Diane L. Richard, MEng, MBA
Diane tells us that most talks on post offices focus on them as employers — for those seeking to document family members who worked for the post office. Post offices aren’t just about employees or even the mail. Post offices used to define communities and people used their location to define where they lived. If you want to know where a small community was located, see if it had a post office. Now, most of us receive our newspapers and magazines directly from the publisher, either printed or electronic, or purchased in a store. These subscriptions used to be handled at the post office. Wouldn’t you like to see great-great-grandpa’s subscription list? These subscriptions provide insight about a person, often including religious and/or political leanings, hobbies, news interests, and much more
(Image source: “Post Office, Elon College, NC”, State Archives of North Carolina, No known copyright restrictions, via Flickr.)
Available in the NCGS online store is North Carolina Research – Genealogy and Local History, the text for the NCGS Webinar Series. For more information about the speaker, please see our flyer (pdf file).
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