Making Do With What You Have
This photograph, taken at the tail end of the Great Depression, captures an exchange of mail as well as a changing moment near Morehead, Kentucky. Morehead, the county seat of Rowan County, is located in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. In this picture, a mailman and his son pass the mail along to another postman, on horse, who will take it the rest of the way, as the roads were difficult to traverse with a horse and wagon, although the difficulty of the roads is not completely apparent in this photo. They may not be asphalt, but they are gravel, which the hose and cart could traverse. The horse drawn cart seems like a throwback to a bygone era, long before the widespread use of cars, and yet, this picture was taken in 1940.
Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, Colorized by Sanna Dullaway. Source: (Reddit)
The photo was one of a number of photographs taken by Marion Post Wolcott, a New Jersey native who was educated at the New School, New York University, and the University of Vienna. By 1936, she freelanced for Life, Fortune, and other magazines. From 1938 to 1942, she worked for the Farm Security Administration. Although she stopped working in 1942, she began freelancing again in 1968, focusing on color work. Her photos for the FSA included middle-class and wealthy people, in addition to the poor. In addition to this picture of mail delivery, she took a number of photographs in the rural areas around Morehead, Kentucky.
Life In Rural Kentucky
One of the many photos Wolcott took is of this schoolhouse near Morehead, Kentucky. Source: (Library of Congress).
People in this rural area struggled to scrape by, working jobs including coal mining and farming, and the Great Depression made it even more difficult. They often didn’t have basic amenities, and so necessity led to creative solutions. In rural areas, these challenges created by the Great Depression were compounded by the lack of amenities common in more urban areas. Many people had to live without electricity or indoor plumbing. In 1935, only 10% of rural residences had electricity; that percent was even lower in Kentucky, where only 3% of rural residences had electricity. In 1936, Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act (REA), which allowed the government to provide loans to farmers who came together to create non-profit cooperatives to bring electricity to rural America. This, of course, took time, and one of the components of the REA was educating people about the positive changes electricity could bring to their lives. Of course, providing electricity became more challenging with the advent of World War II. But electricity was not the only modern amenity that was lacking; according to the 1940 census, 45% of Americans did not have indoor plumbing. Communication was also a challenge in rural eras. In 1912, the rural telephone systems had begun to really spread, but by 1940, fewer farms had working phones than they had in 1920, as the system had begun to deteriorate.
Early Mail Delivery
Fortunately, they did receive mail, so they were not completely cut off. Even before the Declaration of Independence, the North American colonies established its own postal service, headed by Benjamin Franklin. With the adoption of the Constitution in 1793, Congress was called upon “to establish post offices and post roads.” They didn’t deliver mail to individual addresses, but rather from post office to post office, and the recipient would travel to the post office to receive their mail.
Finding A Way To Reach Remote Areas
Source: (Pinterest. Colorized by MyHeritage).
By 1863, Congress approved free home delivery in cities which could support the cost of salaried mail carriers. These cities had to meet certain requirements: a population of at least 10,000, sidewalks and crosswalks, named and well-lit streets, and the houses needed to have numbers. This, of course, meant that people in rural areas still faced difficulties getting their mail. If the destination for a piece of mail was along the route, the carrier could drop it off, or if you lived in certain cities, you could pay an extra two cents for delivery. If this was not an option, you could travel to distant post offices to pick up your mail. There were also private mail carriers, such as Wells Fargo and the Pony Express. Rural Free Delivery (RFD), but it was not universally adopted until 1902, but even then, mail delivery faced challenges particular to the geography and other factors.
If There's A Will
The original photo. Source: (Reddit),
Prior to the invention of the car, the mail was delivered using regulation wagons, which changed over time. In the early 1900s, wagons were replaced by automobiles, although there were exceptions. Rural postal workers purchased their own vehicles to complete their deliveries, which may be one reason why, as in this photograph, the mail is being delivered using a horse drawn wagon. A magazine published for carriers, the R.F.D. News, still advertised horse drawn wagons through the 1920s. However, because of the terrain, even by 1940, when this photo was taken, getting mail delivered to remote areas was a bit more complicated than it is today. This photograph shows even addition of the RFD, people needed to be somewhat creative in delivering those letters and packages. While the mail cart was able to take the letters and packages a certain distance in the wagon, as the terrain became impassible for the wagon, the mailman had to hand the mail off to a second mailman, who would complete the deliveries on horseback.