I have a special interest in the U.S. Postal Service for reasons that are both historical and uniquely personal.   

My grandfather, Henry Bowen, served as postmaster for Chebeague Island, Maine, from 1899 to 1935. His position on a comparatively isolated island provides a perspective on the life and times of rural post offices everywhere. Those decades also tell a story about the unique ways my Maine relatives combined mail with resourceful marketing. 

My Gramp Bowen shared illustrious historical company. The postal service dates from early colonial days. George Washington firmly believed that the new nation needed the glue of a post office to cement it together. Benjamin Franklin became the country’s first postmaster general.    

Nowadays, the scale of the USPS is impressive. Historian Devin Leonard tells us that this “wondrous American creation” uses 300,000 mail carriers to deliver the 513 million pieces of mail mandated for delivery six days a week. This is 40% of the world’s total volume. The extent of deliveries dwarfs UPS and FedEx. If the USPS did not exist, we would have to invent something very much like it.  

Henry Bowen had to be aware of this when he quit repairing lighthouses in 1898, came ashore for good, and built a post office and store in the middle of the island. 

Around the 25 square miles of Chebeague with its 15 miles of roads, Henry set up five mailboxes near the two hotels and seven boarding houses. Each day he bicycled to pick up correspondence for transfer to the mainland by ferry. As they say, neither snow nor rain slowed him. Like his rural counterparts across the country, Henry also maintained a store within the post office where he sold postcards, clothing, candy, some hardware, patent medicines, films and fir pillows. 

The post office was fourth class, which meant Henry earned his only official compensation of $250 annually from small commissions on stamps. There were no government pensions until 1940. President Theodore Roosevelt made rural free delivery permanent in 1902. This made the island’s mail delivery a family affair. Henry’s son Archie made a career from delivering the daily mail. At times my grandmother did the chores with a mare and buggy, accompanied by a 12-year-old who became my father.  

An intriguing aspect of my grandfather’s service was postcards. In the post office he maintained a library of some 40,000 of them. Many were provided by Portland photographers contracted to Henry. Sold to boarders and visitors to the island, the cards could be stamped and mailed from the same site. Reportedly, on just one day in 1906, the island post office set a record by processing 1,734 post cards, notable because there were no more than 1,000 summer residents. Today, these postcard souvenirs are a hot collectors’ item.  

Most likely Henry also figured that stamps would become increasingly valuable. Commemorative issues were becoming popular in the early 1900s, and they are much more so today. Now there are an estimated 5 million stamp collectors in the U.S. alone. President Franklin D. Roosevelt still ranks as one of the nation’s most passionate and involved so-called philatelists. 

Back in the early 1950s, my dad bought me canceled stamps and I pasted them faithfully in an album that still provides a colorful window on the world. Although his face will never appear on a stamp, and I have only photos of his profitable postcards, my grandfather will forever remain an affectionate feature of my personal history and our national heritage.