Thursday, November 16, 2006

Oskaloosa Post Office to celebrate 150 years

by Kenneth Lassiter

From its transient beginnings to more stationary place of business over the last 150 years, the Oskaloosa office of the U.S. Postal Service has been in service almost as long as Jefferson County has existed.

The office, which now sits at the northwest corner of the junction of Delaware and Washington streets, will mark its 150th birthday with an open house from 2:30 to 4 p.m. Nov. 21. Accompanying the open house will be refreshments and a proclamation by Mayor Judy Miller to mark the occasion.

Another interesting part of the event will be a book of information put together by former postmaster Millie Ellerman, who is now retired and living in Nortonville. Ellerman was postmaster in Oskaloosa from 1987 to 2000 before retiring and has spent time recently trying to piece together the office’s history.

Jefferson County was formally organized on Aug. 25, 1855, and the Oskaloosa post office was established on Nov. 25, 1856. The office pre-dates the Pony Express, which carried mail in the midwest and far west in 1860 and 1861 until the transcontinental telegraph line was completed.

Ellerman said in its early years the office moved from business to business around the courthouse square as the local postmaster position changed hands.

The first permanent post office in town occupied the space that now houses the town’s public library on the south side of the square. That spot served as the post office for 50 years before the current one was built in 1962.

Ellerman said she has contacted other former local postmasters in her quest for information on the Oskaloosa post office and has found good results. While some former locations of the post office have been uncovered, she hasn’t confirmed all the former locations in town.

She has submitted information requests to the National Archives as well as the state historical society and awaits further information from those entities.

“I’ve got information on when the office was established and a list of the former postmasters, but I’m still trying to find out more information,” Ellerman said.

She spent 35 years working for the USPS as a clerk in Nortonville and Cummings before taking the postmaster job in Easton in 1984 and then switching to Oskaloosa three years later.

“I’m trying to get it all down on paper and I’ve been double checking information with former employees.”

The long history of Jefferson County has carried the Oskaloosa post office from the days of mail delivery by horse and train through the beginning of rural free delivery in the late 1890s and early 1900s, the advent of mail transport by automobile and airplane, the creation of ZIP codes in 1963 and the privatization of the USPS in 1971.

Even since then the complexion of the mail service has changed with the computer age but the post office has survived. Current postmaster Halene Hothan works with her crew of five staff members at the post office now and said she is excited to see Ellerman’s ongoing work when she brings it in to the birthday celebration.

“I think it’ll be interesting to see,” Hothan said. “We would have liked to have the celebration on the actual birthday on Nov. 25 but with it being Thanksgiving weekend, we start getting really busy so I figured it would be smarter to have it a little ahead of time.”

Ellerman asked that anyone with pictures of the post office from the past contact the Oskaloosa post office. She said while information has been somewhat forthcoming, she hasn’t been able to find pictures of the local post office from the past.

“This has been good for a retiree’s brain,” joked Ellerman about her research. “The post office does and has done so much and a lot of people don’t know about it all. A lot of the reason for the roads being established out in rural areas was for the mail carriers.

“I’ll try to do more work as I can find the information. It’s really something I’m doing for the community and for the benefit of the historical society, not just for me. I’d appreciate any more information I could get.”