This page contains data I’ve collected while doing research for my dissertation on the geography of the US Post in the nineteenth century.
NATIONAL DATA
Post Offices By State
This dataset contains yearly tallies for from 1867-1902 on post offices in each state. It includes the total number of post offices, the number established, and the number discontinued each year.
I’ve also put the data into a Tableau Public worksheet if you would like to play around with the data in map form.
Source: The Annual Report of the Postmaster General, from 1867-1902. (Example page)
Date Created: 8/28/2012
Date Modified: 8/28/2012
REGIONAL DATA
Western Post Offices and Postmaster Salaries, 1871
This file contains post offices in existence in 1871, postmasters salaries, and latitude/longitude coordinates for each office.
Source: Official Register of the United States, 1871.
Date Created: 11/19/2013
Date Modified: 11/19/2013
Postal Data by Cameron Blevins is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
I have a small collection of family letters written between 1852 and 1860; mailed from the area around Oregon City, Oregon to Sangamon County, Illinois. I do not have the envelopes. I realize it is probably impossible to say with any certainty how the letters traveled from Oregon to Illinois but I would appreciate whatever insight you might have as to the probable route.
Thank you for your time
Fred Hinke