The Mail Carriage Dispute
Citizens of Olympia clash with their local postmaster over a controversial contract, suspecting graft in the transport of official mail.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The U.S. Mails on our sound have heretofore arrived at this place every Monday morning at 7 o'clock by steamboat. The punctual and faithful manner in which the service has been performed by the Anderson company has met with the approval of our citizens generally. Last Monday was the day on which the new service of Mr. Geo. Parkinson was to have commenced. Mr. Parkinson not appearing, the owners of the steamer Eliza Anderson signified their willingness to continue carrying the mail as previously. This fair proposition did not meet the approval of the Postmaster, R. Willard, unless he could retain the privilege of any future arrangement for the transportation of the mails. The Anderson company declined to accept the service with such a reservation. A petition signed by citizens representing almost every locality on the Sound was presented to the Postmaster, but he took not the slightest notice of it, and on Tuesday night, the mail was dispatched from the post office in a wagon. It appears a certain individual named Scranton is the person referred to in the petition. He professes to have a steamer engaged to arrive in a few weeks. Hence, the Postmaster prefers the delay of wagon service to ensure the contract falls to Scranton. We consider the course of the Postmaster remarkable, to say the least.
“It is to the interest of the people along the route... that the mails be carried by the said Scranton, if in the meantime, the mails are necessarily transported in wagons!”
This 1861 dispute highlights how local post offices were once the center of political patronage and civic frustration. Long before modern debates over USPS funding and service, Olympia residents were already fighting against bureaucratic choices that prioritized connected 'scramblers' over the reliable, established infrastructure their community relied upon.
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