a general post-office was established in North America and the West Indies, or any other of her majesty’s dominions, or in any country or kingdom beyond the seas, and “at which office all returns and answers may be likewise received. For the better managing, ordering, collecting, and improving the revenue, and also for the better computing and setting the rates of letters according to distance, a chief office is established in Edinburgh, one in Dublin, one at New York, and other chief offices in convenient places in her majesty’s colonies of America, and one in the islands of the West Indies, called the ‘Leeward Islands.’”

That our readers may form some idea of the limited use of a post-office at that period, it is only necessary to state the fact that in 1708 New York contained but one thousand houses, most of them substantially built. The great Trinity Church, so called then, was erected in 1695.[24] A library was established there in 1700, and the post-office, as stated above, in 1710. The post-horse system, such as was pursued in England, continued, nor was it until 1732 that the first stage-route to Philadelphia was established: stages also departed for Boston monthly, taking a fortnight on the route.

The following announcement is taken from the “Philadelphia Weekly Mercury,” dated November 30, 1752:—

“On Monday next the Northern post sets out from New York, in order to perform his stage but once a fortnight during the winter quarter; the Southern post changes also, which will cause this paper to come out on Tuesdays during that time. The colds which have infested the Northern colonies have been also troublesome here; few families have escaped the same; several have been carried off by the cold, among whom was David Brintnall, in the seventy-seventh year of his age. He was the first man that had a brick house in the city of Philadelphia, and was much esteemed for his just and upright dealing. There goes a report here that the Lord Baltimore and his lady are arrived in Maryland, but, the Southern post being not yet come in, the said report wants confirmation.”

The David Brintnall mentioned here built the first house made of brick in the city of Philadelphia: it was situated in Chestnut Street below Fourth, and stood back from the street-line, with a small garden in front. The first house erected in Philadelphia was a wooden one, on the east side of Front Street, a little north of the place now called “Little Dock Street,” and is said not to have been finished when William Penn first arrived. The owner, John Guest, kept a public house there for many years. His sign was a “Blue Anchor.” The town and boroughs of Philadelphia were located in 1682.

Letters between New York and Boston were, previous to the introduction of stages, conveyed on horseback. Madam Knight, in her journal, dated 1704, says that “she was two weeks in riding with the postman, as her guide, from Boston to New York. In most of the towns she saw Indians.” In 1702, Mrs. Shippen, soon after her marriage, came from Boston to Philadelphia on horseback, _bringing a baby on her lap_.

Even at a much later period the mode of travelling was still in a slow way, as may be seen by the following advertisement, which appeared in 1776:—

“This is to give notice to the Publick that the stage waggons kept by John Burrowhill, in Elm Street, in Philadelphia, and John Mersereax, at the Blazing Star, near New York, intend to perform the journey from Philadelphia to New York in two days; also to continue seven months, viz.: from the 14th of April to the 14th of November, and the remaining five months of the year in three days. The waggons to be kept in good order, and good horses, with sober drivers. They purpose to set off from Philadelphia on Mondays and Thursdays punctually at sunrise, and to be in Prince-Town the same nights, and change passengers, and return to New York and Philadelphia the following days. The passengers are desired to cross Powlass Hook Ferry the evening before. The waggon is not to stay after sunrise. Price, each passenger, from Powlass Hook to Prince Town, ten shillings; from thence to Philadelphia, ten shillings also; Ferriage free. Threepence each mile any distance between. Any gentlemen or ladies that wants to go to Philadelphia, can go in the stage and be home in five days, and be two nights and one day in Philadelphia to do business or see the market-days. All gentlemen and ladies who are pleased to favour us with their custom may depend on due attendance and civil usage by those humble servants,

“JOHN MERSEREAX, “JOHN BURROWHILL.

“June, 1776.”

Market-days in Philadelphia at that period, and long afterwards, were great attractions to the country-people, even apart from business. It was also customary to ring the bells of Christ Church on the evenings previous to “market-days” for the edification of the country-people, who had learned to look upon them—or at least to hear their sound—as more or less identified with our independence. There is a peculiar history attached to these bells. They were purchased in England at a cost of £900. There were eight of them, and their aggregate weight was eight thousand pounds, the tenor bell weighing eighteen hundred pounds. In 1777, fearful of their falling back again into English hands, they were taken down and conveyed to Allentown, Pennsylvania, for “_safe keeping_.” After the evacuation of the city they were replaced, and have been ringing joyfully ever since. They pealed forth in gladsome sounds when the old State-House Bell sounded its note to liberty, and in harmony they proclaimed it to the world. But did the world respond? Did it shake off the bonds which bound man to man by an iron chain? Did it “proclaim” alike to the African that freedom was his birthright? Alas! no; for although the Declaration of our Independence pronounced “all men equal,” yet a distinction was made in color, and, under that very document and the Constitution, slavery came in, to become in time, what it was in reality before, a curse.

Years passed on; trade and traffic in human flesh continued, until the Almighty, in his wondrous mystery, brought about their emancipation in a manner that levelled the institution of slavery to the ground forever. But, alas! have we not as a people and a nation been severely punished? Established on a basis of crime and carried out in a spirit of fiendish ferocity, they dared call it a “divine institution.” For this fearful error on the part of those eminent men who framed that document, our country has suffered fearfully; but these bells and all other bells will peal once more under a new order of things, and truly as well as righteously “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the people thereof.” Then will our land

“be blest, Its branchy glories spreading o’er the West; No summer gourd, the wonder of a day, Born but to bloom, and then to fade away, A giant oak, it lifts its lofty form, Greens in the sun, and strengthens in the storm. Long in its shade shall children’s children come, And welcome earth’s poor wanderers to a home, Long shall it live, and every blast defy, Till Time’s last whirlwind sweep the vaulted sky.”

_EARLY POSTS._

New York, like Pennsylvania, has its primitive postal history. The first postmaster at Schenectady was Dr. Eleazer Mosely, who died in 1833, aged seventy-three years. He established a post by raising subscriptions from the inhabitants, which operated very favorably; and the result was the carrying the mail by contract.

At first the western mail was carried from Albany once a week, in a valise on the shoulder of a footman.

As late as the year 1810 there was only a weekly mail between Canandaigua and Genesee River, carried on horseback, and part of the time by a _woman_!

In 1730 notice was published to this effect:—“_Whosoever inclines to perform the foot-post to Albany this winter is to make application to Richard Nichols, the postmaster._” Only think of this, ye modern letter-carriers!

The carrying of the mail between New York and Philadelphia previous to the Revolution was a very small matter: it was hardly an affair to be robbed. It was carried by a boy, who took the whole in saddle-bags, on horseback, three times a week. Next it was carried in a sulky;—next in coaches. What is it now?

In 1753 the post-office at the Bowling Green, Broadway, was, as announced, “opened everyday save Saturday afternoons, and Sundays from eight to twelve A.M. and from two to four P.M.”

_NEW YORK POST-OFFICE._

The original office was situated at the corner of William and Garden Streets, in which house resided the then Postmaster-General, Theodorus Bailey. It was also the residence of Sebastian Ballman, the first postmaster of the city subsequently to the Revolution, who was appointed to the office by General Washington. The room used as an office was twenty-five to thirty-five feet in length, and contained one hundred boxes. In 1827 it was in the basement of the “Merchants’ Exchange,” occupying two-thirds of that extensive space. The Merchants’ Exchange is situated on Wall Street. It is built of white marble. Its front on Wall Street is one hundred and fourteen feet, and its depth, extending to Garden Street, one hundred and fifty feet. The portico of the building, to which a flight of marble steps ascends, is ornamented with Ionic columns twenty-seven feet high.

In 1844 the post-office was removed to a new building,—the first, we believe, ever erected in that city expressly for postal purposes.[25] It is situated on Nassau Street, and reflects but little credit to the city either for its architectural or business-like appearance. There is many a lager-beer establishment can compete with almost any post-office in this country in point of those attractive qualities in architectural design in which they are so totally deficient. In this, however, we are not surprised; for the former has become an institution that may well claim precedence over almost any other in the country. Lager-beer saloons are institutions dedicated to death: hence their motto should be the Dutch word for _beer_,—BIER.

_INDEPENDENT POST-OFFICE._

An independent post-office was established in New York in 1775. It was suggested by William Goddard, the publisher of the “Maryland Journal,” and John Holt, the printer, was appointed postmaster. It went into (partial) operation on the 11th of May. The office was kept at Holt’s printing-office.

There is no doubt that the “Sons of Liberty,” a popular association of Americans, were connected with this movement; for one of the first acts of its members was to send, through this office, threatening letters to the leading members of the tory party. This association took the lead in political matters, and exercised a powerful influence over the masses.

They also, in the dead hour of the night, went to Holt’s printing-office and printed inflammatory handbills themselves, and then circulated them throughout the city.

_JOHN HOLT._

This gentleman was originally mayor of Williamsburg, Virginia. He also established a newspaper there, and rendered important service to the cause of the patriots. He came to New York, where ten years before he had published the “New York Gazette and Post-Boy” in company with James Parker. He started another paper shortly after his arrival in New York. When the British took possession of the city, he left it, and published his journal at Esopus and Poughkeepsie. While at the former place he published Burgoyne’s pompous proclamation, also the full account of the dreadful massacre in the Wyoming Valley. Holt died January 30, 1784, aged sixty-four years.

The tongue of slander found no poison in his life to bait shafts with; and justice, having awarded him all praise in life, left his memory and his acts to the historian.

VIII.

Pennsylvania—The Olden Time.

_SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF PENNSYLVANIA._

William Penn, the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, was born in London in the year 1644. His father, Sir William Penn, was distinguished in the British navy as an able admiral, being commander of the fleet at the reduction of Jamaica in 1655, and contributing greatly to the defeat of the Dutch fleet in 1664. For his services he was knighted by Charles II.

William Penn was entered in 1660, as a gentleman commoner, at Christ’s Church, Oxford; but, withdrawing from the national forms of worship, in connection with other students, who like himself had attended the preaching of Thomas Loe, an eminent member of the Society of Friends, commonly called Quakers, he was punished by fine for nonconformity, and in the succeeding year, for pertinacious adherence to his opinions, was expelled from the college. His father, considering that his singularly sober and serious manner of life tended to prevent his elevation to the honors of Charles’s licentious court, was indignant at his disgrace, and therefore turned him out of doors in 1662, after, as he says, being whipped and beaten.

He was, however, sent by his father to France, and after his return was entered at Lincoln’s Inn as a law-student. He renewed his acquaintance with Loe in Ireland, where he had been sent to manage an estate in 1666, and showed so much partiality to the persecuted sect of Quakers that he was arrested at a meeting in Cork and imprisoned by the authorities, who at last restored him to liberty at the intercession of some influential persons. He returned to England, when he had a violent altercation with his father, who was desirous that he should abandon habits so singular, so offensive to decorum, and so opposed to established forms; and, refusing to appear uncovered before the king and before his father, he was a second time dismissed in disgrace from protection and favor.

In consequence of a controversial dispute in 1668, when he first appeared as a preacher, he was sent to the Tower, where he remained a prisoner for seven months, and shortly after his release he was, on the passing of the Conventicle Act, again sent to prison in Newgate,—from which he was liberated by the interest of his father, who about this time became reconciled to him, and, dying some time after, left him an estate of £1500 per annum. Marrying in 1672, he fixed his residence in Hertfordshire, occupying himself zealously in promoting the cause of the Friends both by preaching and writing.

Soon after his return from Holland, whither he had gone in 1677 to assist at a general meeting of Friends, he petitioned his majesty Charles II. for a grant of land lying north of that already granted to Lord Baltimore, and west of the now Delaware. In consideration of his father’s services, and of a debt of sixteen thousand pounds due the admiral at his decease, the grant was readily made, to which the Duke of York added by cession a neighboring portion of territory on the Delaware to the south of the king’s grant. The patent bore date March 4, 1680-81; and in this instrument the king gave the name of Pennsylvania to the province, in honor of Admiral Sir William Penn.

The day after the charter was granted to Penn, he wrote a letter to Robert Turner, in which he gives the particulars of the naming of his province. The essential parts of this letter we quote:—

“ ... Know that, after many waitings, watchings, solicitings, and disputes in council, this day my country was confirmed to me under the great seal of England, with large powers and privileges, by the name of Pennsylvania, a name the king would give it in honor of my father. I chose New Wales, being a pretty hilly country; but Penn being Welsh for _a head_, as Penmanmoire in Wales, and Penrith in Cumberland, and Penn in Buckinghamshire, the highest land in England, called this Pennsylvania, which is the _high_ or _head woodlands_; for I proposed, when the secretary, a Welshman refused to have it called New Wales, _Sylvania_, and they added _Penn_ to it, and though I much opposed it, and went to the king to have it struck out and altered, he said it was past, and would take it upon him; nor could twenty guineas move the under-secretaries to vary the name, for I feared lest it should be looked on as a vanity in me, and not as a respect in the king, as it truly was, to my father, whom he often mentions with praise.”

The charter constituting William Penn and his heirs true and absolute proprietaries of Pennsylvania, saving to the crown their allegiance and the sovereignty, is preserved in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth at Harrisburg. Being thus constituted absolute proprietor and governor of Pennsylvania, Penn published “A Brief Account of the Province,” proposing terms of settlement to such as might choose to remove thither; in which land was offered to purchasers at forty shillings per hundred acres, with a quit-rent of one shilling per annum. Many persons embraced his offer, and several companies of emigrants sailed to take possession of their new purchase, landing, December, 1681, at Chester.

While the colony was thus commenced, Penn remained in England, occupied in forming a government for his people and providing means for its security.

Early in 1682 the proprietary published “The Frame of Government of the Province of Pennsylvania, together with Certain Laws, &c.,” in the preface to which is found a sketch of his sentiments on the form and substance of civil government.

The governor, having completed all his preparations, sailed early in the fall of 1682, in company with about one hundred colonists, mostly Quakers from his own neighborhood, of which number, however, about thirty persons perished by small-pox, which broke out after their departure.

The first colonists sent out, being chiefly of the Society of Friends, with the predominating characteristics of their people, temperance, industry, and economy, and conducting themselves in the difficulties and hardships of their new situation with much prudence and circumspection, avoided most of the dangers to which a new colony is usually subject, and received with demonstrations of satisfaction the new settlers who arrived at New Castle October 24, 1682. Immediately on his arrival, Penn proceeded to establish his government over the colony, and the first assembly was convened at Chester on December 4. This legislature, in a session of three days, passed laws annexing the lower counties ceded by the Duke of York to the province, confirming an act of settlement, and naturalizing resident foreigners, and also passed in form, after some revision, the laws which had been prepared in England.