Rudimentary postal system dates back to colonial times

"Who invented the post office?" asked Maya D'Souza, 10,a fifth-grader at Butterfield School in Libertyville.

The post office, the place where letters and packages are sorted and delivered to a house or place of business, might have first started as a message service in a time before there were alphabets and writing.

Once people could write proclamations or demands on paper, parchment or papyrus, messengers would deliver the messages. Many ancient rulers used couriers to deliver messages about new laws, orders and other important information to all their citizens.

In Ancient China, there were 1,400 postal stations staffed with men and horses. The couriers delivered government announcements and messages on horseback from dignitaries and government officials. Marco Polo, the famous Venetian explorer who traveled across the Silk Road to China in the 1200s, took advantage of the postal system to dispatch messages. At about the same time, people in Iraq used homing pigeons to deliver messages. Seven hundred years later, this same practice was used successfully in World War I and later in World War II when allies established the Confidential Pigeon Service.

The word post comes from the verb "to post." During ancient times, people would post announcements by nailing them to a door frame. During medieval times, British men could become riders of the post and deliver the king's messages. The post master was in charge of the king's exclusive supply of horses used to deliver his mail.

A colonial postal system was used in the late 1600s well before the U.S. became a country, but there were no post offices. The territory along the Atlantic seaboard was so vast that mail was taken to the nearest location -- usually an inn or tavern. While it is illegal today to read another person's mail, back then a dishonest person might rip open someone else's letters. Sometimes an embarrassed letter writer might find a private note had been published in the local newspaper.

The British Crown appointed Benjamin Franklin postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737. They fired him when he was found to support the colonists. In 1775, the Continental Congress reinstated his position and named Franklin postmaster general.

The U.S. Postal Service today delivers hundreds of millions of pieces of mail each day to more than 141 million homes and businesses. It is an independent operation established by the Executive Branch of the U.S. government.

Want to know about philately? That's the study of postage stamp collecting. In 1886, The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. received a donation of Confederate postage stamps. That was the start of a much larger collection now housed in the National Postal Museum, located in the old Post Office building in Washington, D.C.

For information on stamp collecting and exhibits, visit www.postalmuseum.si.edu.see to see the National Postal Museum Web site.