USPS: Early Ben Franklin postal ledgers now online

The ledgers that Benjamin Franklin kept when he was Philadelphia’s Postmaster recently became available online — in time for this weekend’s 245th anniversary of the American postal system’s birth. Franklin became America’s first Postmaster General 245 years ago when he was appointed to that position by the Second Continental Congress on July 26, 1775. Prior…

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For the Record….

Ben Franklin was a man of unmatched vision and foresight. The US Postal Service is a quasi-Federal entity that was established and protected under a constitutional Amendment. We are the last line of supply and communication in the event of an apocalypse. We touch the lives and households of every single family in the nation….

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Ben Franklin, postal purveyor

To Benjamin Franklin’s successes in science, statecraft, and slyness, add a lesser-known exploit: postal service. Among the many hardships of colonial life, lack of communication perhaps ranked right behind hunger and fear. In the absence of a service operated by the British crown, many fledgling colonies instituted private mail systems. In 1683, the Pennsylvania Assembly…

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Early postal service was mostly an informal system

While America was achieving its goal of independence during the Revolutionary War from 1775-1783, its leaders knew that starting a new nation was not to be all that easy. They were on their own then. Limited and oppressive that it had been, there was no help from the mother country anymore and, as the saying…

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