Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1885 — The Postoffice in Early Times. [ARTICLE]

The Postoffice in Early Times.

The New York Poetoffice was established in 1775. It was not the first by any means, either in this city of the country. Ripper tells us what excitement it made, Jan. 1, 1673, when the first monthly postman between New York and Boston drew up at the tavern with his “portmantels [a corruption of portmanteaux] crammed with letters and small portable goods. ” This service was undertaken by the colonial government of New York. In 1692 one person, Thomas Neale, received letters patent in England to take charge of the whole postal business of the colonies. Then, in 1704, a new arrangement was made —a general office in, London, under a Postmaster General, with a Colonial Deputy Postmaster General at New York. For fifty years, however, things went poorly under British management. The service did not pay till, in 1753, Benjamin Franklin came into office as Deputy Postmaster General for the colonies. Then began system. He established the penny post, made newspapers pay — which hitherto had been perquisites of the Postmasters and riders —advertised letters, reduced rates, and quickened up riders and everything else. The result of Franklin’s energy was that in 1774 there was a clear annual revenue to Great Britain of £3,000. In that year, for political reasons, he was dismissed, and the whole service practically collapsed, only again to reach like success under our two Postmasters and Postmasters General, Ebenezer Hazard and Thomas L. James. On July 26, 1775, the New York Povincial Congress recommended my grandfather, Ebenezer Hazard, to the Continental Congress as a fit person for Postmaster, and on Oct. 5, 1775, he was duly appointed by that body the first Postmaster of New York-j-nine months before the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Hazard was a merCjxantvfthis city, and his mother, Catherine Clarkson, was a daughter of Matthew Clarkson and Cornelia De Peyster, of New York. * * * Washington retreated from Long Island during the night of Aug. 29, 1776. The next day the Committee on Safety ordered Mr. Hazard to Dobbs Ferry. For several months the Postoffice, at least the Postmaster, was not in clover. Ostensibly it was kept at Hercules Cronk’s, next door to Mayor Abraham Storm’s, a mile above the ferry. In fact, it was peripatetic, and might easily have been mistaken for a peddler or a tramp. It had to be near the Provincial Congress, then at Fishkill, and at the same time near Washington and his movable headquarters, as most of the letters were army letters. On Nov. 28, 1783—three days after the evacuation —the Postoffice turns up alive and well at No. 38 Smith street, William Bedlow, Postmaster. Mr. Hazard’s first difficulties were with the anti-Federalist newspapers, which he was accused of Suppressing from the mails. But by law they were not mail matter. They made their own arrangements with the riders. Then contractors .of stages (introduced in 1785) attacked him, since he would not pay their exorbitant prices. Mr. Hazard was able to say to the President that with 1,500 miles of road under his care, on a salary of $1,250, without clerk Ipre,,which he could not afford, and without the aid of the Treasury, he had made the office pay its way —which it did not do afterward.— Bee. Dr. Fermilye.