The Postal Service of the United States in Connection with the Local History of Buffalo | Page 3

1796, there were but four buildings in all that territory--as stated by the
late Joseph Landon. In 1807, there were about a dozen houses. This
number, it is said, had increased to more than 200 houses, when, on the
31st of December, 1813, the village was burned by the British and
Indians;--only the house of Mrs. St. John, Reese's blacksmith shop, the
gaol, and the uncovered frame of a barn escaping the general
conflagration.
The white population of the territory now comprised in our city limits
did not, in 1800, probably exceed 25. The earliest census report which
gives any information in regard to its population is that of 1810 when
the population was 1,508. It was 1,060 in 1814; 2,095 in 1820; 5,141 in
1825; 8,668 in 1830; 21,838 in 1840; 34,606 in 1845; 49,769 in 1850;
74,214 in 1855; and 81,129 in 1860. It is believed that it is now about
100,000.
But little reliable information in regard to the transportation of the
mails west of Albany from 1800 to 1824, can now be obtained; and as
the transportation service and the origin and progress of the system of
posts, by which, even now, much of this transportation service is

performed, are believed to be the most interesting of the topics of the
present paper (as that service itself is the most essential of those
connected with the Post-office establishment), it has been deemed
proper to refer to the probable origin of that system;--a system which in
its continued extension and constant improvement, has grown into the
Post-office establishment of the present day. These are now, almost
universally under the control of the State or sovereign power, and they
are certainly among the most important and beneficent of the
institutions of civil government.
It is said that the Assyrian and Persian monarchs had their posts, at a
day's journey from each other, with horses saddled, ready to carry with
the utmost dispatch, the decrees of these despotic rulers. In the Roman
Empire, couriers on swift horses carried the imperial edicts to every
province. Charlemagne, it is said, established stations for carriers who
delivered the letters and decrees of the court in the different and distant
parts of his dominions. As early as the XIth Century the University of
Paris had a body of pedestrian messengers, to carry letters and packets
from its thousands of students to various parts of Europe, and to tiring
money, letters and packets in return. Posts for the transmission of
Government messages were established in England in the XIIIth
Century, and in 1464 Louis XI. established a system of mounted posts,
stationed four French miles apart, to carry the dispatches of the
Government.
Government posts, as the convenience and interest of the people at
large began to receive some attention from their rulers, were at times
allowed to carry private letters, and private posts for the transmission of
general correspondence were sometimes established. This was at first
but an irregular and uncertain service, without fixed compensation; but
considerable regularity, order and system were the results of the public
appreciation of their convenience, and of the gradual improvements
which followed their more general employment.
In 1524 the French posts--which had previously carried only the letters
of the King and nobles--were first permitted to carry other letters; and
in 1543 Charles V., Emperor of Germany, established a riding post

throughout his dominions. It was not until the reign of James I. that a
system of postal communication was established in England, although
Edward IV., in 1481, had established posts twenty miles apart, with
riders, to bring the earliest intelligence of the events of the war with the
Scots. It was not until about 1644 that a weekly conveyance of letters,
by post, was established throughout that kingdom. Mail coaches were
first used at Bristol, in England, in 1784. They were placed on the post
routes in 1785, and their use became general throughout England.
The mail service of North America, which in its magnitude and
regularity, and in the extension of its benefits to every settlement and
fireside, has, it is believed, no superior, probably had its beginning in
private enterprise; although perhaps sanctioned at the very outset, by
local authority.
As early as 1677 Mr. John Hayward, scrivener, of Boston, Mass., was
appointed by the General Court to take in and convey letters according
to their direction. This was probably the first post-office and mail
service authorized in America. Other local arrangements, necessarily
very imperfect in their character, were made in different colonies soon
after; some of them having the sanction of Colonial Governors or
Legislatures.
Thomas Dongan, the Governor of New York under the Duke of York,
in a letter to the Duke's secretary, dated February 18, 1684, says:
You are pleased to say I may