History of The Postal Service
in The Benton Area

Postmasters Since 1835

The office of Postmaster became a presidential appointment shortly before January 22, 1904, and the job was placed under Civil Service during the tenure of Daniel E. Hartman. The Benton Post Office became Second Class in 1946.

The post office in its current location was dedicated Saturday, April 25, 1964. The building has 2,600 sq. ft. of inside area, with a loading platform.

Copy of First Day Cover Honoring Dr. Frank C. Laubach, Benton Native

We were asked to speak at the Benton Lions monthly meeting November 18, 2004. We closed our presentation with this story. We prepared the story in honor of Benton's Post Master Gary Strauch, a member of the Lions and husband of the President of the local Lions Club.

There is a rule of thumb that postulates that everything takes longer than we think it will take and that if anything can go wrong it will. That rule of thumb is sometimes applied to the U. S. Postal System and that is what this section is about: our mail system. By way of introduction, we'll mention that out in Pittsburg, California, a postal patron once was so upset over the non-delivery of a letter he needed that he simply shot the postal clerk.

What we used to know as the Post Office Department has since 1970 been an independent public corporation operating under the name of the United States Postal Service.

Everyone can tell a story about letters that went askew. What a friend and former postal employee from Arlington, VA, used to call a nixie, a inside term denoting an unknown origin and seemingly undeliverable mail, gets remarkably good service sometimes. We remember Sue Laubach's son Stanleigh Malotte, both now deceased, wrote to his Mother from California. Sue and Earl Laubach were Back Home in Benton, PA. Without a return address, the envelope was addressed simply, "The House With the Hole in the Roof," Benton, PA. The letter was promptly delivered to their home which Earl and others were painstakingly building beside the present Benton Elementary School. A letter incorrectly addressed to "Don Helwig" was correctly delivered to Donald Rabb, thanks to the Benton Post Office.

Sending post cards from a vacation trip was popular over the years, and at one point many post cards were sent to specific people in the Benton area, and the opening line of the post card frequently read, "Dear Wilene," a postal employee who some felt perused the incoming mail before sortingthe mail into the applicable pigeon hole. Those were the days when the post office was at the corner of Main Street and Market, where the Sports Center is now. Those were the days when standing in line waiting for the mail to be sorted was a popular event.

The rather rotund Rev. Robert Matthews served the congregation of the Benton Christian Church from October 1968 to November 1971. A youthful Bob Kelsey once wrote a letter simply addressed to the "Big Man in the Pulpit, Benton, PA," and the letter found its home on the first try.

Pat Truskoloski, Red Rock, told us about her six-year old nephew who sent her husband a letter addressed to Uncle Frank, Benton, PA. The letter was delivered. Their mailman at the time, Bruce Crawford, explained that he knew of two Uncle Frank's with relatives in Virginia and "he took a chance that it was us, and he was right. I still have the letter! You don't get service like that anywhere but 'Back Home In Benton, Pa.'"

John Herbert Laubach tells of a tavern in Bad Godesberg, on the Rhine River. Numerous foreign embassies and government agencies as well as residences of diplomats and government officials are here and in September, 1938, Adolf Hitler and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met there. In the town is a tavern called "Aennchen." With apologies to those who know German better than we do, Aennchen is a form of "Anna," and means gracious. The word "Aennchen" also could mean a small "n." Anyway, many letters were addressed to this tavern with simply a small "n" as the recipient with no other identification on the envelope.

Dayne Kline, a man with a mischievous side at times, is known to have been in Canada and simply addressed a post card to "The Proprietor of the Grist Mill, 17814." The card went through to John Mather without a hitch. Children write a lot of nixies, addressing their Christmas list to "Santa Claus" or "My teacher."

One of the most famous nixie was an envelope addressed to "Smitty, Askk Cookie." It was delivered by the letter carrier, "Smitty," to a tavern owner known to her customers as "Cookie." Another letter was addressed to "s.o.b., Washington." The letter was promptly delivered to the late Drew Pearson, a newspaper columnist. A letter in 1963 addressed to an address in Cowford, FL, a nonexistent town, was promptly delivered to Jacksonville. Cowford had became Jacksonville in 1822.

With our modern transportation methods, we no longer need to write "Haste, Post, Haste," on envelopes. We have come a long way from the days of the mail delivery on the Susquehanna & Tioga Turnpike where the mail went through every three days. We can no longer live as Henry David Thoreau did. We need the mail system.

We all know the motto of the U. S. Postal System, but few of us remember that the motto originated in fifth century B.C. During what was then called the Persian Wars (as distinguished from the Persian Wars still ongoing), Xerxes used runners to send back the warfront news of his invasion of Greece. Herodotus told the story...

A modern adoption of that is today the post-office motto. "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
--Inscription on the General Post Office, New York City

And where does the name "post" come from? Dating to the time of Augustus, the Romans had a system of delivering the mail, called "cursus publicus." The stations along the route were known as "posts," from the Latin positus, the past participle of ponere and it means "placed." There is no indication that mail was delivered during what we now call the "Dark Ages," but as civilization moved toward the "Middle Ages," private mail carriers carried messages in small metal bags made out of mesh, from which the term "mail" comes.

Mail delivery did not speed up for 1,900 years. In March, 1861, the Pony Express carried Abraham Lincoln's inaugural address 1,600 miles in 7 days and 18 hours. Benjamin Franklin was appointed in 1753 as postmaster general. He wanted the job for the prestige it would bring to him and the increase of sales of his newspaper he thought it would bring. He was an excellent postmaster general, even though he spent long periods of time during his incumbency in London. William Goddard actually got his private-enterprise system into operation and called it a constitutional post office. Disregarding this, the Continental Congress authorized a publicly owned post office on July 26, 1775, passed over Goddard and named Franklin the first American Postmaster general. When Government began under the Constitution, the American postal system had about 75 post offices and 1,875 miles of post roads.

We would continue writing, but we have to quit now. We have to pay some bills, and get to the post office before it closes to get them mailed.