Features (258) capsule biographies of people who are honored, but not pictured, on US stamps--thus filling in the gaps in Who's Who on US Stamps and making the set a comprehensive guide to stamp personalities between 1847 and 1992.
Based on an incident that occurred in Idaho in 1914, this story tells of little May, who longs to visit her grandmother. May's parents cannot afford a railway ticket for the 75-mile trip, but with the help of cousin Leonard, who mans the mail car on the train, May's father takes advantage of the new parcel post regulations: he presents his daughter at the station post office as a package he's mailing to Lewiston. Affixing 53 cents in stamps to the back of her coat, the good-natured... (4 1/2 star review)
"...The U.S. Postal Service is the web that holds this great country together. Next to Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Rufus Easton was one of the most colorful in the Postal history at the dawn of these United States. For Easton was first postmaster of St. Louis while simultaneously judge of the largest territory ever in North America. ...
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...In 1805 Rufus Easton refused to partake in Burr's Conspiracy in which General James Wilkinson was a major player. In his lifetime Easton backed out of four separate duels. The most historic one was in 1805 when President Jefferson's favorite cabinet member, Postmaster General, Gideon Granger implored Easton not to participate in a duel with Aaron Burr. In 1804 Aaron Burr had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. Had Easton entered a duel with Burr, would historians have declared Easton a major player in American history? ..."
From a review entitled 'Dangerous Mail Delivery":
"...So often we see in westerns the stagecoach roaring into town and well-dressed easterners get out--not even dusty. This book shows the real and extremely difficult days of the stagecoach mail delivery and does it in a very factual, well-documented way. The end of the book should have been put at the first so we could know Ben Holladay before we learned all about the difficulties of getting the people and the mail to the western cities. ..."