July 29, 2019
Galesburg Post Office By Barbara Schock
When the first settlers arrived
at Log City in 1836, there was no post office. Mail
was brought from Lewistown by anyone coming this way.
It was left at the home of Reverend George W. Gale.
The settlers picked up their mail there. In the spring of 1837 Nehemiah H.
Losey was appointed Postmaster and the mail was
delivered at his home. Later the post office was
located in C.S. Colton’s store on the west side of the
Public Square. At other times it was located on Main
Street until a new federal building was erected in
1894. In the early days postage was
twenty-five cents per letter. The person receiving the
letter had to pay the postage. The twenty-five cent
coin was a scarce item on the prairie. Some letters
were never claimed as the recipient didn’t have the
money to pay for the postage on it. A letter from the
East Coast took about two weeks to arrive in
Galesburg. In 1845 postage was reduced to
five cents per letter. The first stamps were sold in
1847. The meant that the sender had to pay the
postage. By 1851 postage was reduced to three cents
per letter. As soon as the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy Railroad came through Galesburg in
1855, it also carried the mail. Galesburg became a
sorting center. There were six hundred boxes at the
post office where residents of the city went to pick
up their mail. It became the central place in town for
people to meet and discuss the news of the day. With less costly postage and the
widespread manufacturing of pens, ink and writing
paper, it became quite fashionable to write letters,
send thank you notes and greeting cards via the public
mail. Americans were well enough educated to write
letters and to describe the situation around them. Penmanship became a skill to be
admired. Women could keep in touch with their families
“back home” and with other women who had similar
interests, such as abolition and a woman’s right to
vote. Stamp collecting became a hobby for many people. In 1883 City Free Delivery was
instituted in Galesburg. Every house had to be
numbered and every street given a name. Letter
carriers had to be hired and trained to sort and
deliver the mail. At the time there were 2000 boxes
rented at the Post Office. Five letter carriers were
hired: John H. Wheeler, Horace L. Arnold, George K.
Inness, Nels N. Olson and Ralph W. Alexander (a black
man). They had to be trained to sort the mail and
deliver it correctly. They were paid $800 per year
with no vacation. In 1864 the money order system
was enacted by Congress. It provided a means for
soldiers in the Civil War to send money home and to
receive money if they needed it. Later, it provided a
means for consumers to pay for things they ordered
from catalogs. By 1890 the Galesburg Post Office was
selling $500,000 a year in money orders. It was the
safest way to move money around for various kinds of
business transactions. The 1792 Post Office Act set a
precedent for serving the people of the United States,
no matter where they lived, Serving all of the people
helped democracy become real for them as the system
grew to cover the entire continent. It also helped
reinforce the people’s right to free speech with the
cost of communication being kept at a reasonable rate. Note: The next time you go to the
Galesburg Post Office, notice the mural on the east
wall. There is a happy lady in it who has just
received a letter from the “folks back home”.
|