 Thanks to everyone for joining us. It is just seven o'clock. I'm going to give one or two more moments for more people to enter from the waiting room. I'm going to thank you all so much for joining us tonight. As you are coming in. I do want to let everyone know that this tonight's program is being recorded and will be available for everyone to view later on ACMI. I want to thank ACMI so much for partnering with us tonight. So it'll be wonderful to access that if you do need to leave early just know that that program will be available there. And submitted after seven so I think I'm going to begin. I'm going to welcome everyone. Thank you so much for joining us tonight as we begin a new focus at the library, learning more about the civic organizations around us. We are beginning the series with pushing the envelope a history of the United States Post Office. Why the post office you might ask the post office and organization that has been in the news quite a bit recently is an organization that we touch every day and likely don't understand very well at all. We are lucky to be joined tonight by Henry Lucas of the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History. Henry Lucas became education director of the Spellman Spellman Museum in December of 2004. He was a high school social studies teacher in Cambridge and principal of Marblehead Manchester by the sea and Canton high schools for 35 years previous. After retirement, he served as a docent at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Frederick Hall Olmstead National Historic Site and the Harvard Peabody Museum of Natural History. He also gave historic tours of Boston to out of town visitors. In addition, he has served for many years as president of Boston Children's Theater and was the director of the Massachusetts Academic Decathlon for 25 years. I want to give a special thanks tonight for tonight's program for to the Arlington Libraries Foundation who have been generous enough to fund tonight's program. Thank you so much to the Arlington Libraries Foundation. I hope some of you are contributors to that event. And with that, I'd like to turn over the presentation to Henry Lucas. Henry, thank you so much for joining us. And I know that if we were together in the community room at the Robbins Library tonight, you would be receiving a round of applause for joining us. Henry, thank you so much. Well, thank you, Anna. I appreciate that. I appreciate the invitation to talk about the post office. Let me see if I can get my slides up here. All right, I'm going to go through a bunch of slides that hopefully will entertain you but also give you some history information. We like to do stamps because stamps really do tell a historical story. So tonight's program is taking you right from the first sending of mail in the American colonies up until the present day. And as you know, the post office has certainly been in a lot of controversy. But we do want to thank all our postal workers. I know some of you out there probably know your mail carrier. We don't call them mailmen anymore. We call them mail carriers. And they are essential workers, and they have been through quite a bit. So if you haven't had a chance to thank your mail carrier, you really should do that. And of course, the reason everything's in the news is because of the need to have much more voting by mail. There's been much heavier volume. You've probably been listening to the news. I've been to a number of post offices and I asked the clerks if everything is going fine and they seem to think they're going to deliver those ballots. So looking at this, not going to be the big turmoil that some people have predicted. The post offices, even without the election going on, is in trouble financially, which is not unusual for the post office as we'll see right through the years. Money in the post office has always been an issue. But let me tell you quickly about our museum. We're out at Regis College. It's called the Cardinal Spellman Museum of Stamps and postal history. There you can see the Cardinal who was a big stamp collector himself. He was even named stamp collector of the year back in the 50s. And in 1960, he and a bunch of his supporters founded the museum and on his birthday in 1963, the museum opened. Some of you may remember Cardinal Spellman. I've heard about him. He was quite an influential Cardinal in the United States. And right after World War II, he did become a Cardinal. But he gave his collection to the Sisters of St. Joseph, which was the teaching order at Regis, and that's why the museum wound up at Regis. He got the stamp collecting habit, or the fun of it, when he went to study to be a priest in Rome, picked up the habit with friends. And ever since then, he just kept collecting. He was the vicar of all the Catholic chaplains in the army during World War II, and that was another way to do it. So as I said, the museum opened in 1963 on May 4, which just happened to be the Cardinal's birthday. So that was a very nice birthday present for him. And as I said, he was well known, not just in the United States, but around the world. This was a stamp issued for him when he visited Nicaragua in 1959. All right, let's get to the program. I've got a lot to do here, and let's see what we have. Just a couple of little cartoons. We've been joking a little bit about the post office. As you can see, you're all familiar with forever stamps. Buy them today, and you can use them 10, 15 years from now, even though the postage rate will probably go up. But the post office, as I said, is financially hurting, and we hope that the money will come through to support what they need to do. Congress is waiting. Congress, actually, my understanding is, has approved the money. It just needs the approval of the president. But the unofficial model, model of the museum, I'm sorry, of the post office, neither snow nor rain or heat, but budget cuts might just affect that. People wonder about that expression. It's a phrase that comes from a book written about the Persian Wars by Herodotus, who was a Greek historian, you can see appears on the stamp. And it was during the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, and the man who delivered the message about that. It's not the official model of the post office, but it is something that everybody associates with it. In fact, if any of you are from New York or visited, one of the huge post offices in New York City is the James Farley building, built in 1912. Interestingly, the same architects that built the Boston Public Library. And if you look closely at the top, you can't see it in this picture, but the official model is inscribed at the top of the Farley building. James Farley, by the way, was the postmaster general under Franklin Roosevelt. And in those days, your campaign manager very often became the postmaster. James Farley was actually the campaign manager for FDR. Since we're in Arlington, you may have been to the post office. The Arlington post office has one of the murals that were very popularly made during the late 30s and early into 40s. There were WPA projects for help out the artists during the depression, and they were hired. And so if you've been to, they didn't get up to the Arlington library, but you can see it there. I do have a question for people, maybe they can answer at the end. This was a Google picture I found and it said Arlington Library, and I'm wondering if anybody can tell me that building's still there, or if they remember it or not. That artist, by the way, who did the mural, a very famous artist, there were quite a few artists who were well known, but obviously they were needing support so they got the financial packing to do the mural. And in fact, about a year ago, I think the post office actually put out a series of stamps with the murals on them. And there are 37 murals that were done in Massachusetts and over a thousand nationwide. And like anything else, if you just Google post office murals, you can find all the ones that are in the state. There's a little controversy. We always like controversy. And so about 16 murals have been covered up in the last few months because of concerns or protests even from the community that the murals touch on subjects or something that shouldn't be mostly regarding slavery and Native Americans. So not the case in Arlington. And so as I said, 16 murals in the 12 states. Since you're also in Arlington, I think everybody out there is proud of Uncle Sam and the post office has honored Uncle Sam and a number of stamps, including all of these. And now the other thing about post office is one of the largest, if not the largest employer in the in the government and quite a few famous people have served in one way or another, either in the post office or delivering a mail, and they have all appeared on on stamps. In fact, I'm just looking at my slide and left out somebody. And that was Abraham Lincoln, who was a post master for a while. He didn't do so well, he spent all this time reading and so they asked and dismissed him from that. But these are some of the stamps that celebrate some of the people who worked for the post office, as I said, in one way or the other. Okay, let's get to the start of delivering mail. In 1639, the crown established what is considered maybe the first post office in the colonies and it was down right in the Quincy Market area, the Fairbanks Tavern. And of course the Pilgrims Puritans that only arrived in Boston, let's say, what nine years earlier. And so they said that, as a 1639 all ships bringing in mail would have to deliver deposit them at the tavern, and then they would be distributed from there. The tavern owners would make some money in getting the delivery. Then the down in New York City. In 1673, Governor Francis Lovelace established a postal road road between New York City and and Boston, which we all still refer to as the Boston Post Road. The writer was John Wendt of the younger related to on winter of Boston, and he actually left earlier from Hartford. Unfortunately, when the British regained New York from the Dutch, the King Philip War broke out. And so communications between Boston and New York City were delayed until the agreements of Native Americans were solved. But this is a map of the Boston Post Road. There are actually are considered three post roads, the upper, the middle and the lower roads, the one we mostly associate with is the one that goes route 20 up to a spring field and then heads down to New Haven. It would take about two weeks for the writers to deliver mail between there. A couple of good books are available. The King's Best Highway probably gives you the best explanation of what this whole system was like. And of course, when we talk about the history of the post office, we have to mention Benjamin Franklin. He was made postmaster for both the colonies and Canada in 1753. And then a few years later, he was made postmaster for all the 13 colonies. And he did many things to improve the delivery of mail. He set up milestones, which some about 20 of them still exist on the post road between here and Springfield. And he actually had an odometer that he attached to the back of his carriage. He visited all 13 colonies to set up these post roads. He also was able to get the writers to deliver the mail through the dark. And so it was quite a fast delivery between Philadelphia and New York City. And then he was named when the first Continental Congress met, actually the second Continental Congress. He was picked as the postmaster for the colonies. He left soon after that to go to France and so his son took over. And then in 1792, after we became a country, the post office was officially established and Samuel Osgood was the first postmaster general. And after the war, most of the mail, actually all mail before the revolution was carried just on horseback. And after the war, they started delivering coaches and interestingly the Concord coach became quite popular. And of course we know the reason one of the controversies in the current situation is the post office is mentioned in the Constitution. The post office has the right to establish the post offices and post roads. And that's exactly what's happened all over the years. And then of course when the Northwest Territory, which included Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, when that opened up, more and more settlers were going and of course they demanded that they be receiving mail. And so the postal routes grew quite quickly in that time period. And most mail, some was then delivered by carriages. Much of it was done on the river. The steamboat paddles would deliver the mail and then they would be given to the delivery. Again people did not, I'll mention this later, but people did not get mail delivered to their house. If you thought you were getting a letter, you would go to the local post office and have to pick it up. And we'll find out too. There was a big controversy in the 1830s about abolition literature. The Southern Postmasters were refusing to deliver some, what they considered incendiary literature and this created a contract between the local states and the federal government, which continued right up until the Civil War. Now, people don't realize that before 1840, if you mail the letter, there was no stamps, there were no stamps, and you had to pay to receive the letter. So when the mailman, when you went to the post office to see if there was a letter for you, they would say yes and then they would charge you. And this was not a very good system. So in England, where they had the same system of making the receiver pay, they said we need a better system. And so they came up with a stamp piece of paper with the picture of Queen Victoria on the front. And on the back a little glue printed them up in sheets. There were no perforations so they had to use a scissor to cut the sheets. But that was the origin of the postage stamp. The reason I have Henry there, King Henry VIII, England is the only country by the way that does not have to put its name of the country on the stamp. You might see the Queen Elizabeth silhouette there in the upper left hand corner of the stamp. That indicates it's from Great Britain, but every other country has to. And that's because Great Britain was the first country to have stamps. That was 1840 and it took until 18, while the man who invented stamps is usually a man named Roland Hill and he has appeared on a number of stamps. But this is what a letter would have looked like before stamps. They would have put, and again they very rarely use street addresses. And not that much, you know, people knew where you weren't being delivered to your house anyway. And the price would be put somewhere on there up in the corner, and that would have to be paid by the recipient. Then in 1840 Daniel Webster heard about the experiment with stamps in England, and he said that we should be doing the same thing in the United States. So many things today, it took a little while for Congress to actually get around to authorizing postage stamps. So he suggested it in 1840, but it wasn't until 1847 that we issued our first two postage stamps. We charged a little more than a penny, and by in those days, unlike today, we charged by the distance. 300 miles would cost you 5 cents would cost you a Ben Franklin stamp. And if it was over 300 miles, you'd have to pay 10 cents. See, of course, you pick the Washington and Benjamin Franklin, the first two people understand. And then now today every country has stamps, and it creates, well, it's the way we communicate, even today. Now a couple of things you might be wondering the first for forever stamps as you can see they came out. And that was just an experiment and it turns out to be very popular. The first self adhesive stamp was back in 1974 was a Christmas stamp. Unfortunately, the blue was not very good. And so they discontinued doing self adhesive. So, a little bit later and there, but we all remember. Interestingly, we get kids who come to the museum. And the first thing we ask them to do is to send themselves a postcard. Well that poses a couple of problems. One, very often they don't know how to address postcard or an envelope. And two, we give old stamps that still have the blue on the back. And it turns out, they all look at me, and they don't know what to do. We have to tell them, no, you have to turn it over, and you have to lick the stamp and put it up in the quarter which often react. Interesting reactions from people, which is this gentleman here who seems to have had a little problem with him, but stamps also became very popular and people not only use them for mailing but they use them for decorating. We have a lot of people who want to decorate his whole automobile with stamps. We have a nice dress at the museum, which is made entirely out of stamps. Stamps are also been used to raise money for charities, they're called semi postal stamps. And this was the first one of raising money what you do I think you're aware of this, you pay for the cost of the postage, which is 55 cents right now. And it goes back on another few cents, and that goes to the charity. And these are some of the semi postal stamps that have been issued. And the breast cancer stamp is raised, I think almost $100 million from breast cancer research, and these other stamps as well, and other countries do the same thing. So, another use of the post office for charity work. In fact, now we're getting just close to the Civil War, people are moved out to California where gold was discovered in 1848. And of course they want to get their mail. It would take a good six weeks to send a letter from Boston to San Francisco, because you'd have to put it on a boat, take it down to the Panama Canal, take it off the boat, give it to people with their mules to take across the Panama, put it on another ship, and then get it up to California, especially San Francisco. So there was a hope that maybe they could do this a little faster. And so in 1857 they established the Overland Mail Road, which if you can see from that map, went from St. Louis down through the south, through the desert, and then back up to Los Angeles and San Francisco. So if you aren't as familiar with that system, they are of course familiar with the Pony Express. Pony Express was started in April of 1860. And as you can see from this stamp on the right, it started in St. Joseph, Missouri, traveled about 2000 miles to Sacramento, California. And it would take maybe only 15 days for the Pony Express riders to deliver it. But remember, California, the Civil War was fast approaching, and California wanted to get the news of what was happening. And there was some talk of even California being its own countries. But the Pony Express did it, but it didn't last that long, even though everybody knows about it, it disappeared after 18 months because of the telegraph. And telegraph wires were strung all the way across the western part of our country. And that's a picture of Samuel Moore's stamp. Then in 1862, because of the Civil War, they decided that people can get their mail delivered to their house. One of the emotional reasons were people would have to wait in long lines for their mail if they were expecting to hear about their husband or their son or somebody in the family who was in the war. The post office felt this was a little unfair to people, especially if you've gotten a note that you had lost a dear one. And so they decided to start city mail delivery right in the middle of the Civil War. Speaking of the Civil War, and there's been a question in the current news about the soldiers mailing in their ballots, it turns out about 700,000 soldiers were able to vote by mail through their division. And if there wasn't a way to do that, they were actually sent home so they could vote. So voting by mail has a long history in our country. And of course, when the South seceded, we were not obviously going to deliver mail for them, so they created their own post office. And they should mention, we have an interesting rule in this post office and that is only people who are deceased get to be on a stamp. No living person gets on a stamp until they die and usually have to wait a few years before the post office puts them. The South didn't have that same restriction. And so that's Jefferson Davis on the left. And that's a statue on the right of the postmaster, the South. Then, of course, as the mail continued to be in demand and more and more letters were being sent, they wanted to, it's always been the goal of the post office to get mail sent as fast as possible. And so trains were the way that mail was transferred. And interestingly, first they just carried the mail, and then it was sorted when it dropped off the train. But then in the 1860s, it was actually decided to sort mail on the train. And that became the major way. And if you've seen those old pictures of the mail bags on the side of the tracks, they didn't even have to stop the train. They just picked up a sack and dropped it off. Then postcards became popular. We call them the original tweet, short message. They started in 1863 with what we call the Penny postcard. And then by 1907 picture postcards were very, very popular. But it wasn't until 1907 that you could actually write a message on the back of the postcard. If you collect postcards or see old postcards, if there's writing around the picture that was postcard was sent before 1907. And then with the world getting smaller and smaller, agreements had to be made about delivering mail to other countries. And so a man named Montgomery Blair, who was the postmaster during the Civil War for Abraham Lincoln, he discussed having an agreement between countries that we would deliver their mail if they would deliver ours at no extra cost. So 1874 the organization called the Universal Postal Union was established for all rules about international mail. Then another thing that influenced the post office was a Christmas card man right out there in Worcester, Lewis Prang probably one of the most famous people for printing Christmas cards and he made over 5 million in a year. And obviously this with the demand on the post office for delivering there. I should say some of you might remember here been around long enough. That used to be able to when when posted was only three cents, you could also send a post a Christmas card for only a penny and a half. I don't know if any of you remember that. But the reason you could send it for half price, which you didn't seal the envelope. Then special delivery came along it's paying extra 10 cents. Sometimes the mail could be delivered right during the same day. In fact, several cities had delivery several times a day you could post a letter in the morning and it might get to where you wanted it to go in the same day. The man named Mr. Wanamaker, maybe remember that name from the Philadelphia stores. He was made postmaster general by Benjamin Harrison, since he was his campaign manager, and he as a businessman wanted to improve all the service for the post office. So one of the things he did was issue the first commemorative stamps, they were all celebrating the arrival of Columbus is a year late but this was the first time stamps actually have pictures on them, rather than just people. And I like to show the $4 stamp because that's Queen Isabella on the stamp. And interestingly the very first woman to appear on a United States stamps was not an American. And then of course, the first woman you may think about it for a second, and that was Martha Washington who appeared in the first American stand. And then in 1913, the post office realized that they were losing money, because they weren't delivering big packages. And so they started with parcel posts. These are all the different parcel post stamps for the different amount of postage. These stamps didn't last too long. One of the troubles was since they were all red, the mailman had a hard time. Took them longer to figure out the right post if the right postage was on there so these stamps have only lasted for a few years. And then of course, as I mentioned Mr. Wanamaker he had the idea that let's deliver mail to everybody's house. So the rural free delivery started. It was an experimental basis. There were a lot of objections to it. It was going to be costly to put people out on the road rather than have the farmers come to town to get their mail. It started and by 1903 it became official and all homes in the post office delivers mail everywhere in the United States, even to down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon three days a week. The mules head down there with the mail. There's an Indian tribe living down there. And of course the post office delivers the places that FedEx and the UPS do not. They may take the packages on the last few miles to deliver those. And the reason parcel post came about and it was because of a place called Wells Fargo. With the advent of parcel post a lot of different things could be sent. You may have seen in the news recently people mail their baby chicks. The news controversy was that the post office slow down. The chicks were not surviving. They can survive for two days, but they were not doing but still it's a big business you can get your baby chicks. And on the other end, this is an example of how eggs were sent by parcel post by the farmer's wife. She collected the eggs, took them down to the train station put them in this aluminum box, sent it out and then the box was sent back to her empty. And that was just two of the things you could mail by parcel post. Another one was your laundry. Very often college students especially would get one of these laundry packs, send it on home to mom. She would make do the laundry, fold it all up and then send it back. And this is one of kind of suitcases that carried that mail. And there's a very kind of famous story about a little girl who lived in Idaho. She wanted to go visit her grandmother, and her father didn't have money for the train ticket. He had heard about parcel post, and he went down and he said, can I mail my daughter, and they checked all the regulations and there wasn't anything against mailing people. They put some postal stamps on her supposedly put her on the mail car and she got delivered to grandma. They since then have changed the rules. The Post Office like all other organizations has been involved in segregation and discrimination and black post masters, especially in the south, we're not very popular. Some of them actually even got lynched. And there's a famous story about this post master one of the first. The first African American female post master. The name was Minnie Cox, and she was driven out of her and she was forced to resign by her community down in Mississippi. Teddy Roosevelt was president at the time and we heard about it. He closed the post office and the folks had to go about 30 miles away to get their mail. And Woodrow Wilson came in and you may be aware that he instituted a lot of segregation in the government. And he had the black postal workers working separately from the white post masters even on the trains they had to have separate parts even in the post offices. So the African Americans organize their own union to protect themselves. And they were very powerful, powerful force. And I just found this out but Frederick Douglass, the very famous abolitionist, and his funeral. 10 of the Paul bearers were African Americans who belong to the postal workers. In 1918, airplanes, the Wright brothers only a few years earlier had got the planes going and so they post office as I said, always wants to get the mail as fast as possible. So they said, let's do air mail. And so 1918, and the air mail stamp this is probably one of the most famous ones. I've heard about stamps, you know that this is called the inverted Jenny. There's only 100 of these stamps, you were only made on one sheet. And depending on the condition of the stamp, they can sell from anywhere from 300,000 to a million, a million dollars. Especially that with air mail the pilots were very courageous men. There were no radar and old radios or anything. They actually use these towers that were placed along the roots of the planes, and they would the pilots would search for those. And then on the ground they would see arrows, which would point them in the right direction to fly. So they would use these they'd also use railroad tracks. And one of the most famous pilots air mail pilots before he flew off to Paris was Charles Lindbergh. And, and after that he worked for the post office to help them. If you're a cat lover, you might like this little stamp this was a stamp issued by Spain to celebrate Lindbergh flight. And there's a little pussycat on the right hand side. And that's considered maybe the first time I can has appeared on a stamp. Remember, did you take your cat with you and he's a no definitely not would have been too dangerous. Then there's a thing called catapult mail, which again was designed to get mail faster from Europe to America. And it would be put on the passenger ships on the back of the ship to be a catapult. And when they got to about 400 miles from New York City, they would put the mail in the plane catapult it off and it would get almost maybe two days earlier in a fast way of getting mail in. Then, again, something about the post office, those little letter boxes. This was a design of what probably one of the first mailboxes look like back in the 1850s, and then they kept changing the models. So you can see 1909 the four legged boxes 1918 they were all of green, which I think it's kind of interesting the reason why they got the paint from the, from the army left over paint. Then they, some of you may remember mailboxes looking to be a red white and blue. And now in 1971, they all became dark blue. These are just some examples of some of the posts. They've had some fun. They for a while in Star Wars was popularly actually made mailboxes that look to like R2 D2. And some of you may remember these you still see them in some of the old office buildings the mail shoots. That was save the mailman from having to go up and down to pick up the mail. There was one couple of famous companies that made these. They were outlawed in the 70s for fire reasons. It's an easy way to carry up the fire but you can still see them in a lot of older, older buildings and some of them are quite fancy design. And these you no longer exist but these are another example of the boxes on the thing. And bail boxes as you may maybe in your own neighborhood, notice that they are decreasing. There's a little rule that there have to be at least 25 letters a day, average, nailed in a postbox. What happened in the post office takes them away. So if you want to keep your mailbox, make sure that you use your neighborhood mailbox, but they are disappearing read stamp collecting became popular because the post office pushed it, and especially President Roosevelt. He was a big stamp collector. And I found this interesting there was a man named Captain Tim, who had a radio show right on WB Z actually was a national show sponsored by ivory soap. And if you sent the captain Tim for soap labels, he's into some stamps. In World War two, the biggest problem with mail was the volume, and they just could not carry envelopes on the planes along with ammunition and food. So they came up with the idea we call the mail, which is a taking a letter. It would be put in that special type paper on the left. And then they would microfilm it, send the microfilm over, and then reproduce the letter in a smaller shape. And that's how millions over a million letters that sent during World War two. It hadn't been that way would have been a much longer trip for that. And of course mail during any war is very important to soldiers. And I did find out there was a little from shorthand that wives or husbands to put on an SWAK would mean sealed with a kiss. There was also censorship of the mail from the troops. I could not reveal where they were. And there's also this stamp on the left called the win the war stamp was issued during World War two is kind of a propaganda piece. The Germans considered it propaganda, and they would not accept mail from the United States that had the win the war stamp on it. But the Red Cross would deliver mail to a concentration camps, especially in Germany. And then of course with the shortage of men, women started carrying the mail and it's continued right up until today. And some of you may remember this story of miracle on 34th Street, very famous movie takes place with Macy's Day Parade. And it's show it's the theme of it is somebody who's claiming that he really is Chris Crinkle, Santa Claus, and the way his lawyer proves to the judge, and he is Santa Claus. He has all the letters that children have sent to Santa Claus, who was sitting in the New York City Post Office, they were all delivered to the courtroom to show that the post office which is an official branch of the government recognizes this man is Santa So I'm sure most of you have seen that movie shows every every year Thanksgiving. And then they tried some experimental things. They during President Eisenhower is they thought maybe we could deliver mail by rockets. It was not successful and did not last very long. Then of course the volume of mail was continually getting larger and larger and they needed to get into automation. So the first automated post office was opened down in Rhode Island. To speed up the mail. And then in 1963 zip codes came along again because more and more mail. And maybe it didn't know but zip code means zone improvement plan. And found out even FL Merman was using one of the commercials, but usually if you remember before the in bigger cities they had zones and think Arlington may have had several zones. The zone now is part of the part of the zip code. And then in 1969 1970 post office was really in a mess. This is a cover of a 1969 life magazine, and they would did the same thing that people are doing today. They were sending a letter to see how long it would take to get from different cities. And this caused the post office. Big turmoil. In fact, the postal workers actually went on strike in the 1970 he brought the army in in the cities anyway to deliver the mail strike didn't last too long. And there were agreements basically the strike was over the poor pay that postal workers were getting. So in 1971, President Nixon reorganized the post office. He took it out of being a cabinet position, made it semi independent people. There is no government money that is used to pay for the post office. And this served as a helpful way. It also did away with some of the patronage that was still going on. But then in 19 in 2006, more legislation which is what has caused the problem now for the post office. But as they post office is expected to pay the pensions in advance, which very few other companies have to do. And that's actually what's put it in the in the red today. And hopefully, as I said in the beginning, Congress may approve some money as a loan, but that's still on hold. Quick trip through the history of the post office. It's part of our history. And it without the post office who knows how our country. So let me stop here. I just say that if you have questions about our museum, we do have a website. We just put up a virtual trip even walk around the gallery. And we also have our email be happy to take any email questions from you from my presentation. And if you have an old, if you have an old collection sitting in the closet up in the attic, you can get it out and we do evaluations even though we're closed for a visit. If you give us a call or an email, we can set up an evaluation. And if it turns out your stamps are not very valuable, which turns out in the cases very often happens, then we happy to take donations and we use with our education programs and also to help as a fundraiser. So I think at the quick trip through the history. I noticed there's a few things I can probably add and but anyway, I hope that's been good information for you and I always like to hear anybody who has good stories about their experience with the post office. So Anna, I think we're all set for that. Yeah, we are gonna I'm gonna ask you to turn off the presentation now, Henry, and we are going to do a brief Q&A so if people do have any questions now. Please feel free to answer them in the question and answer panel, you can just stop sharing here. Thank you. You can enter those questions in the Q&A panel and we're going to take them I'm going to share them and please feel free to put any questions again that you might have. I wanted to begin with a comment that Richard Duffy who's a town historian who presented on the history of the island library is just last week wanted to answer your question and then we'll get to questions from the building. Yeah, so Richard has written into the Q&A it's replied to your question about whether or not the post office building shown in the anti postcard is still standing. Yes, it is, although greatly altered in the 1950s. For many years, it was the Arlington National Bank and then the Coolidge Bank. The address is 635 Mass Ave and the building is adjacent to the Uncle Sam Plaza and Mystic Street. And I did learn quite a bit from Richard last week about where libraries have been over the years and that building has not served as the library for quite a few years. The library's current location opened in 1896. I believe Richard will tell me if I'm wrong. Yeah. So that was fantastic. I learned so much and I just had a few questions as people might be entering some additional questions in the Q&A panel. Right. I was really, really surprised to hear that zip codes were not introduced until 1963. Right. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah, it was just like that. You know, obviously I don't remember a time before zip codes. Well, let me. The reason the zip codes was just, you know, more and more mail being done and it was a way of just getting the mail faster. Almost all countries have some form of a zip code. But if you remember the old Elvis Presley song, Return to Sender. Yeah. You know that there's a little line in there. It says return to Sender address unknown, no such number, no such zone. And that song was then obviously written before 1963 when he mentioned zone rather than zip code. We have another question. And this one you may or may not be able to answer the question is why is the post office politicized and why have some business people wanted to privatize the post office and it sounds like it is a sort of a semi private and it has been semi private for quite a while. And the questioner goes on to ask what happened to the Postal Service in the UK and was that semi privatized. A lot of the post offices are I was lucky enough to visit New Zealand a few years ago and they actually had two types of mailboxes on the street for the government one and the private service. People think it just would be a business choice to, you know, united parcel and FedEx. The argument against it is that it does not make money for them. There was no post office they would not be delivering mail to every house. So, and again, it's in the Constitution. But it's more of, can you can you make more money delivering mail and packages than the post office. I don't think that's ever really going to happen. Yeah, thank you. I was also another piece that really surprised me was the push to deliver mail to rural communities in 1896 and I think I was under the impression that that happened far earlier. Can you tell I'm sorry there was people got mail they just didn't get it delivered to their house. Right. And that seems like it must have been a huge undertaking, including the huge financial undertaking for the post office. Can you tell a little bit about the work that went into rural mail delivery. You know, it was that Mr. Wanamaker, the businessman who became postmaster general, it was his idea. He had he had to fight for it for almost seven or eight years because of the cost. You needed a lot more people to go out and deliver the mail. That was basically the argument against it, but people felt in the, in the countryside that they deserved as good a service as people in the cities. And so, but the mail those mailman actually could, he could sell stamps. He could cancel stamps. There are stories where they were asked to go pick up the groceries as long as it was going by. So, but yeah, it just became an issue I think of fairness to everybody to get their mail. I also was curious. You mentioned that 700,000 Union soldiers voted mailed it voted by mail in ballot during the Civil War. Yeah, that may be a little exaggeration number but there definitely was. They definitely because most of them felt that they were going to vote for Lincoln. And as their commander in chief, that's why the army made an extra efforts to, to let them vote. Wow, that's fantastic. Really interesting. I was the John Wanamaker stories really interested me obviously he undertook a huge effort. And he, you know, he made a lot of effort to improve mail service for all kinds of people, but he was not somebody with post office experience in his background. That's that's been an issue that's the issue with the current postmaster general who famously when they asked him what it costs to mail a postcard didn't know. But the, it's not always the case that they worked their way up. But they have a John Farley I don't believe he worked in the post office either. So there's a history of both people with post office experience and post office people without. That's a good question and I'd have to. We've had quite a few postmasters, some of them only lasting a year because again it was the whoever was president. It was not. If when a new president came in they would change the postmaster unusual. It's always been a politically appointed position. Yeah, in fact, post mentioned the Arlington post office. There are some places where people would just have the post office in their in their home. And when the president president of a different party got elected, the Republican or the Democrat would become postmaster and they'd move it to his house. So, yeah, definitely was. In fact, if you've seen the movie Lincoln, when Lincoln is trying to get votes to pass the 13th Amendment, he sends out his people to tell to talk to congressman and promise them a postmaster job when they left Congress. So it definitely has a patronage type atmosphere to it. So question from my attendee, is it true that Congress gets to send letters for free? If it's a congressional business. Just the same as the president. If it's for official business. It's called the franking privilege. But there was a congressman who got in trouble for sending out his Christmas cards, I think we're using it for campaign purposes. So the other people who get free mail are soldiers in combat areas. They also can send letters for free, but nobody can send letters to them for free. No, that's a good question. No, they can't. In fact, even some of the soldiers can if you send a care package to a soldier, sometimes they suggest you put the stamps in there. Another question from a little attending, I just learned there are postal investigators and police. What do they do. Oh, yeah, that I didn't include that because that's a whole nother aspect of the post of the postal police. In fact, when they was the marathon bombing. Because I think they did blow up a mailbox the police were called in. There's a lot of fraud mail fraud they have to investigate people counterfeit stamps. They have to investigate that. In the old days, one of the big things was robbing trains. In fact, if you remember the old movie butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. And they're running away because they used to rob the mail trains, and then the postal police were sent after. They had they had they have quite a, in fact, my understanding is they will be sent out during an election day to various post offices to see how the mail is going. Thank you so much. This was really interesting I learned a lot and not sure if there's any last questions, as I'm waiting for people to answer last questions in case they have any. I do want to mention the piece that I was sort of expecting you to talk about but you did not talk about Ponzi and the fact that the original Ponzi. That's a little hard to explain but yeah you're right Ponzi was able to get some stamps. He could buy them cheaper in Europe, I believe, and here and then he was able to sell them here at a higher price. And that's how he started getting his money. I did not know that at all until I read the book Ponzi scheme he was also he was living in like Lexington or Wellesley or someplace quite near where we are now. He was actually in the north end I believe. Yeah, born there and I think as he as his scheme blossomed he did move out to either Lexington or Wellesley someplace like that but quite close to where we are now was really interesting. If people are interested in the stamp piece that part was I had just had no idea that Ponzi scheme was actually about selling stamps. Well I think it's still true that you can buy an international stamp here in the United States send it to a friend in Europe and they can use it to mail a letter back. I haven't seen that recently but that was, you know, if you were trying to have a friend over in Europe it didn't have much money. You would send them the stamps to use that you could buy here. But the Ponzi scheme definitely had a connection with the post with stamps. Question another question from a member how excuse me in attending how many miles a day does the average postal worker walk great question my postal worker seems to walk so far she looks tired a lot. Well you know, there depends on where you are because in New York City, some mail post letter carriers only do one or two apartment buildings which takes the most of the day to sort the mail. Remember the, the old the towers the twin towers had five different zip codes. That's how much mail was going into those buildings. So it's hard to say who, you know, an average walk depends on what your route is bicycle some some people are navigating using bikes. Yeah, that's a good question and I don't know what the average walking of a postman would be. There is a lot. Yep. Yeah. Um, I think that's all the questions we have for today. I want to thank you so much for joining us. I know I learned a lot about really some of this information is just so amazing to me. And this is the organization that we all touch. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to come talk to us. I want to again thank the Arlington Libraries Foundation for sponsoring tonight's program. I also wanted to let everyone who's here know that Henry was generous enough to provide us with museum passes for for our museum pass program. I know that they are closed now, but I hope we come to a time when we will be able to offer those passes to the community. I think it's really fantastic that we are so close to this museum and that you're giving us the opportunity to learn more. And if people have a chance, check our website. We just did a 12 minute virtual quick tour of the museum, which give you a little better idea of all the things we offer. Great. Well, thank you so much. Again, I really appreciate you taking the time. I want to thank everybody in the audience for coming to hear us tonight. Just want for you one last comment. Somebody again said thank you very interesting. And I second that comment. Thank you all so much. Please continue to look for our programming event, a lot of new great new programs are keep coming up at the Robbins Library, even through this difficult time. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful night and stay safe.