Good Sunday morning, everyone!
This post, which will be quick (promise), is coming to you only because I was finally able to spend a little time this morning on my favorite social media platform: Twitter. For those of you who are now rolling your eyes and saying to yourself, 'I am NOT going there...', here's real proof that it can link you with people, resources and information you might not get otherwise (or certainly might not find as easily).
I was looking at Twitter using Tweetdeck, and I have lists to filter groups of tweeps together. It helps me to focus on specific things like genealogy, archives, fitness, etc. I saw a tweet from @GenealogyCircle, Cindy Freed, with a link to her latest blog post. (Which in and of itself is great). But, what caught my eye were the words 'mail carrier' in the title of a prior post. So, I clicked through to read it (I'm painfully behind on blog reading and social media...apologies to anyone I've missed.). Cindy wrote a post about her gggrandfather and his work as postal carrier.
Well, I have to say, after reading that she had gotten some great information from the USPS historian, but nothing on her ancestor, I couldn't type fast enough! My great grandfather, George Jeffrey, was a mail carrier from 1903 - 1923 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In 1998, when I did some initial research, I found out that the US Postal Service maintained records on their employees which are still in existence! I couldn't believe it. So I wrote to the address listed, and in a matter of a few weeks I received a letter from them. While they didn't have his specific record, they were able to confirm for me where and when he worked with the Postal Service, some great evidence!
Anyway, today, the USPS has a pamphlet with the resources available on the Postal Service and it's employees. You can find it HERE.
And, once I'd tweeted out the link, another of my tweeps, @Ghyxion, said her great Aunt had been a Post Master (or, rather, Mistress, as she later pointed out) and that the resource will hopefully help her get some more information too!
So, apparently, there are lots of us family historians and genealogists with Postal workers in our trees. Hopefully someone else will find this information helpful!
And, we're keeping up the family tradition of delivering information...just in a very different format! :-)
Wow, the U. S. Postal Service -- who knew that they kept these kinds of records? Well, now we do! I copied the link to the Pamphlet and will use it. Often people were postal carriers for a few years, if not for their whole lives. In fact, before my hubs went to grad school, he was a postal carrier for 2 years. I'm going to look him up (plus my other surnames). So neat!
ReplyDeleteLaura ~ Thank you for the mention in your blog post. I appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome Cindy...thanks for jogging my memory so that I could share this resource!
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