The Lizzie Borden Society archive

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1. "Mail delivery"
Posted by Harry on Mar-10th-02 at 11:59 PM

I have been for the longest time trying to learn if there was home delivery of mail in Fall River in the 1890's. I ran across a site of in all places - China! It appears to be some sort of reading test. It had a small article on the history of the U.S. Postal service. The part I found interesting was:

"Finally, in 1863, Congress provided that the mail carriers who delivered the mail from the post offices to private addresses should receive a government salary, and that there should be no extra charge for that delivery. But this delivery service was at first confined to cities, and free home delivery became a mark of urbanism. As late as 1887, a town had to have 10,000 people to be eligible  for free home delivery. In 1890, of the 75 million people in the United States, fewer than 20 million had mail delivered free to their doors. The rest, nearly three-quarters of the population, still received no mail unless they went to their post office."

It doesn't quite answer my question but it's a start.

The site is at: http://www.wayabroad.com/chinese/homepage/4_tests/reading/421.htm

(Message last edited Mar-11th-02  12:00 AM.)

(Message last edited Oct-6th-02  11:32 PM.)

So do we know if the paper was delivered to the home or the post office?

(Message last edited Oct-6th-02  11:33 PM.)

Harry has been discussing this with me a few times.  We concluded that we wouldn't assume the Cunningham collecting was residential ANd commercial. (And he reminded me of the "paper wrappers" that needed addressing, which might imply "mailing's".)
It's good to have another *Word Searcher* aboard!
Harry has been my *handydandyallpurposewordsearcher* for a year...now Stef tells me I HAVE the capability on this computer I got from her ...and I just tried it for the first time last week, once!

Oh, BTW: David:
Is the City Hall Clock important in your post?..we seem to have neglected it's reference.  Does it figure in any way?

(Message last edited Mar-21st-02  12:48 AM.)