Archive for the Mail Category
Brantwood, WI
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on September 17, 2009 by kihm
If I had lived in this town in 1906, I surely would have welcomed a letter.
Apalachicola, FL
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on September 16, 2009 by kihm
On the Gulf of Mexico and Apalachicola Bay, this town was once home to the sponge trade and boasted a post office that also did duty as the customs house and the weather bureau.
Fredericton, N.B.
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on September 10, 2009 by kihm
Do you think the photographer had no place else to stand? Fredericton is the capital of New Brunswick province, and surely its post office deserved better than to be upstaged by a tree. And not a very stately tree at that.
Royal Oak, MI
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on September 10, 2009 by kihm
A handsome group of mail carriers prepare to spread joy, on foot and by bicycle, in Royal Oak, Michigan.
South Queensferry, Scotland
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on August 12, 2009 by kihm
You have to love this postcard, with well-clad postal ladies and a bicycle at the ready, a humble yet eager post office serving the people of South Queensferry. Part of the City of Edinburgh, the town took its name from St. Margaret of Scotland (1045-1093), wife of Malcolm III, King of Scots. While his Queen Consort, she crossed the Firth of Forth here, by ferry, to visit her chapel in Edinburgh Castle.
Mineral King, CA
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on July 2, 2009 by kihm
In a mountain valley 7,800 feet above sea level in California’s High Sierras sits Mineral King, where summer cabins have been in some families for seven and even eight generations. The roads are closed in winter; there is no electricity, but there is mail.
Bridgeport, CT
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on June 9, 2009 by kihm
The post office in Bridgeport, Connecticut, courtesy of Gary Archer.
Monterey, CA
Posted in Mail, Post Office, Postcards on May 29, 2009 by kihm
An unflattering postcard of the Monterey, California, post office, but the only one I’ve been able to find. The post office is on Hartnell Street, named for an Englishman who opened a school in Monterey in 1834.
You wouldn’t know it from this photo, but the building’s alcoves are graced by two tile murals depicting the Monterey landings of Sebastián Vizcaíno (1548-1624) and John D. Sloat (1781-1867).
Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, explorer and diplomat whose travels took him to the Americas, Philippines, and Japan. In 1602, he sailed up the California coast, exploring and naming Point Lobos, Carmel Valley and Monterey Bay.
In 1846, Sloat, an American naval officer, raised the American flag over the Monterey Customs House and proclaimed California a part of the United States.
The tiles are from the Gladding McBean tile company; an individual artist is not mentioned.
Alaskan Mail Run
Posted in Mail, Post Office on May 28, 2009 by kihm
I often marvel at what people will do to get their mail, and in this photo by B.B. Dobbs from Alaska’s Digital Archives we see Martin Victor “Sport” Smith, with his dogs and friends, bringing mail ashore from the S.S. Corwin on June 2, 1907. In this photo, Mr. Smith, and what a sport he must have been, is five miles out on the ice of the Bering Sea, apparently as close to the shore as the Corwin could come.
“It’s a fierce game, that carrying the mails in the winter,” he once observed. This “summer” run must have been a lark for him.
