Among the early mail routes in La Salle county was one running from Mendota
to Ottawa by the way of Triumph, Prairie Center and Freedom Center in the time
of the Civil War and twenty-five years later.
Prairie Center was the
center of the route from which the mail was taken to Mendota and exchanged for
new mail on Tuesdays and Fridays. This mail was taken to Ottawa and new mail was
brought back on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Mondays and Thursdays were free days
for the mail carriers.
The letters that were carried by the carriers
were put in bags of about the size of a common flour sack, which was made of
leather and locked by the postmaster before leaving his office. The carriers
were not allowed to open these. The weekly papers were carried in a leather sack
of about the size of a grain sack.
The government was very strict about
carrying the mail, so the carriers had to go regardless of what the weather was.
In the winter time the snow would be so deep and frozen so hard sometimes that
the horses would walk right on top of it without breaking through the crust. The
carriers had to leave early in the morning in order to get the trip made during
the day.
The mail wagon was a queer affair. It had a bow top, and three
seats, which could be removed so the wagon could be used as a spring wagon.
Curtains could be put on and rolled up when the weather permitted.
Occasionally passengers were carried from Prairie Center to Mendota. Each was
charged either fifty or seventy-five cents a round trip. The mail carrier also
did errands for people, charging ten cents.
The Triumph post office in
old Triumph was across the road east from where the Triumph school now stands.
William Worsley, father of R. W. Worsley, present Triumph grocer, and of Mark
Worsley, present cashier of the Triumph bank, owned this post office, which
consisted of about one hundred or less small boxes. The building was about the
size of the Prairie Center post office.
The post office of Prairie
Center was kept in a house where Philo Kellogg then lived and which is now owned
and occupied by Mrs. Rosa Redlick. This post office had about fifty small mail
boxes, which had glass fronts. The people who got their mail here, each rented
one of these small boxes and paid Mr. Kellog fifty cents a year.
The
post office of Freedom Center, which was three miles east and one mile north of
Prairie Center, was first owned by a family named Courtwright. Later a family
across the road kept it in their house. This post office had only about twenty
boxes.
The men who owned these post offices got their salary by keeping
the value of each stamp on every letter and also by the rent paid by the people
for the use of these small mail boxes.
Mr. Blackwell, a native of New
England, who lived one mile north and one mile east of Prairie Center, was the
first carrier of this route, holding the position for almost fifteen years. At
this time it was very hard for the people to travel from the country to town and
back before nightfall, so some of the people who lived east of Mendota and
Triumph paid Mr. Blackwell a certain amount a year to leave their mail off at
their houses.
When Mr. Blackwell discontinued carrying the mail, Stanley
Place, who lived one mile north and two miles east of Prairie Center, took this
position. He kept it until the spring of 1881, when he started farming, one mile
north and one and one-half miles east of Prairie Center.
Then John
Landers, whose son now lives one and one-half miles from Prairie Center, carried
it until about 1887, when railroads began running through Triumph, carrying the
mail. The mail was then brought from Triumph. Soon after the mail had to be
carried again. This time it came from Earlville because the daily papers could
not get here early enough for delivery.
This time James O'Brien carried
it for almost four years. Later they discontinued carrying it and the mail had
to be gotten at either Harding or Prairie Center.
The Triumph post
office was changed over to where Triumph now is. It is located in R. W.
Worsley's general merchandise store.
The post office of Prairie Center
remained until the rural routes of delivering the mail began in 1902.
Extracted 08 Nov 2018 by Norma Hass from Stories of Pioneer Days in La Salle County, Illinois, by Grammar Grade Pupils, published in 1932, page 22.
| Lee | DeKalb | Kane |
| Bureau |
 |
Kendall |
| Putnam | Grundy | |
| Marshall | Woodford | Livingston |
