Stamps and markings on mail reveal how it was transported and what challenges it encountered. The effort to move mail ever farther and faster contributed to major advances in transportation technology—from bicycles to trains, canoes to submarines, balloons to spacecraft. Times of difficulty sparked innovations in mail delivery. How did mail travel? What route did it take to reach its final destination? How long did it take? What obstacles did the mail encounter along the way? Different kinds of markings on mail reconstruct the story. Postage rates show what services were requested. Postmarks record where and when mail entered and traveled through the system. Auxiliary markings give routing directions or indicate special services. Addresses and handwriting provide information about both sender and recipient. The envelope’s condition delivers clues to handling (Figures 68 and 69).
Mail has been delivered in a surprising variety of ways on both land and sea. The origins of modern postal systems date to the thirteenth century, when private couriers carried dispatches for governments, churches, universities, and other institutions. Over time, these private systems opened to the public. As populations grew, people tried moving the mail using a range of transportation technologies. Ocean-going ships have transported mail from one continent to another since at least the 1300s. Steamships, introduced in the 1830s, shortened Atlantic Ocean crossings to a little more than two weeks. Over time, more and more steamship companies secured contracts to carry government mail. By the mid-1860s, government mail contracts heavily subsidized the construction and operation of transatlantic passenger liners (Figure 70).
As cities expanded in size, so did methods of mail transport. Trains and buses carried mail over long distances. At the turn of the twentieth century, horse-drawn wagons and electric streetcars transported mail within most cities. By the 1920s, motorized postal trucks became the dominant form of urban mail transportation. In the United States, as railroads declined, the Post Office used buses and the new Interstate Highway System to move mail among cities and serve communities in between.
Aviation technology forever changed mail delivery in the United States and around the world. From the 1800s onward, a wide variety of aircraft and spacecraft have carried the mail. Over the years, these craft have increased greatly in speed, size, sophistication, and endurance, revolutionizing global mail delivery. Markings on mail record the major transitions and milestones in airmail service that have occurred worldwide over the last two centuries (Figures 71, 72, and 73).
Balloons and gliders carried the first airmail. By the 1920s, zeppelins had established postal routes over long distances. On 17 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. As the twentieth century progressed, the speed and reliability of airplanes improved considerably and transformed communication, moving the mail more efficiently than ever. In the 1900s, scientists used balloons and rockets to explore the stratosphere and space for the first time. Only a few of these space missions carried mail, either privately by astronauts or as payload. Markings on this mail document these early space explorations as well as later space flights and missions.
Wars, natural disasters, epidemics, and other types of adversity have an impact on mail, leaving behind objects that bear testament to history. Pieces of mail that survive challenging circumstances such as these provide evidence of how normal communications were disrupted and how postal authorities coped with formidable obstacles (Figures 74 and 75). With the help of innovative ideas, clever inventions, and persistence on the part of postal employees, the mail usually managed to get through, even during the most difficult times.
The oldest paper letter in the National Philatelic Collection, dated 1390, traveled on the Silk Road. It discusses prices of luxury fabrics and spices such as cinnamon and pepper. Mailed by a Venetian merchant in Damascus on 24 November 1390, it was carried by courier to Beirut, where it boarded a Venetian galley. It arrived in Venice on 26 December, having traveled 1,650 miles in one month.
British naval lieutenant and entrepreneur Thomas Fletcher Waghorn pioneered an overland mail route between the Egyptian cities of Alexandria and Suez in order to speed up mail delivery between Great Britain and its empire in India. About 200 covers are known to have survived with the endorsement “Care of Mr. Waghorn,” this example from 1838.
First-class Titanic passenger George E. Graham, a Canadian returning from a European buying trip for Eaton’s department store, addressed this folded letter on ship’s stationery. Destined for Berlin, it received Titanic’s onboard postmark (“Transatlantic Post Office 7”) on 10 April 1912 and was sent ashore with the mail, probably at Cherbourg, France. Mail is one of the rarest artifacts from Titanic.
This postal card traveled on the last legs of the first transcontinental flight via the Vin Fiz Flyer, piloted in 1911 by Calbraith Perry Rodgers. The makers of the grape soda Vin Fiz sponsored the flight, signaling the use of the post for advertising. The entire flight from Sheepshead Bay, New York, to Long Beach, California, took forty-nine days, including stops, breakdowns, and crashes.
On 20–21 May 1932, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to pilot solo across the Atlantic Ocean, flying from Newfoundland to Ireland. The feat brought her worldwide acclaim and a place in aviation history. On her flight, Earhart carried fifty pieces of privately transported mail.
The 6 May 1937 Hindenburg disaster ended the golden era of airships. While attempting to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the airship burst into flames. Within thirty-four seconds, it was destroyed. Two-thirds of the passengers and crew survived, but most mail burned.
This pad of stamps survived the ferocious 1871 Chicago fire, which burned from 8 to 10 October. The fire destroyed about four square miles of the city, including the main post office, where these stamps were recovered.
Located at 90 Church Street, across the street from the World Trade Center, this mailbox was scratched, dented, and filled with dust on 11 September 2001, but its body and mail inside remained intact.
