The Postal Service of the United States in Connection with the Local History of Buffalo | Page 4

set up a post-house, but send me noe
power to do it. I never intended it should be expensive to His Royal
Highness. It was desired by the neighboring colonies, and is at present
practiced in some places by foot messengers.
In the same letter Gov. Dongan says he will endeavor to establish a
post-office in Connecticut and at Boston. Under date of August 27,
1684, Sir John Werden, the Duke's secretary, wrote to Gov. Dongan:
As for setting up post-houses along the coast from Carolina to Nova
Scotia it seems a very reasonable thing, and you may offer the privilege
thereof to any undertakers for ye space of 3 or 5 years, by way of farm;

reserving wt part of ye profit you think fit to the Duke.
At least as early as January, 1690, there was what was called a public
post between Boston and New York, and in 1691 there was a post of
some kind from New York to Virginia, and from New York to Albany.
This was during the war with the French, and these posts were probably
established by the military authorities.
On the 4th of April, 1692, Thomas Neele, having obtained a patent to
establish post-offices throughout the American colonies, appointed
Andrew Hamilton (afterwards Governor of New Jersey), his deputy for
all the plantations. Mr. Deputy Hamilton brought the subject before
Gov. Fletcher and the New York Colonial Assembly in October
following, and an Act was immediately passed "for encouraging a
post-office."
In 1705 Lord Cornbury, the Governor of New York, informed the
Lords of Trade of the passage by the New York Assembly of "an Act
for enforcing and continuing a post-office," which he recommended
His Majesty to confirm "as an act of necessity," without which the post
to Boston and Philadelphia would be lost.
In 1710 the British Parliament passed an Act authorizing the British
Postmaster-General "to keep one chief letter-office in New York and
other chief letter-offices in each of His Majesty's Provinces or Colonies
in America." Deputy Postmasters-General for North America were
afterwards, and from time to time, appointed by the British
Postmaster-General in England. Dr. Franklin was appointed to that
office in 1755, and it is said that in 1760 he startled the people of the
colonies by proposing to run a "stage waggon" from Boston to
Philadelphia once a week, starting for each city on Monday morning
and reaching the other by Saturday. In 1763 he spent five months in
traveling through the Northern Colonies for the purpose of inspecting
and improving the post-offices and the mail service. He went as far east
as New Hampshire, and the whole extent of his five months' tour, in
going and returning, was about sixteen hundred miles. He made such
improvements in the service as to enable the citizens of Philadelphia to
write to Boston and get replies in three weeks instead of six weeks, the

time previously required.
In 1774 Dr. Franklin was removed from office; and on the 25th of
December, 1775, the Secretary of the General Post-Office gave notice
that, in consequence of the Provincial Congress of Maryland having
passed a resolution that the Parliamentary post should not be permitted
to travel on a pass through that province, and of the seizure of the mails
at Baltimore and Philadelphia, the Deputy Postmaster-General was
"obliged, for the present, to stop all the posts." It is supposed that this
terminated the regular mail service in the old Thirteen Colonies, and
that it was never resumed under British management.
Before this suspension of the Parliamentary posts, Mr. William Godard
of Baltimore had proposed to establish "an American Post-office"; and
in July, 1774, he announced that his proposals had been warmly and
generously patronized by the friends of freedom, and that postmasters
and riders were engaged. During the preceding six months he had
visited several of the colonies in order to extend and perfect his
arrangements, and there appears to have been a very general disposition
to abandon the use of the British post and sustain that established by
Mr. Godard. In May, 1775, Mr. Godard had thirty postmasters, but Mr.
John Holt of New York City was the only one in this State. In that year
partial arrangements for mail service in Rhode Island, Connecticut,
New Hampshire and Massachusetts were made by the Provincial
Congress of each of those Colonies.
The old Continental Congress first assembled in September, 1774; and
on the 26th of July, 1775, it resolved "that a Postmaster-General should
be appointed for the United Colonies who should hold his office at
Philadelphia and be allowed a salary of $1,000 for himself and $340 for
his secretary and comptroller; and that a line of posts should be
appointed, under the direction of the Postmaster-General, from
Falmouth, in New England, to