History of Allamakee County postal service is new exhibit at museum
The other kind of stamps ... Part of the new Allamakee County postal history exhibit at the Allamakee County Courthouse Museum in Waukon includes a large number of hand-held stamps used to cancel postage on envelopes and packages. Photo by Maury Gallagher.
by Maury Gallagher
With the donation of historical items, a new feature is being developed at the Allamakee County Historical Society Museum and Genealogy Center in Waukon. “We are setting aside a room dedicated solely to items from past and present post offices in Allamakee County,” said museum coordinator Ada Marie Kerndt. “The idea began when Waukon Postmaster Mary Hawes found many old items in the basement of the Waukon Post Office. She recognized the historical value of the items and donated them to the museum. The items were recently moved to the museum with the assistance of Jim Janett, Jerold Olson and the Waukon Boy Scouts. The initiative to set aside a special room for all the post office items began with Marcia Rush, an Historical Society member.” Larger items added to the collection included two mail sorting boxes from the Waukon Post Office and a sorting box that was used in the Post Office in Ben Decker’s General Store in Churchtown. There was a time in Allamakee County when even the tiniest communities had post offices. In towns like Maud, Myron and Hanover, the post office was often in the postmaster’s home, or in a place of business in the community. The Landmark Inn, north of Waukon, was the site of one of those early post offices. Frequently, the postmaster job remained in one family and was passed down from one family member to another. There were many scales and a variety of hand-held stamps in the collection. “The number of scales were required in days past because each sorting station needed one to verify proper postage as mail was sorted,” Postmaster Hawes said. “The large numbers of stamps were used for a variety of reasons, from cancellation of postage to dealing with a variety of issues such as insufficient postage, return to sender, etc.” In the days before rubber stamps, most of the stamps had wooden handles with metal lettering inserted in the business end. There were stamps that were used to cancel one stamp, larger stamps for cancelling a block of stamps, and rolling stamps to cancel a line of stamps. Many stamps remain in use today, but the majority of cancellation actions are done with automated sorting machines. Among the variety of other items in the display are the badges that each postal carrier once had to wear as they made their rounds. Also included are two old, cast iron mailboxes that were, for many years, conveniently located downtown in Waukon. One stood on the corner of Main Street and Spring Avenue in front of the old J.C. Penney’s Store. The other stood on Hale’s corner, at the intersection of Main Street and Allamakee Street. An old map desk, used to define and lay out postal routes on maps, was included in the collection. A large wooden cut-out of “MR. ZIP,” made by Willard Leiran back when Zip Codes were first coming into use, rounds out the collection for now. “We are hoping to get additional items to add to this collection,” Ada Marie Kerndt added. “We would appreciate donations of any items of historical interest from any post office, past and present, in Allamakee County. We have some photos of past postmasters, and would like to get one of all those who served as postmaster in any and all post offices. Additionally, it would be great to have envelopes and post cards which bear the postmark of all the old post offices from communities that no longer exist.” For now, the beginnings of a new display are in place. With the help of the public, hopefully it will get better and more complete as time goes by. Members of the public who would like to visit the museum and view the above mentioned exhibit, and all the other items of historic interest, can call Jessie Emerson at 563-568-2954 or email: info@allamakeehistory.org. Through June and July, Emerson will be at the museum Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.-4 p.m., with a break at noon for lunch. Guided tours are available to the public from 1-3 p.m.
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