The Rural Burden - Postal History Sunday

Welcome to Postal History Sunday!  This weekly post can be found on the Genuine Faux Farm blog amidst posts that are farm related, nature related, or whatever-else related.  Over the past couple of years a new entry has appeared on that blog nearly every day.  But, Sundays are reserved for posts that share the farmer's postal history hobby with those who might enjoy it.  If you are only interested in Postal History Sunday, you might prefer the GFF Postal History blog.  Postal History Sunday is cross-posted there and all of the farm stuff is absent.

It doesn't really matter which location you read Postal History Sunday.  Everyone is welcome.  It doesn't matter if you are a beginner in postal history or an expert - or a passing bystander who just likes to learn a few different things here and there while I share something I enjoy.

Put on the fuzzy slippers and grab a favorite beverage - it's time for some postal history!

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Pickup and delivery of the mail in rural areas has always posed a unique problem to postal services.  Since I live on a gravel road in a decidedly rural area, the handling of the mail in such places has a personal connection for me.  Of course, the hard part about my focus on mail in the 1850s, 60s and 70s is the fact that there is much less material from and to rural areas than there is to the big cities and towns of that time.  It's a simple matter of the mathematics - a rural area has fewer people, so there is bound to be less mail to and from those locations.  And yet, there is still plenty to explore.

The postal drop box in France

The folded letter above was mailed in December of 1856 from the rural area near Le Neubourg, France to Evreux - about 25 km to the southeast.  Forty centimes of postage were applied to the envelope to pay for a letter that weighed over 7.5 grams and no more than 15 grams (effective July 1, 1854- Dec 31, 1861).

The postmark at the top left that reads Le Neubourg was applied at the post office in that town, which could not have been very large in the 1850s, but sufficiently large to have a post office.  However, we have a clue that tells us this did not actually originate in Le Neubourg.

The "O" in circle marking was applied by a rural carrier using a hand stamp that was kept in the rural mail drop box.

Many rural villages in France did not have their own post offices.  However, mail boxes were provided for residents in the area to drop mail.  The mail carrier would remove mail from the box and apply a marking to each item to indicate the rural origin of the piece of mail.  The hand stamp that was used to apply this marking was kept inside of the drop box and only pulled out when the carrier needed to mark the letters being picked up.

These markings were introduced in 1836 and were in service until being completely phased out in 1912.

I presume, but do not know for certain, that a unique letter was given to each drop box within a rural area - so I do not know if the letter "O" can help us determine exactly where this piece of mail originated.  However, we are in luck with this particular piece of postal history because we do have some of the contents!

This letter was sent to the department prefecture in Evreux to obtain permission to build a dwelling.  The seal of an ‘Ingenieur Ordinaire” and the “Ingenieur en Chef” are both affixed to the letter.  Presumably giving approval.  The contents of the letter indicate that the building would take place in Épreville, and there just happens to be an Épreville-près-le-Neubourg to the southwest of Le Neubourg.

It now seems like a very good guess that this would be where this letter got its start.  It is also a very good guess that we do not have all of the contents since the single sheet of this folded letter is certainly not enough to require the additional postage.  Perhaps there was additional documentation or some other material inside of this cover sheet?

Eure is in the Normandy region and Evreux was prefecture of the department.  Evreux's population was around 12,000 people in 1856 while Le Neubourg and its surroundings were (and remain) much more rural in nature.  You will find Le Neubourg listed as Neubourg on the portion of the 1861 map below.

As a bonus, you can go to this blog by Mark Joseph Jochim to learn all sorts of things about post boxes if you are so inclined.

That will cost you!

Our first example focused on mail being sent from a rural area and our second item will look at the other end of the process - the delivery of the mail.

This large envelope was mailed from San Francisco, California on November 9, 1867.  It traveled overland (mostly by train) until it got to New York City.  It left New York on December 3  and went to Boston so it could be placed on board a steamship named the Cuba, which was part of the Cunard Line fleet.  The Cuba left Boston on December 4 and arrived at Queenstown (Cobh, Ireland) on December 13.

This letter would have gone through Dublin (Ireland), London (England), and Ostende (Belgium) before it was taken out of the mailbag while in a Prussian mail car on a train that ran from Verviers to Coeln December 15.

This letter was pretty heavy - weighing more than a half ounce and no more than one ounce.  This required a double rate of postage, which was 28 cents per 1/2 ounce.  So, fifty-six cents of postage were applied in the form of two 24-cent stamps and one 10-cent stamp.  The letter was properly treated as a prepaid letter from the United States to the Kingdom of Hannover, which was part of the German-Austrian Postal Union (GAPU).

Now - finally - I get to the "rural" part of this letter.  There is a receiving postmark on the back of this envelope that reads "Bersenbruck" and the date is too faint to read.  The address panel ALSO reads "Bersenbruck K. Hannover."  So, that seems like the case is closed, doesn't it?  It was delivered to Bersenbruck?

Except the back of the envelope has this marking in red pencil.  Hmmmm.  What could this be?  It certainly looks to me like a postal marking - but what is it for?  

It turns out that the Hannover post would collect 1/2 silbergroschen for letters delivered to a rural destination, to be collected on delivery by (and for) the postal carrier.  The amount was not dependent on weight, so this would have been the cost for a simple letter or a very large packet.

If we look more closely, we see this is mailed to an address that reads "in Gehrde ??? Bersenbruck."  Leaving the letters I am less sure of alone for the moment, we can guess that the recipient was actually in the small town of Gehrde, which did NOT have a post office and was located a short distance to the east of Bersenbruck.

I wonder if they sounded a post horn as they entered Gehrde to deliver this letter?

Forward to Climax

We'll conclude with a letter that was mailed in the 1860s from Grand Rapids, Michigan to rural Kalamazoo County at the 3 cents per 1/2 ounce rate for domestic letter mail in the United States.

The address panel is a bit more complex than most letters of the time - and that may well have to do with the rural destination.  The address reads as follows:

Galesburgh, Kallamazoo Co.  Please Forward to Climax with Daily Mail

For further clarity, they included "Mich" at the bottom left - just in case there is a Kalamazoo County elsewhere in the United States...  I was able to find an image of the 1873 Climax Township plat map that shows the land owners and settlements in that area.

If you click on the map to view it, you will find there were exactly three post offices in the entire township in 1873.  One was in Climax itself.  One in Scotts and the last in South Climax.  It is possible, if I could decipher the name of the recipient, that we might find them on this plat map if they owned land - so if anyone can help me figure it out, let me know.

During the 1860s, most rural residents had to expect that they needed to go to the post office to check if they had any letters.  And, at that time, most post offices in small towns were the local mercantile or other such business.  The owners of these small businesses likely appreciated the opportunity to serve as postmaster since it also encouraged customers to patronize their business at the same time they were picking up their letters!

But, there is more to the story!

It turns out that Climax was the first post office in Michigan to establish Rural Free Delivery on December 3, 1896.  And, it also turns out that the citizens of the area were pretty proud of that fact!  

Pictured at right is a monument that was constructed from stones collected from each farm (nearly 300 of them) on the rural route.  

Rather than re-write some of the pertinent history surrounding the events of free delivery of the mail to rural customers of this particular Michigan post office - I will quote this Kalamazoo Public Library page (viewed Jan 15, 2022).  The photo comes from this page as well and was taken in 1955 (Kalamazoo Valley Museum Photograph 72.338.2A)

The first Rural Free Delivery mail service in Michigan was started in Climax in December, 1896. Two postmen, Lewis Clark and Willis Lawrence, Judge Eldred’s great-grandson, set out on their routes, one by horse and buggy and the other on a bicycle. A memorial to this event, dedicated in 1917, is next to the Lawrence Memorial Library. On four sides of the memorial are bronze tablets, contributed by the State Grange, the D.A.R., the Michigan Rural Letter Carriers Association, and the Climax Men’s Fellowship Club. The ten-foot high RFD Memorial was built with nearly 300 stones, one each was contributed by farmers on the rural route.

Today, people like me continue to receive delivery of the mail to our rural farms and homesteads for the same cost a letter to a recipient in town might require.  An oddity that has come about over time is that some rural towns in the Midwest have no carrier delivery - requiring residents to purchase post office boxes for their mail.  Meanwhile anyone living outside of the (often outdated) town limits would qualify for free delivery to mailboxes near the road next to their homes and farms.  This can result in homes mere yards from each other having different status when it comes to mail delivery!

But, that's all for another day and another Postal History Sunday.  I hope you enjoyed today's installment.

Have a great remainder of your weekend and a fine week to come!