POSTAL LORE OF EARLY MANSFIELD With our new post office exhibit, we thought it would be appropriate to reprint this bit of Mansfield lore, which appeared in the January 1981 newsletter. The Town Historian of Amenia, New York first sent this story to us. She stated that it originally appeared in The Youth's Companion, and was reprinted in 1901 in The Amenia Times. Later, Mrs. Bertha Fuller Stapleton gave an undated newspaper article with the same story to us. She is a descendant of the Fuller family in Mansfield that appears in the story. The newspaper was not identified but advertisements for concerns in New Bedford, Massachusetts appear on the back of the clipping. The story was apparently well circulated! The story tells of an incident involving the Fuller family in Mansfield and reflects the erratic nature of postal delivery be-fore the establishment of the U.S. Postal Service. Coincidentally, other members of this family later played a crucial role in the development of postal service in Mansfield. The town's first post office was established at Mansfield Four Corners in 1808 at the Fuller Tavern that also served as a tollhouse. It was situated at the intersection of major stage routes passing from New York to Boston (now Route 44) and from Springfield to New London (now Route 195). The post office later moved across the road to the Fuller homestead and store. It served as a post office from 1860 to 1925.

A POSTAL DELIVERY An Incident Of Revolutionary Days In Connecticut

The arrival of the first batch of rural free delivery in Mansfield, Connecticut, recalled to an aged lady of that town a postal incident remembered in her family for 120 years. When my mother was a little girl, mails were so slow and uncertain that the safe arrival of an expected letter by any means was an event in a country family, with the post offices miles away. Sometimes the delivery was helped along by volunteer carriers; a farmer going home from the grist mill, a housewife returning from market town with her bargains of lamp oil, West India molasses and green tea, or even a passing peddler with his load of tinware and corn brooms. In the old wartime the army had post riders, but they were few and far between. My grand-father was a soldier of the Revolution, and grandmother kept the home fire burning here, and provided for their three children as well as she could while he was at the front. All summer she had heard no word of him, and when one autumn day a man in a military cloak rode to the door on a white horse her heart beat quick. "Does Ruth Fuller live here?" he said holding a thick letter in his hand. "Yes I am Ruth Fuller," and grandmother reached eagerly for the letter, for she saw the address in her husband's handwriting. "The postage is 2 shillin's." Grandmother's countenance fell, for there wasn't so much money in the house. "Guess you don't know me," remarked the man, opening his cape and tipping back his cocked hat, but still holding the letter. She knew him then- an enemy capable of mean revenge ."Ah, yes, you remember Tom Turner and how he asked you to marry him and you gave him "No, I thankee", and took John Fuller. I wasn't good enough to marry ye, but I'm good enough now to bring ye letters from the man that did, and I'm good enough to charge ye a steep price for goin' out o' my way. So hand over your 2 shillin's and take your letter. "The poor woman told him she had not money. To be held up in this heartless and insulting way was a bitter hurt to her. Her grief was deeper than her resentment, but she was too proud to let the cruel fellow see her weep. "I will get you a good dinner," she said, "and feed your horse and give you a pair of nice long stockings." It was a humiliation to plead with Tom Turner, but she could do no less. "Money or nothin'," he said, and he put the letter in his pocket and rode away. Grandmother went into the house and sat down and cried, and her children clinging about her, cried too. During her long months of waiting, at odd hours she had spun and woven cloth and sewed garments, and knitted woolen stockings for John's winter comfort, trusting to find some way to send them to him. Now the messenger had come and gone who could at least have carried word, and he had refused even to give her her husband's letter. "Ma, God knows what the bad man did," sobbed one of the little ones. "He knows what nice things you've made for pa, and he'll send a good man next time." The baby's thought relieved the mother's despair, and the three lonely hearts prayed and waited anxiously for the 'next time,' and sure enough, before winter came they saw the same white horse galloping toward the house. "He's brought the letter back!" they all cried out together, for they believed the rider to be the same man. Grandmother rushed to the door with all her children. The horseman held out the same letter, and as he gravely put it in her hands she glanced up to his face and screamed for joy. "John! It is you!" It did not take her husband long to tell the rest of the story. Tom Turner had returned to headquarters, and one night, made talkative by an extra ration of rum, he bragged how he "got even" with an old sweetheart who jilted him. His exploit reached the ears of his commanding officer, who took away his commission and put my grandfather in his place. The new post rider had brought his own letter to his wife.