Postcrossing Blog

Up until a couple of centuries ago, sending a letter was very different from today. For instance, postage was often paid by the recipient based on the distance traveled and the number of sheets it contained. Even after stamps were introduced, sending something to another country was an odyssey involving acquiring stamps from all the intermediary countries, and also engaging the services of private couriers, diplomatic channels, or securing transport along with the ship’s cargo… You can probably guess there weren’t that many international penpals back then. 😅

But this all changed in 1874! Heinrich von Stephan, the visionary postmaster-general of the German Reichspost (and the person who first floated the idea of a postcard!), suggested countries should meet and discuss the postal status quo in an international conference to see if they could work out a better way to do things. And they did! Representatives from 22 countries got together in Switzerland with the goal of reforming the postal sector and improving the efficiency and reliability of international mail. There were many technical issues to resolve… but after a few days of intense negotiations, they managed to put together a system that would be fair to all countries, regardless of their size or the volume of mail they handled. On 9 October of the same year, a date now celebrated worldwide as World Post Day, the Treaty of Bern, establishing the General Postal Union, was signed. The Union’s membership grew so quickly that it changed its name in 1878 to Universal Postal Union (aka, the UPU)!

The goal of the Treaty of Bern was to create a single postal territory for the exchange of international mail, simplifying and standardizing things. In practice, this meant that all members of the union allowed the free transit of international mail through their territories without additional charges, and also agreed to treat the delivery of incoming international mail the same way as domestic mail. The treaty also established uniform postal rates for international mail, making it easier and more affordable to send letters and postcards. It meant that items could be mailed from any one member country to another with just one stamp, no matter how far they needed to travel or how many countries they traveled through. This might seem like a small change, but it had a massive impact on how people communicated and did business across borders.

All of this happened 150 years ago, and since then, the UPU has expanded to foster collaboration between 192 member countries in the different areas that relate to mail. Whether it’s coming up with standards, supporting the development of e-commerce, improving quality of service and mail security, or helping to ensure that postal services are accessible to everyone, the UPU has been on top of it for decades. Every time you write an address, fill out a customs form or check a tracking code, you can thank the UPU for their work!

So this year, on October 9th, the UPU celebrates its 150th anniversary, and you can imagine this is a big deal. A few countries are planning to issue special stamps to honor the occasion, and Postcrossing has joined the celebrations too on the campaign “A maximum card for maximum worldwide fun!”

For this campaign, the UPU has designed a special commemorative postage stamp, cancellation mark and matching postcard, and invited postal operators to issue it in their country so that people worldwide can celebrate too. 😊 The postcard has a little blurb about Postcrossing on the writing side, encouraging the person to send out the postcard into the world and receive one back as a way to celebrate the work of the UPU. A few countries have confirmed their participation in this activity so far (Belarus, Nigeria, Oman, Russia, Lithuania, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates), but we hope more will join and that we’ll see many of these postcards traveling around the world on October 9th, which is World Post Day. Keep an eye out for them!

PS: If you’re curious to see what the UPU headquarters look like, check out this travel report from the Little Mail Carriers some years ago!

Some months ago, we received a message from Janna (aka revode) who told us about her visit to a wonderful postcard exhibition at the Porter County Museum in Indiana! Sadly, we couldn’t go there ourselves… but the cheeky Little Mail Carriers were happy to jump in and volunteer for a guided tour. 😍 Here is the report from their latest adventure!

Hello everyone! We have arrived at the Porter County Museum in Valparaiso, Indiana! We heard that the PoCo Muse has an exhibit with hundreds of postcards on display until January 7, 2024 so we decided to come check it out!

The Porter County Museum was founded in 1916 and has over 20,000 objects in their collection related to the history and culture of Porter County, Indiana. With so many objects in the collection they rotate through what is on display frequently in order to tell as many stories as possible. When we visited, the Robert Cain Gallery was featuring art from the museum’s collection, the Eunice Slagle Gallery had the exhibit “Connections: Take a Closer Look”, and the Montague/Urshel Gallery featured (the exhibit that we traveled here for) “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age”.

Before searching out the postcards, we explored the Robert Cain Gallery, admiring the work of many Porter County artists who worked to capture scenes from the area. The art in the Cain Gallery rotates out every three months, so that there are always new things to see.

Walking through the museum to get to the postcards, we had to journey through the “Connections” exhibit where seemingly different objects from the museum’s collection are paired together with a variety of connections between them. This concept allows for a wide range of objects to be on display. Did you know that there has been a Popcorn Festival in Valparaiso every September since 1979?

One of the first objects we came across in “Connections” was just our size! It is a scale model of the Maxwell/Remster Dairy Barn which was made by John Remster Sr. for his son John Remster Jr. in the 1950s. The barn can be opened up and played with and has been played with by every generation of the Remster family since its creation! Unfortunately, the barn it is modeled after no longer exists, though the milk house that was connected still stands.

These two pieces are connected by being not the final product. The linocut block (right) shows the artist, Hazel Hannell’s home that was in Furnessville, IN. No prints made from this block are known to exist, though you never know what might be in someone’s attic. The “Brenda Starr Reporter” comic strip was written and illustrated by Dale Messick who lived in Ogden Dunes, IN and inserted many local and personal references into her strip. The comic is in the final stage when it comes to the artist but not for the reader who ultimately would have seen this in the newspaper.

I swear that dog is watching us… 🤨

Check out this postmark stamp! It is from a town that no longer exists! The Tassinong Post office was founded the year after Porter County was founded in 1836, making it one of the earliest European settlements in the region. By 1884, almost all of the Porter County post offices were receiving their mail by rail, Tassinong was one of two still serviced by horseback. At the turn of the 20th century, when the Kankakee Marsh was being drained, the people of Tassinong refused to allow a proposed rail line to come to their town. The railroad, instead, bypassed the village and promoted a new town called Kouts. In 1903 the Tassinong post office was discontinued with all of the people relocating to somewhere serviced by rail.

Can you imagine checking someone out on this cash register? This is a nickel plate brass National Cash Register manufactured in 1914 sold to Wark’s Hardware in Valparaiso. The register worked perfectly at Wark’s until the early 1990s when someone broke into the store and broke the machine. Mr. Wark was not one to throw things away just because they didn’t work, so he disconnected one of the cash drawers from the machine and then it became a very large cash drawer until the store closed in the early 2000s.

Turns out she WAS watching us! This is Daisy the taxidermied dog and her eyes follow you! She is 90 years young and belonged to Helen Slanger of Portage, IN. She has been in the museum’s collection since the 1970s and has become an unofficial icon of the museum.

After journeying through ‘Connections’, we finally made it to “Ever Yours: Postcards from the Golden Age” — the exhibition we had been looking for! I don’t think that that postcard will fit in a regular mail slot…

Did you know that the first postcard was created in 1869!?

The PoCo Muse has over 2000 postcards in their collection. How did they narrow it down to the couple hundred on display? The wall of postcards that are behind us here were all received by one man, John Griffin, from Valparaiso, IN!

Did you know that approximately 1 billion penny postcards were sent every year between 1907 and 1915?

All of these flip books have both sides of a historic postcard with transcriptions! This one is a real photo postcard showing Lila and Thaddeus Whitlock posing with their dog Maxie. Lila sent this to her daughter Olive who was studying Nursing in Iowa in 1912. It is nice to see that people have felt conflicted about their selfies from the beginning; “I was so engaged in trying to keep Maxie still, I forgot to look pleasant.”

The exhibit makes the comparison of postcards to social media of today. The message is public since there is no envelope, the amount of text is limited to the space available on the card, and it is accompanied by an image which might be compared to today’s use of memes. Just like social media today there was pushback to the use of postcards with detractors saying that postcards symbolize “the triumph of the commonplace.”

This binder of postcards shows an individual’s collection of historic postcards that they loaned for the exhibit. In the early 20th century it was common to invite guests over and flip through your postcard collection. Similar to showing friends vacation photos.

After reading all of those postcards it was nice to color some for ourselves. Plus once we are done coloring the booklet, it can be turned into a postcard — just tape it shut and add a stamp on the back! On the wall above, the many postcards sent to the museum are on display, which helps to show that postcards are still thriving today! Hurray! 🎉

Thank you to the wonderful team at the Porter County Museum, and especially Visitor Experience Manager Quinn, for opening their arms to the Little Mail Carriers and showing them around. If you’re in the area, the exhibition will be there until January 7th, so don’t miss it!

The little ones are back on their envelope and on their way to their next adventure… who knows where they’ll pop up!

To many, the name “Mulready” might not ring a bell… but more avid postcard-connoisseurs will know that these were the grandfathers of postcards! Introduced in May 6, 1840, Mulready stationery were pre-paid postal envelopes designed by artist William Mulready as an alternative to the Penny Black stamp. Despite the intricate design symbolizing the British postal system’s reach, they were mercilessly mocked at the time and overshadowed by the popularity of adhesive postage stamps.

Sometime ago, Graham Beck from popular Youtube channel Exploring Stamps produced this great video about Mulready stationery, in which he interviewed Robin Cassell at Stampex. Robin is an expert and dealer of this type of items, and tells its fascinating and troubled story. If you like philately and postcard history, don’t miss it!

Are there other videos or resources out there about postcards that we should check out? Let us know in the comments — we’re always eager to learn more!

In the US, February is designated as “Black History Month”, intended to highlight the stories of the many African-American people whose stories have often gone unheard. In honour of that, I’ve been looking into the story of the “Six Triple Eight”, the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a non-white battalion of the Women’s Army Corps, made up of 855 women in total, commanded by Major Charity Adams and Captains Mary F. Kearney and Bernice G. Henderson, who were themselves African-Americans. Charity Adams (pictured right) was the highest-ranking Black woman in the US army by the end of the war. When the army proposed a white man to manage the battalion, due to lack of faith in their ability as a non-white unit to manage the job without supervision, she reportedly refused to countenance this (with the words “Sir, over my dead body, sir!”).

Though the group is often referred to as having been the only all-Black, all-female battalion to be sent overseas during World War II, that’s not quite true. There were also Puerto Rican women in the unit, and at least one Mexican woman. Nonetheless, white women were not a part of this unit, which was active from 1945 to 1946, and sent to the UK to manage a backlog of mail that was not being sent to the soldiers it was intended for. Their motto: “No Mail, Low Morale”.

By all accounts, the task they faced was monumental. The mail was unsorted and just lying around, with millions of items, including parcels containing food (some of which was apparently being nibbled on by rats). This was Britain during the Blitz, so the women were also working in shifts in the dimly-lit warehouses—and the warehouses were also freezing cold, prompting the women to wear long johns and extra layers of clothing. The packages and letters themselves presented a problem: addresses weren’t always clear, and there were often soldiers who had the same name, or mail addressed to men by their nicknames.

Nonetheless, the women got the job done. They created a card index of soldiers’ details to help them in their task, an index which ultimately included around 7 million cards. There were three shifts of eight hours each day, and each shift cleared approximately 65,000 pieces of mail. They used clues in the letters and parcels to piece together to whom they should belong, updating the cards as they went. In the end, they completed their task in three months, rather than the projected six! They took their assignment seriously, and I’m sure their efforts made such a difference to soldiers who thanks to them finally got word from home. If postcards bring us joy now, imagine how much those letters and care packages meant to soldiers in World War II. The Six Triple Eight restored both mail and morale, and in record time too.

After the war, the group was disbanded. They ultimately received the European African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and finally, in 2022, the Congressional Gold Medal. As of 2022, six members of the battalion were still alive: Romay Davis, Cresencia Garcia, Fannie McClendon, Gladys E. Blount, Lena King, and Anna Mae Robertson.

Apparently, there’s going to be a Netflix film about it, so perhaps more people will learn about the Six Triple Eight soon—will you be planning on watching it? Did you know about this battalion’s story already?

Did you know that there is such a thing as a Pony Express Museum? The Little Mail Carriers heard about it and wouldn’t stop badgering us to go… so when Duane (aka DuaneThePhilatelist) offered to take them for a visit, they jumped on an envelope and off they went. Here they are, to tell you all the story of that adventure.

Hello from a sunny St. Joseph, Missouri! We’re super excited to be taking a special tour of the Pony Express Museum today, and hopefully will learn a lot about this unique way mail was delivered back in 1860. The museum is actually inside a part of the Pike’s Peak Stables, from which westbound Pony Express riders set out on their journey — how cool!

The Pony Express was a short-lived mail service that delivered newspapers, letters, telegrams as well as government and commercial mail using riders on horses across the United States, between St. Joseph in Missouri and Sacramento in California. Here is a superb map of their route, which you can see in great detail on Wikipedia:

Why was there a need for this service though? Well, back in 1848, gold was found in California, and a lot of people rushed there in search of the opportunities it brought. California was a new state at the time, and its population was growing fast, so there was a lot of demand to connect the west coast with the rest of the country.

At the time, the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company ran a stagecoach service between Kansas and Missouri, and they thought that starting an express service could perhaps earn them a more lucrative contract with the United States government. So the Pony Express was launched on April 3, 1860, when two riders left from the opposite ends of the route, and completed their journeys of 1800 miles (or 2896 kms) in 10 days — an amazing feat that many thought would not be possible!

The Pony Express recruitment announcements were infamous for asking for young, skinny men, and stating that orphans were preferred. Although the payment was high for the time, the journey through the country was perilous, as there were often ambushes and raids. Some riders were killed and many horses stolen or driven off in the Pauite War with the Pauite Indian tribe, whose territory the route crossed. The Pony Express was forced to temporarily suspend its services due to the conflict, and some mail was lost.

Because this was an express service and the journey had to be super fast, riders could not carry a lot of mail with them. To make changing horses quick at relay stations, a special saddle cover (called a mochila) was crafted, which had four mail pouches (or cantinas) on each corner. Mail had to fit in these small pouches, so that the riders could be quick!

One of the most famous Pony Express riders was William Cody… aka Buffalo Bill! He began working for the Pony Express at age 15 and is said to have completed the longest ride, covering 322 miles (518 km) in 21 hours and 40 minutes, using 21 horses. His adventures were immortalised (and are said to have been greatly exaggerated) in a novel that launched him into the spotlight. Many more books and movies were made about his adventures, in which he often wore a “cowboy” hat.

Mail carried by the Pony Express riders had its own cancellation mark, and in the museum you get the opportunity to sort the mail yourself. Postal work is hard, and we were exhausted…

The Pony Express never managed to secure that government contract their founders had hoped for, and became bankrupt after 18 months, closing on October 26, 1861 — just 2 days after the first transcontinental telegraph started its operations. Despite having run for only a short period of time, the service is immortalised in the tales of the American West, and the original route is even a national historical trail that crosses 8 states.

And that’s it for our wonderful visit to the Pony Express Museum — we are off to explore a bit more, and hope you all have the opportunity to visit someday!

And a big thank you to Duane, for hosting the Little Mail Carriers and showing them around the museum! 😀 Who knows where the little ones are off to next… keep an eye on the blog for their future adventures!