By Ed & Jean Siskin

The excellent articles on the Bridgeton Post Office and its postmasters by Doug D’Avino started with its first United States post office in 1792. As a prequel to those articles, it is worth discussing a letter from the Bridgeton area a century earlier.

By John A. Trosky

P. Lorillard & Company, one of the most iconic names in the tobacco industry in America, had its beginnings in the New York City area in the mid 17th century. The company was founded by Pierre Abraham Lorillard, a French Huguenot, in the year 1760. Its small beginnings were from a rented home on Chatham Street, now Park Row, in lower Manhattan. The company began as a snuff grinding factory. Lorillard is recognized as the first man to make snuff in America…

By James W. Milgram, M.D.

From November 1, 1845 to June 30, 1855 there was an unofficial type of Registration of valuable letters at most post offices within the United States. The first marking is the large blue “R” applied on receipt at Philadelphia beginning in 1845. Later beginning in 1847 some post offices began to mark valuable mail at the post offices of mailing. There were other post offices which applied markings on receipt and a few which applied markings on transient mail that was registered. The author has written several articles and a book on this subject.

By Steven M. Roth

This completes the two-part article on New Jersey stage lines, begun in our last issue, by Steven M. Roth (see NJPH, Feb. 2013, Vol 41, No. 1, Whole number 189 for a comprehensive introduction to the subject). See also our May 2013 Featured Cover page.

By John Trosky

The first decades of the 20th century saw the dawn of a new age in mail transport, airmail. By the late 1920s the US Post Office Department had established many routes across the continental US to speed the transportation of mail. Transatlantic mail on the other hand remained the purview of the fast ocean steamer. It was only in 1927 that Lindbergh had finally conquered the Atlantic by aircraft.