Interested in early US postal history?
A new United States Post Office Publications 'bookshelf' has just been added to the Stamp Smarter Library named 'Ledgers of the Postmaster General Office'.
Quote:
"All official records were kept by hand in a series of bound Ledgers. The most important of these was a series of Ledgers identified as the Letter Books of the Postmaster General. Over 500 of these Ledgers were prepared for the years between 1789 and 1952, and these are now preserved in the National Archives as part of NARA Record Group 28.
During the 1960s, these ledgers were microfilmed, and a few intrepid postal historians began to examine these for new information about the early operations of the postal system. In 2016, the United States Philatelic Classics Society (USPCS) arranged for the first 86 of these Ledgers to be digitized from the microfilms, and placed versions of the digitized copies on their website in their Resources section. The ledgers here represent only a small subset of those on the USPCS website, but these have been reformatted and annotated to improve access to their contents."
Mike Ludeman has invested much time in making these handwritten records much more usable; his formatting and linked annotations are an excellent resource for postal historians, students, and hobbyists. The originals require you to read and page through the entire handwritten publication to find information, the linked organization great simplifies you searches.
Our hobby owes Mike big 'thank you' for his efforts and generosity.
https://stampsmarter.org/learning/PMGLedgers.htmlNote: These are pretty large files (few hundred MBs each); please avoid downloading multiple Ledgers simultaneously.
Don
Posted 09/22/2021 2:16 pm
