Showing posts with label Barefoot Mailmen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barefoot Mailmen. Show all posts

Saturday, October 17, 2020

Barefoot mailmen in Florida speed up postal service—on foot

 

One of six panels from a West Palm Beach Post Office (1900) Florida State Archives



 


By Jane Feehan

The Barefoot Mailman, a name applied collectively to the men who walked and rowed the rugged 136-mile round trip from Palm Beach to Miami, greatly improved mail delivery in the area during the late 1800s. 

Through their efforts during the years 1885 to 1892, letters took a week to get from Jupiter to Miami along the barefoot route - much-shortened from the mail route used before 1885. The US Post Office operated a route from 1867 for two years before suspending the route.
Current resident of Hillsboro Inlet


Before that year, letters went through a 3,000 mile odyssey that could take up to two months to reach a delivery destination 68 miles away. 

From Jupiter mail went by Indian River steamboat to the Titusville rail; by train to New York’s port; by steamer to Havana and then on a schooner to Miami.  

The USPS Star Route 6451 was reactivated in 1884 with the first courier contract going to Lantana settler and future Dade County school superintendant, Edward Ruthven Bradley.

A statue near the Hillsboro Inlet commemorates these men. Carriers included Kentucky native James “Ed” Hamilton who had settled in Hypoluxo with two friends in 1885. He became a mail carrier in 1887 but disappeared a few months after beginning service, perhaps drowning or being attacked by alligators while trying to cross the inlet after his boat went missing.
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Sources: McGarry, Carmen Racine. Magnificent Mile: a History of Hillsboro Beach. Morriston: RitAmelia Press, 1997.
Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society at hillsborolighthouse.org/bfmn.html

Tags: 

Florida in the 1800s, mail service in early Florida, Hillsboro Inlet, USPS, Ed Hamilton