href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@35715@[email protected]#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[54] since “notwithstanding a late act for the Setling a Poste Office within this Province Sundrie Letters are brought by ships and other vessell a longe shore to the Prejudice of those who are at the charge of keeping a poste goeing once a week by land.” It was “Enacted by the Liet. Governor Counsill & Representatives convened in Genl. Assembly” that thereafter all masters of sloops or other vessels arriving within the Province should deliver all letters brought in by them, except such as concerned the loading of their vessels, to the collector or other post officer to be carried “with all convenient speed” to the post house.

The next year (May 21, 1695), a petition from Campbell for encouraging the post office, was answered by a bill settling a salary of £12 for the ensuing year.[55] In 1698[56] (April 7th) another petition from Campbell for continuing the support of the post office was read in the council and sent to the assembly, but returned without their allowing anything. July 2d, 1703, a committee of both houses was appointed to consider the petition of John Campbell, Duncan’s successor, and in February (8th), 1703/4, £21 4s. was voted.

A year later[57] (May 3d, 1705) the council and General Assembly voted to pay £6 out of the next provincial rate, to Campbell for his “extraordinary Service in forwarding his Excellency’s and Government letters for her Majesty’s service relating to this province;” again in 1707 (April 8th) he was granted[58] £6 out of the treasury, and in 1708 (May 6th) another £6 for “diligent care of expresses and letters.”

The first entry in the Colonial Records of Rhode Island[59] regarding a post is in 1774.

Connecticut’s earliest efforts toward the establishment of a post have already been mentioned in connection with New York and Massachusetts. On May 10th, 1694, the court of election at Hartford passed the following Act for the encouragement of a post office.[60]

“Whereas their most excelent Ma^ties King W^m and Queen Mary by their letters pattents have granted a Post Office to be set up in these partes of N. E. for the receiving and disspatching of letters and pacquetts from one place to another for their Ma^ties speciall service and the benefit of theire Ma^ties good Subjects in these parts. This court being willing to encourage so good a worke, doe order and enact that all such persons as shall be imployed by the Post Master Gen. in the severall stages within this Colony of Connecticut shall and may pass and repasse all and every ferry within this Colony, from the day of the date hereof for and during this courts pleasure, without payeing any rate or sume of money either for his own or horses passage.”

May, 1698,[61] in response to a complaint that posts and other travellers met with great difficulty in journeying through the colony, especially in the township of Stonington, the court ordered the selectmen to lay out convenient highways, kept cleared and open, unless they passed through ancient common fields, or the general or county court ordered otherwise, and “made good with sufficient causeis and bridges as need shall require,” failure to observe these instructions to be punished by a fine of £10 into the public treasury, and for a continuance of the offence by an annual fine of £10 to be levied upon the selectment or inhabitants.

In May, 1704,[62] the general court decreed that since the post was often impeded, “in cases extraordinarie the authoritie may grant a bill to the Constables for the defraying of such charges as are really necessary.”

Watson,[63] in his Annals of Philadelphia, bases on MSS. in the possession of the Pemberton family, his statement that as early as July, 1683, a weekly post was established by order of William Penn and a grant given to a certain Henry Waldy of Tekonay to hold one, and “supply passengers with horses from Philadelphia to New Castle or the Falls of the Delaware; the rates from the Falls to Philadelphia 3d., to Chester 5d., to New Castle 7d., to Maryland 9d., and from Philadelphia to Chester 2d., to New Castle 4d., to Maryland 6d..” Winsor, in the Narrative and Critical History, adds that the notices of the departure of the post were put on the meeting-house doors and in other public places.

The same year (1683)[64] a law was passed at Philadelphia directing the way in which official letters should be dispatched, in order that the governor might obtain “true and speedy information regarding public affairs, as well from Europe as the neighboring colonies and remote parts of this province and territories thereof.” “Be it Enacted by the authority aforesaid, That every Justice of the Peace, Sheriff or Constable within the respective counties of this province and territories thereof, to whose hands or knowledge any Letter or Letters shall come, directed to or from the governor, shall dispatch them, within 3 hours at the farthest, after the receipt or knowledge thereof, to the next Sheriff or Constable, and so forwards, as the Letter directs, upon the penalty of 20s. for every hour’s delay. And in such cases, all Justices of the Peace, Sheriffs or Constables are hereby empowered to press either man or horse for that service, allowing for a horse or man, 2 pence by the mile, to be paid out of the public stock.”

September 5th, 1700, Penn writes to Logan that he sends a package for Governor Blackeston[65] to be forwarded to the sheriff of New Castle, showing that the custom was in vogue seventeen years after its origin.

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