With today’s "door-to-door" postal service, it’s hard to realize that America’s early postal system mostly delivered between post offices, not to and from homes. Before and after the Revolution, this gap was filled by carriers who were paid an additional fee - usually one or two cents - for such personal service. Of the early period, from 1689 to 1800, scant evidence survives on mail matter, but manuscript notations on stampless folded letters surviving from the 1800 to 1845 period show such services prospered in many cities. These progenitor "penny posts" were often run by carriers sanctioned by and working for the local Post Office.

By the time the first adhesive Carrier stamps were issued, in 1842, a multiplicity of mail services existed in a country rapidly expanding due to industrialization and immigrant settlement surges. As the West began to open up with the railroads creating boomtowns, the Post Office had a very hard time keeping up with such explosive progress.

Operating with official sanction were the Carriers, those individuals working directly for the Post Office. Competing head to head with these official mails were Local Posts, enterprising private individuals and companies carrying letters within city limits - including to and from Post Offices. And by late 1843, more private firms joined the fray - The Independent Mails - transporting mail between a widespread grid of major U.S. cities for rates far cheaper than Uncle Sam charged, and over the same Post roads.

The first stamps used for carrier service were issued in 1842 after the government Post Office bought out the privately owned City Despatch Post in New York City. The government also hired its former owner Alexander Greig as a carrier and his local stamp (Scott 40L1), cancelled by a "U.S." or by the newly renamed "U.S. City Despatch Post" handstamp became the first carrier stamp (Scott 6LB1) in August 1842. Within a month the Post Office issued its first own carrier stamp (Scott 6LB3) in blue, with "United States" added to the design. The span of these stamps was 1842 to 1846.

The next series of Carrier stamps are the Semi-Official Issues, spawned in 1849 during a little publicized Post Office reorganization that saw a one cent fee for carrier service imposed in major U.S. cities, presumably in response to the persistent competition of private local posts. The first stamps, called "tickets" showed up in Boston (Scott 3LB1), Charleston (Honour’s City Express, Scott 4LB1), New York (Scott 6LB9), Philadelphia. (Scott 7LB1) and St. Louis (Scott 8LB1-2). Baltimore issued its semi-official stamps the next year, in 1850 (Scott 1LB1). These operations were run by carriers employed by and with the blessing of those cities’ Post Offices.

In 1851, the government attempted to standardize carrier stamps by issuing two "Official" carrier stamps, the Franklin carrier (Scott LO1) and the eagle carrier (Scott LO2), to be valid in all major U.S. cities, unlike the semi-official carriers, which were only for use in the city in which they were issued. It is an enduring mystery why the Franklin carrier, with 330,000 stamps sent to New York, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, is such a great rarity today. I presume its close resemblance in colour and portrait design to the regular one cent Franklin issue of July 1, 1851, bred confusion among postal patrons as to usage. Was the stamp withdrawn? Whatever, the September LO1 was joined - or perhaps replaced - by LO2 in November, which saw widespread use for several years in American cities, and survives in far greater numbers.

Other U.S. cities also issued semi-official carrier stamps through the mid1850s, including Cincinnati (Scott 9LB1), Cleveland (Scott 10LB1-2) and Louisville (5LB1-3), all of which are very rare on cover. From the mid 1850s to 1863, regular U.S. stamps (a 1 cent plus a 3 cent stamp usually) were used on mail to indicate the carrier rate. All carrier fees were discontinued on June 30, 1963, when all U.S. letter carriers became government employees, paid a salary at an annual rate, rather than collecting fees from patrons a la carte to take mail to and from the Post Office.

The golden age of local stamps, the privately printed adhesives used by enterprising individuals to deliver mail within many U.S. cities, ran from 1842 to 1860. The largest companies with the most extensive emissions, were Bloods in Philadelphia and Husseys and Boyds in New York City. In the Scott catalogue, several categories are combined in one comprehensive listing under Local Stamps, including some express companies, the Independent Mails, school and institutional stamps and the classic local posts. Most firms did strictly private business not involving the Post Office, but others acted in a supplemental capacity, delivering mail to and from the Post Office, especially where such service did not exist, or was lacking in efficiency or manpower. The majority of local posts had a very short shelf life, with some Valentine posts lasting mere days. Local posts operated out of stationery stores, tobacconist shops, book stores and other merchants venues, as well as in express company buildings.

The first local post stamp - and the first adhesive stamp in the U.S. - was issued by the City Despatch Post in February, 1842 (Scott 40L1), a successor to the New York Penny Post. The government within six months bought out and took over this pioneer City Despatch, but it was to little avail, as the seed had been planted. In Philadelphia, Robertson’s City Despatch issued crude stamps in 1842 and then the superb "mail strider" stamps (Scott 15L3) in 1843. By 1844, Boyd's and Hussey's began issuing stamps, along with the various Independent Mail companies. The explosion had begun. Dozens of companies sprang up by the late 1840s, in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Buffalo, spreading in the 1850s to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Camden, Newark, Pittsburgh and smaller towns.

As the U.S. Post Office expanded services as a growing monopoly, scores of private posts were forced out of business. A last surge of local posts in the late 1870s and early 1880s was met with instant governmental suppression by postal authorities. Those private posts not suppressed by the government survived by reinventing themselves - Boyd's and Hussey's lasted into the 1880s and beyond by going into the circular business and serving institutions, such as banks and commercial companies on a contract basis.

America’s local posts, exemplifying the best battling spirit of democratic competition, were responsible for several "firsts" in philately. Among the achievements, was the first ever depiction of an actual building on a stamp (Scott 15L3) with the first image of a private postman, in this case, stepping over the Merchant’s Exchange Building which ironically housed the Philadelphia Post office. This design was likely adapted from Harnden’s Express, which used a strider stepping over the North Atlantic on its letterhead in early 1843. The earliest depiction of a ship was a tiny ocean steamer on the Hartford Mail Route stamp of 1844 (Scott 80L1, 80L3). Eagles, pigeons, beehives, the first political campaign images (Zachary Taylor on Scott 18L1-2), even the first ever train on a denominated adhesive (Scott 149L1, Wyman’s 1844 independent mail route stamp) are among the achievements. See the Chronicle (Nov. 1996) for an extensive discussion by the author of such local post firsts.

A final category of local posts are the boarding school stamps including Westtown (Scott 145L1-2) and F.B.S.(Scott 151L1) and the institutional stamps of Glen Haven (Scott 71L1-4) and Hopedale Penny Post (Scott 84L1-4) which were supplemental, paying a fee to students or community carriers delivering letters to or from the Post Office. In a sense, these were really rural mails stamps, where the local post office was small and undermanned and enterprise sprang up in the gap. And of course, this spirit goes to the heart of the creation of Local Stamps from their inception.

The foundations of the Independent Mails were laid by the Express Companies which were carrying packages over the existing rail, stage and shipping routes in the early 1840s. The pioneer express company was William F. Harnden who grew a big business in trans-Atlantic mail and whose flyers flooded eastern cities in 1843, soliciting major companies of the day. Other existing express outfits, such as Pomeroy and Adams and Hale & Company began contemplating carrying letters in late 1843. The idea was to undercut the extortionistic rates charged by the U.S. Post Office, and they did, typically charging 6-1/4 cents instead of 18-3/4 cents. The Independent Mails found avid patrons immediately and their rapidly expanding success bled so much potential revenue from the existing postal system that they were banned by an act of Congress in July 1845. The benefit was that the Independents triggered postal reforms that lowered rates to the American public.

The first Hale flyers were posted in Boston business establishments and taverns in December 1843, with the first Hale & Co. stamps, showing a batch of folded letters, in early 1844 (Scott 75L1); the earliest American Letter Mail Company stamps appeared in late January, 1844, depicting an American eagle. In the summer of 1844, more Independent Mail operations launched, among them Letter Express (Scott 96L1) reaching west from New York to Detroit and Chicago; Hartford Connecticut Mail Route (Scott 80L1) with its Harnden-inspired mail messenger striding over a steamship; Pomeroy’s Letter Express (Scott 117L1-7); William Wyman’s Boston to New York independent mail stamp (Scott 149L1) showing a locomotive; Brainard & Co. (Scott 24L1 & Scott 24L2) which operated on the Hudson River linking New York and Troy and Albany; Overton & Co. (Scott 113L1) with its carrier pigeon stamp, and Hoyt’s Letter Express (Scott 85L1) in Rochester, NY operating on the canals.

All of these Independent Mails thrived on interdependency, that is, they cooperated by recognizing and forwarding each others’ mail matter in a huge grid that encompassed most of the mail routes in the eastern U.S. Surviving covers showing "conjunctive use" are highly sought after by collectors, where a single letter shows evidence of carriage by two or three Independent Mails companies. It was this huge network, piggybacking on existing U.S. mail routes, that led to their undoing. The massive operation was too successful to be permitted to continue. Once the rail lines were declared postal roads, their end was nigh. Those who survived continued to be permitted to carry packages, money matter and freight after July 1845, but not letters.

The legacy of the Independent Mails carried on with the advent of the far west opening up, with the Western Expresses in gold rush regions and of course, with the famous Wells, Fargo and Co. which launched its speedy pony express mail with its running pony stamps (Scott 143L1-9) across vast tracts of cowboy country in 1860-62 . Letters sped from the urban East to the California coast in 12 days, once again proving that private enterprise was faster off the mark than the U.S. government.

The Carriers & Locals Society