Crimes, accounting, and Franklin’s letters: Postal materials in the Kislak Center

While the United States does not celebrate its semiquincentennial until next year, with Penn planning events throughout the academic year through the initiative America 250 at Penn, 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the country’s first national postal agency—of which Benjamin Franklin was the first postmaster general. On July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress established what was then called the United States Post Office.

Franklin had previously been appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737 and co-postmaster general of the North American colonies for the British, notes Lynne Farrington, senior curator in the Penn Libraries’ Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

“He served in that position from 1757 to 1774, increasing the efficiency of the post through improvements in bookkeeping, delivery routes, and more,” she says. “Postmasters at that time typically operated the business out of their homes or printing offices.”

In celebration of the postal service’s 250th anniversary, Common Press in Fisher Fine Arts Library is hosting a hands-on event involving letterpress printing a quote from Franklin or using rubber stamp collections to make mail art, on July 25 from 12 to 2 p.m.

Penn Today visited the Kislak Center to review postal-related materials related to appointments, postal crimes, and revenues and expenditures.

Franklin’s letters

Around 1753, Franklin and William Hunter—“His Majesty’s Deputy Post-Masters General of all his Dominions on the Continent of North America”—sent a printed broadside, with blanks to fill in names and places, to the new deputy postmaster for Newport, Rhode Island, Thomas Vernon. It included directions on sorting letters and bookkeeping, what to do if the post is delayed, and how to handle people wanting to send “Money, Rings, Jewels, or any Thing else of Value.”

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Franklin and Hunter also instructed Vernon, “You are to direct the Post-riders, who go from your Stage, to wind their Horns once every five Miles, and three Times in every Town or Village, and upon the meeting any Passenger on the Road; and also on his arriving at, and Half an Hour before his Departure from, your Office.”

This letter is part of the Curtis Collection of Franklin Imprints, comprising more than 300 titles Franklin and his associates printed between 1719 and 1786, which the Curtis Publishing Company donated to Penn in 1920.

In a shorter, handwritten letter dated July 10, 1764, Franklin and fellow deputy postmaster general John Foxcroft nominated James Parker of Woodbridge, New Jersey, as secretary, comptroller, accountant, and receiver general of the General Post Office, the previous name of the United Kingdom’s postal system. The term was for three years, with an annual salary of 80 pounds sterling.

‘Mail depredations’

An account in the 1856 memoir “Ten Years Among the Mail Bags: Or, Notes from the Diary of a Special Agent of the Post-Office Department” by postal special agent James Holbrook recalled “Thomas L.” as a young postal clerk taken in by “the usual enticements of a moderate-sized Massachusetts county village,—the sleighing parties, dancing schools, balls, refreshment saloons, bowling alleys.” Unable to financially keep up with his lifestyle, Thomas first stole $75 from post office funds and then began stealing money from letters.

After initially having some difficulty identifying the source of the thefts, Holbrook mailed “decoy letters” with marked money to pass through Thomas’ post office to test his theory that Thomas was the culprit. An undercover attempt to catch Thomas passing stolen bills at a bowling saloon failed, but Holbrook eventually got the necessary evidence for a warrant, and a U.S. marshal took Thomas into custody.

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In other chapters detailing “mail depredations,” Holbrook wrote of money stolen from letters intended for students in New England, theft by a never-apprehended night porter in the New York Post Office who was grieving the death of his child, and about how confidence was shaken in the special agent system itself when one agent bit off the ear of a political adversary.

In his flowery language, Holbrook mused on the psychological underpinnings of thievery and shared some history of evolving mail malfeasances. For example, he noted that with the advent of railroads and steamboats, the threat of highway robbery gave way to danger from those connected with the transport and delivery of mail.

In a chapter about writings on the exteriors of letters, he shared a valentine addressed from Syracuse: “Mr. Post Master, keep this well, for every line is going to tell how much I love my Bill Martell.”

“A Mail Bag is an epitome of human life,” Holbrook wrote. “All the elements which go to form the happiness or misery of individuals—the raw material so to speak, of human hopes and fears—here exist in a chaotic state.”

Postal revenue and spending, 1800-1803

Bound in another book in the Kislak Center is a letter dated March 22, 1804,from Gideon Granger, who served as the postmaster general from 1801 to 1814. In it, he transmits a financial report to Congress covering the period from Oct. 1, 1800, through Sept. 30, 1803.

Of the 20 states and territories at the time, Pennsylvania and New York received the highest and second-highest amounts of money from postage on letters in the first two years of this period, whereas Virginia and Maryland saw the largest sums for postage on newspapers.

By the time the letter had been written, mail between Philadelphia and Baltimore had been transported by public carriages for nearly five years, Granger noted. The Post Office Department had allocated $27,763.49 to make this change happen.

Granger wrote that the expenditures of the department “have greatly increased within the last two years,” as mail transport began on 102 roads during this period. But he notes that the increased expenditure equals the increased mileage.

Beyond the Kislak Center collections, the Penn Libraries holdings also include journalist Devin Leonard’s 2021 book “Neither Snow Nor Rain: A History of the United States Postal Service.”

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