Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Katherine Becker, The Philatelic Digital Library Project at http://www.tpdlp.net and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) THE HISTORY OF THE POST OFFICE IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, MANAGER LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4 [Illustration] NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO. BOMBAY } CALCUTTA } MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD. MADRAS } TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TOKYO: MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE HISTORY OF THE POST OFFICE IN BRITISH NORTH AMERICA 1639-1870 BY WILLIAM SMITH SOMETIME SECRETARY OF THE POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT OF CANADA CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1920 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. PREFACE My purpose, in the searches for material which led to the present volume, has been to give as complete an account as it lay in my power to do, of the beginnings and growth of the Canadian post office, with which I was associated for thirty-six years. As my studies progressed, however, I found it would be necessary to widen my field. The Canadian post office did not come into being as an independent organization. It was but the extension into newly-acquired territories, of a system which had been in operation for nearly three-quarters of a century, with well-established modes of administration. Obviously, either reference should be made to well-known works on the older colonial postal system, or an account of it must be attempted in this volume. Although careful studies of some aspects of this history have been made, this part of colonial history has, on the whole, received less of the attention of students than has been devoted to throwing light upon other phases of that history; and, what was important for my purpose, little has been done in the way of describing the relations between the colonial postal system and the general post office in London, to which it was subordinate. The materials for this portion of the history are to be found in the records of the general post office, London, the British Museum, and in the journals of the colonial legislatures. A very interesting document is Franklin's Account Book, which is in the Boston Public Library. The materials for the history of the post office in the provinces now composing the Dominion of Canada, are in the records of the general post office, the larger portion of which have been transcribed for the Public Archives of Canada; in the correspondence between the colonial governors and the colonial office, which can be found either in the original or in transcripts in the Public Archives, and in the Journals of the Provincial Legislatures.