The U.S. Post Office Comes To Johnson County.

**A Letter from Home**. In 1937, Mildred Pelzer won the federal commission (WPA) to complete the post office mural for Waverly, Iowa, as part of the Section of Painting and Sculpture′s projects. The mural depicts a scene of a couple on their farm, where the wife had brought a letter from their previous home to the field. As her husband paused his plowing, the wife read the letter to him, as their child grasped at her mother’s skirts. Click here to read more about the artwork of Mildred Pelzer.

Did You Know? the audio version.

In the earliest days of Iowa, receiving and sending mail was very difficult indeed. The first settlers legally started arriving in Iowa, settling along the Mississippi River, on June 1, 1833, after the Black Hawk Treaty was signed. Dubuque was settled that same year, and “officially” opened a post office at that point.

One by one, communities throughout the District of Iowa added “official” post offices. Keep in mind that post offices, at the time, were located in general stores, and the postal clerk pretty much knew everybody who wanted to mail a letter. Yes, things were simpler back then, but sending and receiving mail was not an easy thing. If you lived in a larger city in the East, things ran smoothly, but the further west one went, the higher the odds that your mail would not be received or sent at regular intervals. Up until the 1840’s, all U.S. mail in Iowa was conditional mail service, based on location and if navigation between point A and point B was even possible.

*Watercolors of early Johnson County by Jo Myers-Walker. See more here.*

In an earlier post, we introduced you to Napoleon, Iowa – Johnson County’s first county seat. Incorporated in 1838, this little community had high hopes of becoming a prominent city in the new Territory of Iowa. As a matter of fact, the townspeople, especially John Gilbert, Johnson County’s first white settler, was a bit sneaky when it came to convincing the Territorial Legislature that there was more growth and activity in Napoleon than there actually was.

*For more about John Gilbert’s 1838 Johnson County expansion proposal – click here.*

Historian, Laura Rigel, tells us more about this “little” deception that brought a post office to Napoleon, the first step in getting your town on the map!

In the winter of 1837/38, it was lonely along the Iowa River. Most of the Meskwaki were away at their hunting camps, and the young white men who helped build (John) Gilbert’s new (trading) post had migrated to Muscatine or New Boston (Illinois) to earn winter money by chopping wood for steam boats on the Mississippi. Isolated and bored, Gilbert and a restless Pleasant Harris (January 1838) decided to walk through the snow to Burlington to petition the territorial legislature for roads and a mail service. When they arrived to present their case, Governor Dodge asked Gilbert for the population of the settlement around the trading post, and Gilbert responded, “Fifteen hundred.” The governor was surprised at the large number and, when Gilbert was asked “how he dared tell the governor such a lie,” his response was, “he did not ask what color they were.”

In truth, there were less than 50 white settlers in Johnson County (Napoleon) at the time, while the Meskwaki tribes had over 1,500 souls living in two large villages along the Iowa River. Rigel continues…

The joke, of course, is that Gilbert counted the Meskwaki villagers as legitimate residents despite their color. By playing upon the governor’s ethnocentric, racist assumptions, he used the large Meskwaki population to obtain a post office for Johnson County. But Gilbert’s response to Dodge also registers the degree to which the Meskwaki counted a great deal (albeit at great cost to themselves) in the economic and political founding of Johnson County. (Chief) Poweshiek’s and Wapashashiek’s villages made up the single most substantial and significant population in Johnson County: without them, neither the fur trade nor the land business, nor the state capital would have emerged on the Iowa River when and where it did.

Based on the inflated numbers Gilbert gave Governor Dodge, the Territorial Legislature, as they gathered in Burlington during the winter session of 1837/38, looked at Johnson County as a prime location for future development. And as the saying goes, the rest…is history.

*John Gilbert’s Trading Post – **Johnson County’s first Post Office (1839) in Napoleon**.*

So here are the facts: In January of 1838, when Gilbert told his Napoleon fib, the population was less than 50. By 1838, when Iowa became a territory, there were 237 souls living here. By 1840, that number had grown to 1,504, ballooned to 4,472 in 1850, and by 1860, Johnson County had a population of 17,573.

Because of John Gilbert’s little white lie, people in authority did go ahead and approve a post office for Napoleon in 1839, and guess who was Johnson County’s first postmaster?

*The “official” government records for Appointments of U. S. Postmasters, 1839-1842 – Johnson County, Iowa*

**John Gilbert** – Napoleon – 2 Mar 1839
**Samuel H. McCrory** – Napoleon – 18 Apr 1839
– Move to Iowa City –
**Chauncey Swan** – 14 Nov 1839
**James M. Hawkins** – 2 Sep 1841
**Samuel Trowbridge** – 30 Aug 1842

Sadly, Gilbert died in March of 1839, just days before he was to be sworn into his new office! Read more about John Gilbert and the early days of Napoleon on the shores of the Iowa River.

Cyrus Sanders – early Johnson County Settler. This rare postal cover (above), dated August 5, 1839 indicates that the little town of Napoleon did, indeed, have Johnson County’s first postal station. The 21-year-old Ohio-born pioneer, Sanders played an integral part in Johnson County earliest days. Click here to read from Sander’s 1839 journal.

Much to the dismay of those living there, the Johnson County county seat was moved to Iowa City on Oct. 8, 1839, with relocation of the post office completed by November 14, 1839. This explains why this 1841 postal cover (see below) addressed to Sanders displays his ‘new’ Iowa City address, even though the original agreement between Napoleon and the Post Office was to continue into 1842.

Look at this very rare postal cover (above) from 1839 addressed to Cyrus Sanders ‘near the City of Iowa.’ Prior to its actual construction, some maps indicated our new planned community by calling it The City of Iowa.

**1839 – John Plumbe’s book, “Sketches of Iowa and Wisconsin”** provides us with the one of the earliest overviews of Iowa Territory. In the back of his book, Plumbe included a large fold-out map which indicates the new **“City of Iowa”** as it had now been established as the new Iowa Territorial capital city! *Click here to read more.*

*Here is a postal cover from John C. Sanders – Cyrus’ father – dated September 17, 1841 and addressed, of course now, to Iowa City in Iowa Territory.*

In 1837, the USPS authorized the first stagecoach mail service in Iowa – Burlington, the Territorial capital, to St. Francisville, Missouri. In 1840, the Iowa Territorial Legislature approved three stagecoach mail routes between Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Davenport, and Macomb, Illinois, and twice-weekly mail service between Dubuque and Davenport. Over time, a number of stagecoach companies entered into the growing Iowa market, with each competing for contracts with the government to carry U.S. mail. Those that snagged these lucrative deals, meant several hundred dollars a year in revenue.

Click here to read more about the stagecoach era in Iowa City.

In 1840, Frink & Walker was the first company to bring stagecoach service into Iowa City. $3 would buy you a seat on the thirty-mile trip to Bloomington (Muscatine) via a two-horse stage coach. Keep in mind that in the 1840’s, getting mail to and from back east would mean accessing the Mississippi River, so when Frink & Walker began their stagecoach run to Bloomington, people in Johnson County could now receive and send mail on a more dependable schedule. But, as you can see from the articles below, things didn’t always go smoothly!

Read about Iowa’s first state governor – Ansel Briggs – who began his career in Iowa by being a stagecoach driver!

By the mid 1840’s, Iowa City’s Post Office became much better established, setting up shop on the corner of Iowa Avenue and Clinton Street.

Once the railroad came into the Hawkeye State – Iowa City in 1856 – and began expanding (1860’s), mail service transitioned from stagecoach lines to rail cars. RPO’s (Railway Post Offices) became the wave of the future. Read more about RPO’s here.