Museum Highlights

By the 1850s, adhesive postage stamps were available, and people no longer needed to go to the post office to mail letters. They could keep stamps at home and mail letters at their leisure. So the Post Office Department began to build and install mailboxes throughout U.S. cities.

Until 1916, Americans were not required to have household letter boxes. Letter carriers handed over the mail personally, ringing the bell twice to signal that the mail was there, or knocking. Door knockers like this one saved wear and tear on the knuckles.

The Railway Mail Service began exchanging mail “on-the-fly” in 1869. This system of mail cranes made it unnecessary for trains to stop at every town to load and unload mail.

Networks of pneumatic tubes speeded mail beneath city street beginning in the 1890s. Pneumatic carriers holding 600 letters traveled at about 35 miles per hour.

Wagons carried mailbags between railway stations and city post offices, which often were miles apart. Screen wagons, introduced in 1886 at Sherman, Texas, increased security as the mail moved between post offices, railroad stations, and steamboat landings.

This model represents the Central America ocean steamer. The Central American, with 423 passengers and crew, tons of mail and freight, and over $1 million in gold on board, sunk in a storm off Cape Hatteras on September 12, 1857.

This registration handstamp was one of six post-marking devices recovered from the U.S.S. Oklahoma. It is dated “Dec. 6 1941” the last day it was used. The Oklahoma was struck by a series of bomb and torpedo blasts during the raid on Pearl Harbor and ultimately capsized.