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

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 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