May 4, 2016 • 23 mins
Women have been part of mail delivery in the U.S. since colonial times, but it took centuries for women postal workers to become commonplace. Even through times when certain USPS jobs were off limits to them, women were still vital to the postal service.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
on Holly Friend and I'm trade Pobe Wilson, and today
we're going to talk about a topic that we've actually
had quite a few requests for. Most recently, I had
(00:21):
a request from a listener who came to see one
of the live shows in Salt Lake. And I feel
bad because I did not get her name, but she
is a postal worker, and I had mentioned women US
postal workers being on my short list of topics that
I wanted to do during Q and A after that show,
and she came up and introduced herself and she took
a photo of me, and she was super charming and sweet.
So it made me want to cover this topic even more.
So we're finally going to get to it, women postal
(00:44):
workers in the United States Postal Service. The earliest reference
to a female postal worker is in a periodical called
the Postal Record from June six, so we should clarify
post worker in the United States. There's an article in
that issue about a woman named Lydia Hill, who was
the first person in charge of the mail for Salem, Massachusetts.
(01:05):
In the late seventeenth century, so women have been part
of the postal services from the colonies all the way
back to that time, when those services in what became
the United States are basically in their infancy. In part,
the early involvement of women in getting the mail delivered
really stemmed from a simple matter of logistics. Most male
at this point went through establishments like local general stores,
(01:28):
which were often family owned and run, so it wouldn't
be unusual for the ladies of the family to be
part of the process. But even outside of handling actual
parcels and letters, women were the ones taking care of
post writers on their stops, and if a patriarch of
a family business that also handled mail were to die
and leave his wife a widow, she would often simply
assume her late husband's duties to keep the family business going,
(01:52):
and that included handling mail. One such woman was Elizabeth Timothy.
She's often touted as the first woman newspaper publisher and
editor in the United States, and she stepped into that
role when her husband Louis passed away. Louis Timothy had
been encouraged in his publishing career by a young Benjamin
Franklin and his leadership role at the South Carolina Gazette
(02:13):
was part of a six year partnership with Franklin, but
when Louis died, there was a year remaining on that
contract and the couple's eldest son, Peter, was only thirteen
definitely not ready to take on the job, although he
had been Louis's apprentice, and so Elizabeth stepped into her
late husband's position in January of seventeen thirty nine. Franklin
(02:34):
was amenable to this arrangement, with the understanding that Elizabeth
was filling in until Peter could realistically take over the
job himself, and along with the editing and publishing, of course,
came the work of handling letters and parcels. Peter did
eventually take over the family printing business, but not until
seventeen forty six when he was twenty one. As the
Revolutionary War took hold of the colonies and many men
(02:56):
were serving in the military, their jobs, including male hand ling,
were often assumed by women. In the interim hear a
lot about similar things happening and all of the other wars,
basically in particular World War two and World War One,
so we hear a lot about this happening in World
War Two and sometimes World War One, but we don't
really hear about it as much during the American Revolutionary War,
(03:18):
even though this happened basically in all of the wars
where a lot of American men went to fight, and
I other men in other nations too. Yeah, that's not
an uncommon thing. Uh. You know, when when men go
to war, the women step up and take over a
lot of the jobs that need to be done. Other
notable early US postal women included Mary Catherine Goddard, who
(03:39):
was appointed postmaster of Baltimore, Maryland in seventeen seventy five.
Like Elizabeth Timothy, Goddard also had some other business credentials.
She grew up the daughter of the new London, Connecticut postmaster,
who was also a physician, and Mary's brother, William, actually
established the colonial postal system, but as he became busy
with other tasks, the day to day of the post
(04:00):
work was largely handled by Mary and their mother, Sarah
Upnight Goddard. Mary was so proficient in her work that
giving her the official role of postmaster was a widely
supported decision, and she was a really devoted worker. She
took her duties and responsive responsibilities so seriously that she
would at times pay postal writers out of her own
pocket when it was necessary, basically anything to keep the
(04:22):
service going, running smoothly and ensuring that the people that
she served continued to receive all of their correspondence and eventually,
though Mary Catherine Goddard was ordered to resign from her
post by Postmaster General Samuel Osgood. The order was issued
in seventeen eighty nine in anticipation of Baltimore becoming the
regional headquarters for the Postal Service. Osgood's opinion was that
(04:46):
the travel and workload that the post would demand as
a consequence of this expanded role was simply going to
be too much for a woman to handle, and he
appointed one of his buddies to the job. Goddard actually
fought her dismissal on the basis that her work had
been impeccable, which every agreed with, and her post office
was quote the most punctual and regular of any upon
the continent. Unfortunately, despite a huge support from the community,
(05:09):
her appeals never resulted in reinstatement. In her petition to
Postmaster General Osgo, though is now a part of the
National Archives, The first woman to be appointed as a
postmaster under the United States Constitution was Sarah Moore Delano DeCrow,
and that was a position she was appointed to in
seventeen two. Her post office was in Hertford, North Carolina,
(05:30):
and while she held a prominent position, she really wasn't
happy with her pay. In seventeen nine, she wrote to
the US Postmaster General, Timothy Pickering, threatening to resign over it,
but his assistants response was that she was receiving the
highest compensation allowed to any of the postmaster's deputies. While
she didn't get the rays that she wanted, she decided
to stay in the job, and she was the postmaster
(05:52):
until she died in early seventeen Yes, Sarah DeCrow is
actually a pretty interesting topic, and she may end up
being an episode all on her own. And despite the
fact that there were women doing perfectly good work in
the fledgling postal service in the seventeen hundreds, by the
eighteen hundreds it had actually become forbidden for women to
serve as post office clerks, and if a man were
(06:14):
to appoint a woman to such a job, he would
be fired from the postal service as well. Just the
same in plenty of establishments like the general stores and
printing shops that we've been talking about since the beginning
of this episode. Women were still handling the mail, they
just didn't have any official title attached to the work
that they were doing. By the eighteen thirties, however, there
were instances of the Post Office Department approving cases of
(06:36):
widows stepping into their deceased husband's mail jobs as the
quickest means to basically keep everything running smoothly. But because
President Andrew Jackson made Postmaster General a position in the
presidential cabinet, it cemented the push out of women from
the work. For a while, post office jobs were often
traded for political favors, and since women weren't part of
(06:56):
the political process, they simply weren't in the running for
the work. Okay, And that actually went on for a
few decades until the US found itself at war internally.
But before we get into that, let's pause for just
a moment for a word from one of our sponsors,
history stuff. As has been the case reputedly in history,
(07:22):
wartime shifts the job landscape, and the US Civil War
was no exception, as many of the nation's men went
to battle, jobs in the postal service were left vacant,
so women were temporarily hired into post office positions for
the duration of the war, and the women that stepped
into those positions were really good at their work, so
much so that when the war was over, Postmaster General
(07:43):
Montgomery Blair praised that work, saying that the women employees
were quote more faithful in the performance of their duties
than the men. This really opened the doors again to
postal work for women. The dead letter office, in particular,
became staffed by significantly more women than men by eighteen
sixty five, but even though they were there and doing
fantastic work, they were being paid far less than men
(08:05):
for the same job. Women earned, on average across various
postal positions four hundred to seven hundred dollars a year
and estimated thirty five percent less than their male counterparts.
This was not really a case though, of apples to
Apple's work comparison, either. Often the women were taking on
greater responsibility than the men who were being paid more.
(08:25):
For example, in the dead letter office, the men were
often opening the letters, but the women were the ones
that were trying to piece together information and do the
detective work to ensure those letters got to their intended recipients.
While we may think of wage disparity as a social
issue that only came to light in the mid twentieth century,
this pay gap was being discussed openly in the late
eighteen sixties. The New York Times addressed it in a
(08:47):
printed letter to the editor on February eighteen sixty nine,
titled Women as Government Clerks. And this editorial opens with quote,
whatever arguments may be urged with more or less force
against the theory of women's political equality with man, very
few persons deny the justice of the principle that equal
work should command equal pay, without regard to the sex
(09:09):
of the laborer. But it is one thing to acknowledge
the right of a principle, and quite another to practice it.
This article goes on to discuss the various branches of
government and how women are positioned in each, but when
it gets to the postal service and addresses why men
are given the job of opening the mail quote, the
post Office Department employs fifty women in the dead letter
(09:30):
office in redirecting the letters which are first opened by men, who,
for this merely mechanical work receives salaries of the first
and some even of the second grade. The letters must
be opened by men, because, as is said, immoral things
are sometimes found. To see these things, would it is
supposed to corrupt the morals of women. It is not argued,
(09:51):
I believe that man is stronger morally than women, but
rather that in doing this work he will be injured
less than her because he has less moral sentiment to
be corrupted. Or in other words, the less strength persons have,
the less they are in danger of falling. Still is
a theme that exists that like women, somehow needs to
be protected by official policy. Yeah. So those passages followed
(10:17):
up with a note on the position of one of
the Postmaster General's assistants, who went on record as saying
he believed that mature or elderly women were able to
safely open any item and deal with the court the
contents without demoralization and quote with perfect propriety. That sort
of cracks me up. I just, uh, you know, it's hilarious.
(10:39):
In eighteen sixty six, the US Congress issued the official
Postal Laws and Regulations, and in them, women in postal
work are acknowledged by the government. For the first time
on record, though it's not really in the best way.
These regulations actually stipulated that miners and married women were
excluded by law from holding a position as postmaster, is
(11:00):
they could not legally execute an official bond. These rules
did change a few years later. In eighteen seventy three,
the regulations updated to say that married women could hold
the position of postmaster and that bonds executed by them
would be valid. That same year, there was a federal
law and acted that gave government managers the power to
appoint women as clerks at equal pay to men, but
(11:21):
that didn't magically change things. The law wasn't enforced, and
even three years later, women were still earning approximately twenty
less than men holding the same postal jobs, and as
the suffragette movement became more vocal about this disparity and
pay and opportunities for women, there was still really strong opposition.
There was still a strong belief within the postal system
(11:42):
that while women were capable of working in large cities
where they had lots of supervision, they wouldn't be able
to handle more rural postmaster positions because they wouldn't be
able to handle leadership jobs without male superiors. On hand,
so while women were still struggling to get even footing
in the job side of the postal system, men were
using the postal system more and more as correspondents became
(12:04):
more fashionable than ever, but even as customers there were
There was serious segregation in the works when it came
to the design of post offices, with separate counters for
women and men. In some cities. There were plenty of
people within the Post Office who felt that women postmasters
were disruptive to society. Women who worked for a living
were seen as less likely to marry, thus preventing some
(12:26):
lucky gent from starting a family, and there were assertions
that mail clerks complained less and worked harder. In nineteen two,
Postmaster General Henry C. Paine made it clear that he
felt that women should be supported by their husbands and
should stay home and take care of their households, and
went so far as to issue a statement that if
a woman who was already working for the Post Office
(12:47):
were to marry, she would no longer be a postal worker.
Some women employees of the USPS were required to submit
formal letters stating their marital status and the details of
their husband's work. If they were married, But there were
proponents of women postal workers within the system. UH. In
nineteen oh six, Postmaster General George Cordelou was open in
(13:09):
his belief that women were perfectly suited for postal work,
as it gave them an opening into government work while
also offering the chance to stay close to and involved
with their communities. At this point in the timeline, women
held about ten percent of the government's postmaster positions. Thanks
to a shortage of city mail carriers in nineteen seventeen,
after a large number of men quit their carrying jobs
(13:31):
due to pay in labor condition disputes, women got a
new opportunity to work not just as clerks but as
regular city route workers. Of course, there were doubters who
thought that women couldn't handle the job and that merely
carrying a mail bag around would be too much for them.
Two women were hired for temporary positions on city roots. Yeah,
there was one piece I was reading about it that
(13:53):
was pointing out that women had been carrying around babies
that wiggle in addition to being heavy for a long time,
and that may be mail bags would not be such
a problem. UH. And then World War One once again
saw a bump in the number of women employed in
the postal Service as many men went to war, although
this was largely temporary uh many of those those women
(14:13):
had been married to the men that left, and most
of the women who had filled vacant positions left those
jobs to make them available once again for returning soldiers.
Saw a major change when will Hayes became Postmaster General.
He removed the ban on married women in the postal
Service that Harry C. Payne had instituted almost two decades earlier,
and when World War Two came around, women once again
(14:35):
became the focus of postal service discussion as jobs needed
to be filled. But the Postmaster General at that time,
Frank Walker, still felt that women could work as clerks,
but that they should not carry the mail. He had
to reverse his position, though, as more and more of
the men in his postal service left to serve in
the military and he really had no other option. Coming up,
we're going to talk about the postal uniforms and other
(14:57):
moves toward work workforce equality, as well as some notable
ladies in postal service history. But first we will pause
for a word from one of our sponsors. After World
War two, the number of women working in the U
s Postal Service increased from year to year, though there
(15:19):
were still very few women employed as male carriers, and
they were still a small enough segment of the US
Postal Service that there had never been a standardized uniform
for them. Skirts were added to the official uniform in
nineteen fifty five, but it took another full decade before
a woman's uniform standard was established. Finally, in the nineteen sixties,
there were enough women in the USPS to merit this move.
(15:43):
In nineteen sixty two, President John F. Kennedy passed the
Equal Pay Act, legally establishing the right to equal pay
for women and men in federal jobs. From nineteen sixty
four to nineteen seventy four, women went from making up
eight percent of the Postal Services employees to more eighteen percent,
and the largest area of growth was as mail carriers.
(16:05):
In the mid nineteen seventies, Postmaster General et Klassen found
the founded the Postal Service Women's Program to identify women
who would make good leaders and then offer training to
enable more women to move into higher levels of employment
within the Postal Service. However, it should be noted that
while that program certainly helped some women. Mary Valentino, who
(16:25):
was the woman who was really pivotal in designing that program,
was unhappy with this execution, and she really felt that
there were some institutional issues of discrimination within the Postal Service,
and she filed a class action suit against the U. S.
Postal Service for discrimination. That suit was ultimately unsuccessful. We're
going to attack next about some of the notable women
and USPS history, which will also you know, phillis in.
(16:49):
But what's happened between the nineteen seventies and today. And
while we mentioned earlier that women mail carriers were virtually
non existent for a long time, there were some exceptions.
And there are so many any notable women in the U. S.
Postal Service history, uh and even before it was the
US Postal Service, that we can't possibly include them all.
So hopefully we're not missing your favorites. The first woman
(17:10):
given an official mail carrying post was actually back in
eighteen forty five, per an appointment by Postmaster General Cave Johnson.
This woman, Sarah Black, carried mail back and forth between
the Charlestown, Maryland post Office and the railroad daily or
as required, and she was paid forty eight dollars a year,
and we know she did that job for at least
two years. We don't know if it went much longer
(17:30):
than that. Uh. Polly Martin was a Star Root carrier
that's a contract worker who carried mail parcels, telegrams, and
even passengers between Attleborough and South Adelborough, Massachusetts for sixteen
years starting in eighteen sixty. She was known to be
tough and smart and only faced one attempted robbery in
all her time as a Star carrier. That attempt failed miserably,
(17:52):
as she beat the man who had tried to climb
aboard her wagon with a horse whip until he fell away.
In nine hundred, the first woman full time rural free
delivery carrier was Ethel Hill. Whereas in previous years, women
were sometimes listed as substitute carriers for their spouses or
other male family members, Hill was the first to list
a man, her father, as her substitute. Up until that point,
(18:15):
there had been women working in the rural roots, but
they were all basically serving as substitutes. Uh. Stagecoach Mary,
who we mentioned in our Six Impossible Episodes podcast, was
a former slave who ran mail in Montana between Cascade
and St. Peter's mission, and her reputation was that of
a rough, tough woman who was also much beloved. Miss
(18:35):
Ada Nelson ran a mail route in Pittsfield, Maine, by
a horse and buggy from nineteen o three to nineteen
o seven. She won the distinction of most efficient male
carrier in the state in nineteen o seven, shortly before
she retired from her position to get married. Catherine Stinson
was the first woman to carry mail by plane in
nineteen thirteen, she dropped mail bags from the air at
(18:57):
the Montana State Fair as part of a demonstration. She
also flew regular airmail at one point from Chicago to
New York, again the first woman to do so, and
that was in nineteen eighteen, and that trip actually didn't
go his plan. She had to land earlier than she
meant to and it ended in something of a disastrous
crash for her plane. She landed in a muddy field
and her plane flipped over. Uh Stinton was unharmed and
(19:20):
she did deliver that the mail that was on that
thing a few days later, but she broke two American
flight records in the process. Even though uh that flight
did not go his plan, she had still gone further
than anyone had gone before and flown longer than anyone
had gone before. The two women we mentioned earlier who
were appointed to temporary positions as the first city mail carriers,
(19:41):
where Mrs Promelias Campbell and Mrs Nellie m McGrath. Campbell
was a widow and McGrath's husband was serving in the military.
Although they weren't used for more than a couple of weeks,
their work was deemed highly satisfactory. Yeah, And that was
in nineteen seventeen. And then in nineteen twenty Genevieve Basque
fee Oild was made the Umbroda, Minnesota village carrier. Postal
(20:03):
work was in her blood. Her father was actually the
local postmaster, and when her father left office in nineteen
twenty four, Genevieve resigned her position. In nineteen sixty three,
Mrs Evelyn Craig Brown became the first wanted to deliver
mail in Washington, d C. Since World War Two. In
nineteen eighty five, Jackie Strange was the first woman to
(20:24):
rise to the position of Deputy Postmaster General, the number
two position in the U. S. Postal Service. She started
her postal career as a temporary clerk in nineteen forty six,
and she slowly made her way up the ladder over
the course of the next forty years. She retired in
nineteen eighty seven, just a little more than a year ago.
On March six, the first female Postmaster General of the
(20:46):
United States, Meghan Brennan, was sworn in. Brennan has worked
for the Postal Service for thirty years and started as
a mail carrier, a job one believed to be too
strenuous for women. My hat is off to all of
these gals. I have a female postal carrier, and I
love her. I have to confess, I am not sure
(21:10):
who are Uh. This is because we live upstairs and
I I don't think I ever see the mail being delivered.
I do. Plus, she'll always, you know, if there's a parcel,
she will always come and knock on the door. And
if it's raining, she will always uh put it in
(21:32):
a bag and make sure it's tucked up on our deck,
or she'll knock on the door. If I'm she sees
the car in the driveway, she knows I'm probably teleworking,
and she'll come and say hi and drop off the
mail in a bag so it doesn't get wet. She's
the best. I love her. I also have a little
bit of listener mail which is related to this, and
it is one of the mini requests sort of that
we've gotten. But it's also a very funny story. I'm
(21:53):
not going to read her whole mail, but I will
read the part that is germane to this this topic,
and it is from our listener May it is and
she said, hello, I love your podcast and that now
I must seem like a jack of all trades to
people because of the random historical events that I bring
up in conversations. Recently, there was a listener mail that
mentioned that you should do a podcast on females becoming
(22:14):
mail carriers. This made me think of one of my
favorite stories about my daughter Maddie. When she was four,
we got a new female mail carrier. The old one
she puts out in quotes, was also a female. One day,
while we were walking, she saw a very tall black
man delivering mail and she kind of looked at him funny,
and I thought, oh, no, she is looking at him
because of his race. And I asked her why she
(22:34):
was making that puzzled face, and she said, I didn't
know men could do that. Job she is. She is
seven now, and she still doesn't know why this story
is funny. I love this so much. It's like such
a great out of the mouth of Babe's moment that
I wanted to include it in this one. You would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at house to works dot com. We're also
(22:56):
at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History on twin
or at misst in history at pinterest dot com, slash
miss in History at mist in history dot tumbler dot com,
and on Instagram at mist in History. If you would
like to learn more about what we talked about today,
you can go to our parents site, how stuff Works.
Type in USPS in the search bar and you will
get an article called how the USPS Works, so you
(23:19):
can learn all about how the Post office works. Uh.
If you'd like to visit us, you should do that
at misston history dot com and there you will find
show notes for all of the episodes Tracy and I
have worked on, as well as every episode of missed
in History that has ever existed, from the very beginning,
long before we were hosts, So we encourage you kind
of visit us at how Stuff Works dot com and
missed in History dot com. For more on this and
(23:43):
thousands of other topics. Is It How Stuff Works dot com,
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
on Holly Friend and I'm trade Pobe Wilson, and today
we're going to talk about a topic that we've actually
had quite a few requests for. Most recently, I had
(00:21):
a request from a listener who came to see one
of the live shows in Salt Lake. And I feel
bad because I did not get her name, but she
is a postal worker, and I had mentioned women US
postal workers being on my short list of topics that
I wanted to do during Q and A after that show,
and she came up and introduced herself and she took
a photo of me, and she was super charming and sweet.
So it made me want to cover this topic even more.
So we're finally going to get to it, women postal
(00:44):
workers in the United States Postal Service. The earliest reference
to a female postal worker is in a periodical called
the Postal Record from June six, so we should clarify
post worker in the United States. There's an article in
that issue about a woman named Lydia Hill, who was
the first person in charge of the mail for Salem, Massachusetts.
(01:05):
In the late seventeenth century, so women have been part
of the postal services from the colonies all the way
back to that time, when those services in what became
the United States are basically in their infancy. In part,
the early involvement of women in getting the mail delivered
really stemmed from a simple matter of logistics. Most male
at this point went through establishments like local general stores,
(01:28):
which were often family owned and run, so it wouldn't
be unusual for the ladies of the family to be
part of the process. But even outside of handling actual
parcels and letters, women were the ones taking care of
post writers on their stops, and if a patriarch of
a family business that also handled mail were to die
and leave his wife a widow, she would often simply
assume her late husband's duties to keep the family business going,
(01:52):
and that included handling mail. One such woman was Elizabeth Timothy.
She's often touted as the first woman newspaper publisher and
editor in the United States, and she stepped into that
role when her husband Louis passed away. Louis Timothy had
been encouraged in his publishing career by a young Benjamin
Franklin and his leadership role at the South Carolina Gazette
(02:13):
was part of a six year partnership with Franklin, but
when Louis died, there was a year remaining on that
contract and the couple's eldest son, Peter, was only thirteen
definitely not ready to take on the job, although he
had been Louis's apprentice, and so Elizabeth stepped into her
late husband's position in January of seventeen thirty nine. Franklin
(02:34):
was amenable to this arrangement, with the understanding that Elizabeth
was filling in until Peter could realistically take over the
job himself, and along with the editing and publishing, of course,
came the work of handling letters and parcels. Peter did
eventually take over the family printing business, but not until
seventeen forty six when he was twenty one. As the
Revolutionary War took hold of the colonies and many men
(02:56):
were serving in the military, their jobs, including male hand ling,
were often assumed by women. In the interim hear a
lot about similar things happening and all of the other wars,
basically in particular World War two and World War One,
so we hear a lot about this happening in World
War Two and sometimes World War One, but we don't
really hear about it as much during the American Revolutionary War,
(03:18):
even though this happened basically in all of the wars
where a lot of American men went to fight, and
I other men in other nations too. Yeah, that's not
an uncommon thing. Uh. You know, when when men go
to war, the women step up and take over a
lot of the jobs that need to be done. Other
notable early US postal women included Mary Catherine Goddard, who
(03:39):
was appointed postmaster of Baltimore, Maryland in seventeen seventy five.
Like Elizabeth Timothy, Goddard also had some other business credentials.
She grew up the daughter of the new London, Connecticut postmaster,
who was also a physician, and Mary's brother, William, actually
established the colonial postal system, but as he became busy
with other tasks, the day to day of the post
(04:00):
work was largely handled by Mary and their mother, Sarah
Upnight Goddard. Mary was so proficient in her work that
giving her the official role of postmaster was a widely
supported decision, and she was a really devoted worker. She
took her duties and responsive responsibilities so seriously that she
would at times pay postal writers out of her own
pocket when it was necessary, basically anything to keep the
(04:22):
service going, running smoothly and ensuring that the people that
she served continued to receive all of their correspondence and eventually,
though Mary Catherine Goddard was ordered to resign from her
post by Postmaster General Samuel Osgood. The order was issued
in seventeen eighty nine in anticipation of Baltimore becoming the
regional headquarters for the Postal Service. Osgood's opinion was that
(04:46):
the travel and workload that the post would demand as
a consequence of this expanded role was simply going to
be too much for a woman to handle, and he
appointed one of his buddies to the job. Goddard actually
fought her dismissal on the basis that her work had
been impeccable, which every agreed with, and her post office
was quote the most punctual and regular of any upon
the continent. Unfortunately, despite a huge support from the community,
(05:09):
her appeals never resulted in reinstatement. In her petition to
Postmaster General Osgo, though is now a part of the
National Archives, The first woman to be appointed as a
postmaster under the United States Constitution was Sarah Moore Delano DeCrow,
and that was a position she was appointed to in
seventeen two. Her post office was in Hertford, North Carolina,
(05:30):
and while she held a prominent position, she really wasn't
happy with her pay. In seventeen nine, she wrote to
the US Postmaster General, Timothy Pickering, threatening to resign over it,
but his assistants response was that she was receiving the
highest compensation allowed to any of the postmaster's deputies. While
she didn't get the rays that she wanted, she decided
to stay in the job, and she was the postmaster
(05:52):
until she died in early seventeen Yes, Sarah DeCrow is
actually a pretty interesting topic, and she may end up
being an episode all on her own. And despite the
fact that there were women doing perfectly good work in
the fledgling postal service in the seventeen hundreds, by the
eighteen hundreds it had actually become forbidden for women to
serve as post office clerks, and if a man were
(06:14):
to appoint a woman to such a job, he would
be fired from the postal service as well. Just the
same in plenty of establishments like the general stores and
printing shops that we've been talking about since the beginning
of this episode. Women were still handling the mail, they
just didn't have any official title attached to the work
that they were doing. By the eighteen thirties, however, there
were instances of the Post Office Department approving cases of
(06:36):
widows stepping into their deceased husband's mail jobs as the
quickest means to basically keep everything running smoothly. But because
President Andrew Jackson made Postmaster General a position in the
presidential cabinet, it cemented the push out of women from
the work. For a while, post office jobs were often
traded for political favors, and since women weren't part of
(06:56):
the political process, they simply weren't in the running for
the work. Okay, And that actually went on for a
few decades until the US found itself at war internally.
But before we get into that, let's pause for just
a moment for a word from one of our sponsors,
history stuff. As has been the case reputedly in history,
(07:22):
wartime shifts the job landscape, and the US Civil War
was no exception, as many of the nation's men went
to battle, jobs in the postal service were left vacant,
so women were temporarily hired into post office positions for
the duration of the war, and the women that stepped
into those positions were really good at their work, so
much so that when the war was over, Postmaster General
(07:43):
Montgomery Blair praised that work, saying that the women employees
were quote more faithful in the performance of their duties
than the men. This really opened the doors again to
postal work for women. The dead letter office, in particular,
became staffed by significantly more women than men by eighteen
sixty five, but even though they were there and doing
fantastic work, they were being paid far less than men
(08:05):
for the same job. Women earned, on average across various
postal positions four hundred to seven hundred dollars a year
and estimated thirty five percent less than their male counterparts.
This was not really a case though, of apples to
Apple's work comparison, either. Often the women were taking on
greater responsibility than the men who were being paid more.
(08:25):
For example, in the dead letter office, the men were
often opening the letters, but the women were the ones
that were trying to piece together information and do the
detective work to ensure those letters got to their intended recipients.
While we may think of wage disparity as a social
issue that only came to light in the mid twentieth century,
this pay gap was being discussed openly in the late
eighteen sixties. The New York Times addressed it in a
(08:47):
printed letter to the editor on February eighteen sixty nine,
titled Women as Government Clerks. And this editorial opens with quote,
whatever arguments may be urged with more or less force
against the theory of women's political equality with man, very
few persons deny the justice of the principle that equal
work should command equal pay, without regard to the sex
(09:09):
of the laborer. But it is one thing to acknowledge
the right of a principle, and quite another to practice it.
This article goes on to discuss the various branches of
government and how women are positioned in each, but when
it gets to the postal service and addresses why men
are given the job of opening the mail quote, the
post Office Department employs fifty women in the dead letter
(09:30):
office in redirecting the letters which are first opened by men, who,
for this merely mechanical work receives salaries of the first
and some even of the second grade. The letters must
be opened by men, because, as is said, immoral things
are sometimes found. To see these things, would it is
supposed to corrupt the morals of women. It is not argued,
(09:51):
I believe that man is stronger morally than women, but
rather that in doing this work he will be injured
less than her because he has less moral sentiment to
be corrupted. Or in other words, the less strength persons have,
the less they are in danger of falling. Still is
a theme that exists that like women, somehow needs to
be protected by official policy. Yeah. So those passages followed
(10:17):
up with a note on the position of one of
the Postmaster General's assistants, who went on record as saying
he believed that mature or elderly women were able to
safely open any item and deal with the court the
contents without demoralization and quote with perfect propriety. That sort
of cracks me up. I just, uh, you know, it's hilarious.
(10:39):
In eighteen sixty six, the US Congress issued the official
Postal Laws and Regulations, and in them, women in postal
work are acknowledged by the government. For the first time
on record, though it's not really in the best way.
These regulations actually stipulated that miners and married women were
excluded by law from holding a position as postmaster, is
(11:00):
they could not legally execute an official bond. These rules
did change a few years later. In eighteen seventy three,
the regulations updated to say that married women could hold
the position of postmaster and that bonds executed by them
would be valid. That same year, there was a federal
law and acted that gave government managers the power to
appoint women as clerks at equal pay to men, but
(11:21):
that didn't magically change things. The law wasn't enforced, and
even three years later, women were still earning approximately twenty
less than men holding the same postal jobs, and as
the suffragette movement became more vocal about this disparity and
pay and opportunities for women, there was still really strong opposition.
There was still a strong belief within the postal system
(11:42):
that while women were capable of working in large cities
where they had lots of supervision, they wouldn't be able
to handle more rural postmaster positions because they wouldn't be
able to handle leadership jobs without male superiors. On hand,
so while women were still struggling to get even footing
in the job side of the postal system, men were
using the postal system more and more as correspondents became
(12:04):
more fashionable than ever, but even as customers there were
There was serious segregation in the works when it came
to the design of post offices, with separate counters for
women and men. In some cities. There were plenty of
people within the Post Office who felt that women postmasters
were disruptive to society. Women who worked for a living
were seen as less likely to marry, thus preventing some
(12:26):
lucky gent from starting a family, and there were assertions
that mail clerks complained less and worked harder. In nineteen two,
Postmaster General Henry C. Paine made it clear that he
felt that women should be supported by their husbands and
should stay home and take care of their households, and
went so far as to issue a statement that if
a woman who was already working for the Post Office
(12:47):
were to marry, she would no longer be a postal worker.
Some women employees of the USPS were required to submit
formal letters stating their marital status and the details of
their husband's work. If they were married, But there were
proponents of women postal workers within the system. UH. In
nineteen oh six, Postmaster General George Cordelou was open in
(13:09):
his belief that women were perfectly suited for postal work,
as it gave them an opening into government work while
also offering the chance to stay close to and involved
with their communities. At this point in the timeline, women
held about ten percent of the government's postmaster positions. Thanks
to a shortage of city mail carriers in nineteen seventeen,
after a large number of men quit their carrying jobs
(13:31):
due to pay in labor condition disputes, women got a
new opportunity to work not just as clerks but as
regular city route workers. Of course, there were doubters who
thought that women couldn't handle the job and that merely
carrying a mail bag around would be too much for them.
Two women were hired for temporary positions on city roots. Yeah,
there was one piece I was reading about it that
(13:53):
was pointing out that women had been carrying around babies
that wiggle in addition to being heavy for a long time,
and that may be mail bags would not be such
a problem. UH. And then World War One once again
saw a bump in the number of women employed in
the postal Service as many men went to war, although
this was largely temporary uh many of those those women
(14:13):
had been married to the men that left, and most
of the women who had filled vacant positions left those
jobs to make them available once again for returning soldiers.
Saw a major change when will Hayes became Postmaster General.
He removed the ban on married women in the postal
Service that Harry C. Payne had instituted almost two decades earlier,
and when World War Two came around, women once again
(14:35):
became the focus of postal service discussion as jobs needed
to be filled. But the Postmaster General at that time,
Frank Walker, still felt that women could work as clerks,
but that they should not carry the mail. He had
to reverse his position, though, as more and more of
the men in his postal service left to serve in
the military and he really had no other option. Coming up,
we're going to talk about the postal uniforms and other
(14:57):
moves toward work workforce equality, as well as some notable
ladies in postal service history. But first we will pause
for a word from one of our sponsors. After World
War two, the number of women working in the U
s Postal Service increased from year to year, though there
(15:19):
were still very few women employed as male carriers, and
they were still a small enough segment of the US
Postal Service that there had never been a standardized uniform
for them. Skirts were added to the official uniform in
nineteen fifty five, but it took another full decade before
a woman's uniform standard was established. Finally, in the nineteen sixties,
there were enough women in the USPS to merit this move.
(15:43):
In nineteen sixty two, President John F. Kennedy passed the
Equal Pay Act, legally establishing the right to equal pay
for women and men in federal jobs. From nineteen sixty
four to nineteen seventy four, women went from making up
eight percent of the Postal Services employees to more eighteen percent,
and the largest area of growth was as mail carriers.
(16:05):
In the mid nineteen seventies, Postmaster General et Klassen found
the founded the Postal Service Women's Program to identify women
who would make good leaders and then offer training to
enable more women to move into higher levels of employment
within the Postal Service. However, it should be noted that
while that program certainly helped some women. Mary Valentino, who
(16:25):
was the woman who was really pivotal in designing that program,
was unhappy with this execution, and she really felt that
there were some institutional issues of discrimination within the Postal Service,
and she filed a class action suit against the U. S.
Postal Service for discrimination. That suit was ultimately unsuccessful. We're
going to attack next about some of the notable women
and USPS history, which will also you know, phillis in.
(16:49):
But what's happened between the nineteen seventies and today. And
while we mentioned earlier that women mail carriers were virtually
non existent for a long time, there were some exceptions.
And there are so many any notable women in the U. S.
Postal Service history, uh and even before it was the
US Postal Service, that we can't possibly include them all.
So hopefully we're not missing your favorites. The first woman
(17:10):
given an official mail carrying post was actually back in
eighteen forty five, per an appointment by Postmaster General Cave Johnson.
This woman, Sarah Black, carried mail back and forth between
the Charlestown, Maryland post Office and the railroad daily or
as required, and she was paid forty eight dollars a year,
and we know she did that job for at least
two years. We don't know if it went much longer
(17:30):
than that. Uh. Polly Martin was a Star Root carrier
that's a contract worker who carried mail parcels, telegrams, and
even passengers between Attleborough and South Adelborough, Massachusetts for sixteen
years starting in eighteen sixty. She was known to be
tough and smart and only faced one attempted robbery in
all her time as a Star carrier. That attempt failed miserably,
(17:52):
as she beat the man who had tried to climb
aboard her wagon with a horse whip until he fell away.
In nine hundred, the first woman full time rural free
delivery carrier was Ethel Hill. Whereas in previous years, women
were sometimes listed as substitute carriers for their spouses or
other male family members, Hill was the first to list
a man, her father, as her substitute. Up until that point,
(18:15):
there had been women working in the rural roots, but
they were all basically serving as substitutes. Uh. Stagecoach Mary,
who we mentioned in our Six Impossible Episodes podcast, was
a former slave who ran mail in Montana between Cascade
and St. Peter's mission, and her reputation was that of
a rough, tough woman who was also much beloved. Miss
(18:35):
Ada Nelson ran a mail route in Pittsfield, Maine, by
a horse and buggy from nineteen o three to nineteen
o seven. She won the distinction of most efficient male
carrier in the state in nineteen o seven, shortly before
she retired from her position to get married. Catherine Stinson
was the first woman to carry mail by plane in
nineteen thirteen, she dropped mail bags from the air at
(18:57):
the Montana State Fair as part of a demonstration. She
also flew regular airmail at one point from Chicago to
New York, again the first woman to do so, and
that was in nineteen eighteen, and that trip actually didn't
go his plan. She had to land earlier than she
meant to and it ended in something of a disastrous
crash for her plane. She landed in a muddy field
and her plane flipped over. Uh Stinton was unharmed and
(19:20):
she did deliver that the mail that was on that
thing a few days later, but she broke two American
flight records in the process. Even though uh that flight
did not go his plan, she had still gone further
than anyone had gone before and flown longer than anyone
had gone before. The two women we mentioned earlier who
were appointed to temporary positions as the first city mail carriers,
(19:41):
where Mrs Promelias Campbell and Mrs Nellie m McGrath. Campbell
was a widow and McGrath's husband was serving in the military.
Although they weren't used for more than a couple of weeks,
their work was deemed highly satisfactory. Yeah, And that was
in nineteen seventeen. And then in nineteen twenty Genevieve Basque
fee Oild was made the Umbroda, Minnesota village carrier. Postal
(20:03):
work was in her blood. Her father was actually the
local postmaster, and when her father left office in nineteen
twenty four, Genevieve resigned her position. In nineteen sixty three,
Mrs Evelyn Craig Brown became the first wanted to deliver
mail in Washington, d C. Since World War Two. In
nineteen eighty five, Jackie Strange was the first woman to
(20:24):
rise to the position of Deputy Postmaster General, the number
two position in the U. S. Postal Service. She started
her postal career as a temporary clerk in nineteen forty six,
and she slowly made her way up the ladder over
the course of the next forty years. She retired in
nineteen eighty seven, just a little more than a year ago.
On March six, the first female Postmaster General of the
(20:46):
United States, Meghan Brennan, was sworn in. Brennan has worked
for the Postal Service for thirty years and started as
a mail carrier, a job one believed to be too
strenuous for women. My hat is off to all of
these gals. I have a female postal carrier, and I
love her. I have to confess, I am not sure
(21:10):
who are Uh. This is because we live upstairs and
I I don't think I ever see the mail being delivered.
I do. Plus, she'll always, you know, if there's a parcel,
she will always come and knock on the door. And
if it's raining, she will always uh put it in
(21:32):
a bag and make sure it's tucked up on our deck,
or she'll knock on the door. If I'm she sees
the car in the driveway, she knows I'm probably teleworking,
and she'll come and say hi and drop off the
mail in a bag so it doesn't get wet. She's
the best. I love her. I also have a little
bit of listener mail which is related to this, and
it is one of the mini requests sort of that
we've gotten. But it's also a very funny story. I'm
(21:53):
not going to read her whole mail, but I will
read the part that is germane to this this topic,
and it is from our listener May it is and
she said, hello, I love your podcast and that now
I must seem like a jack of all trades to
people because of the random historical events that I bring
up in conversations. Recently, there was a listener mail that
mentioned that you should do a podcast on females becoming
(22:14):
mail carriers. This made me think of one of my
favorite stories about my daughter Maddie. When she was four,
we got a new female mail carrier. The old one
she puts out in quotes, was also a female. One day,
while we were walking, she saw a very tall black
man delivering mail and she kind of looked at him funny,
and I thought, oh, no, she is looking at him
because of his race. And I asked her why she
(22:34):
was making that puzzled face, and she said, I didn't
know men could do that. Job she is. She is
seven now, and she still doesn't know why this story
is funny. I love this so much. It's like such
a great out of the mouth of Babe's moment that
I wanted to include it in this one. You would
like to write to us, you can do so at
History Podcast at house to works dot com. We're also
(22:56):
at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History on twin
or at misst in history at pinterest dot com, slash
miss in History at mist in history dot tumbler dot com,
and on Instagram at mist in History. If you would
like to learn more about what we talked about today,
you can go to our parents site, how stuff Works.
Type in USPS in the search bar and you will
get an article called how the USPS Works, so you
(23:19):
can learn all about how the Post office works. Uh.
If you'd like to visit us, you should do that
at misston history dot com and there you will find
show notes for all of the episodes Tracy and I
have worked on, as well as every episode of missed
in History that has ever existed, from the very beginning,
long before we were hosts, So we encourage you kind
of visit us at how Stuff Works dot com and
missed in History dot com. For more on this and
(23:43):
thousands of other topics. Is It How Stuff Works dot com,
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Tracy Wilson
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