Present First Station

Present Post Office new in 1997

Mr. Moderator:
 I arise to a point of personal privilege that I may address this meeting in presenting to the town an Historical Souvenir, one which connects the Stratham of the long ago with the Stratham of today.
 Thank you, Mr. Moderator.

 Ladies and Gentlemen, I would also ask of your indulgence that I may bring to you certain data concerning an arm of the Federal Government that has served the town of Stratham for a period of 127 years, our Post Office.
 However, before the post office came to town, let us briefly review the formation of our town government.

 On April 10, 1716, 233 years backward along the avenue of time, there were gathered in the Chase Hall which was then an annex to the residence in which I now reside, the citizens of the town.  They were assembled for a two-fold purpose; the organization of a town government, and to elect its officials for the year ensuing and also to pass any legislation that would be for the benefit of the inhabitants thereof.
 Their first objective, however, was to form a town government for which they dug deep to place its foundation stones upon the bed rock of their firm and unfailing belief in the “Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men,” and upon this foundation they built a great Town Democracy which has come down from generation to generation to us, a priceless heritage.

THE STRATHAM OF TODAY

 For 106 years after this meeting Stratham was without a post office, how they received communication with the outside world is a matter of conjecture.   However, in the early 1820’s, the citizens of Stratham petitioned the Post Office Department at Washington for the establishment of a Post Office, so May 30, 1822, a Post Office was opened and Jebulon Wiggin was commissioned its first Postmaster by James Monroe, 5th president of the United States.

 For two years after the first establishment, the mail was brought from Portsmouth by horseback or sulky.  In 1824, the Post Office Department entered into a contract with a Stage Coach Company to deliver the mail from Portsmouth to Greenland, Stratham, Exeter, Epping, Nottingham, Deerfield, Epsom, Chichester to Concord and from there to Charlestown, a distance of 107 miles with delivery once a week.  When Postmaster Wiggin received the mail, he carefully arranged it on the clean linen of Mrs. Wiggin’s bed and the patrons at the post office had the privilege of looking over the mail matter taking what belonged to them.  There were no stamps in those days, the people paid in cash and the Postmaster marked the letter paid and started it on its destination.  Many of our day think that the slogan “Cash and Carry” Originated with the Chain Stores, while others believe that Jebulon Wiggin and the Postmasters of his day and generation were responsible for the courage of these words.

 The mail continued to be brought by Stage Coach until the completion of the Portsmouth & Concord railroad in the early 1850’s, when it was left at Stratham Depot which continued for nearly 100 years and as it now it comes to Rockingham Junction.  The first carrier from Stratham Depot was Addison Wiggin.  Numerous Persons have been carriers from the first to the present Mr. Pickard, all with the same determination that the “Mail Must Go Through.”

 Jebulon Wiggin was a religious man, honest in his dealings with all men and very patient.  Now Jebulon had a son Jackson, who was addicted (so he, Jackson, said) to walking in his sleep, but each time his wanderings took him to his fathers wine room, for in those days it was the custom of all grocers to sell the ardent spirits; however, on one occasion, while Jackson was again on his nightly wanderings, his father was either too quick for Jackson or Jackson too slow.  Here in the wine room Jebulon beheld his son about to partake from the cup that cheers.  This was with Jebulon when patience ceased to be a virtue, for Jebulon escorted Jackson to the back door and unceremoniously threw him into a well-filled rain barrel with the salutation ‘Sleep are you, Jackson?  I’ll wake you up, I will, I will” and Jackson, rising to the surface responded, “I’m awake, Father, I am.”  This may or may not have been the first baptism by emersion in Stratham.  Mr. Wiggin, in the first days of March 1864, passed away after a service of two years as Stratham’s postmaster, at the age of 77.  Having been born in Stratham in 1787.
 

 Now as the great Civil War was drawing to a close, Stratham, which prior to the war had been strongly Democratic, became as strong Republican and a controversy arose between the Republicans of the North and South side of the town, who should be appointed postmaster, but it remained for Henry Staples to solve the situation.  Now, Henry had a brother Joseph who a few years back had moved from Elliot, Maine, to Stratham.  So Henry visited his bother Joseph, and thus addressed him “Brother Joseph, if you could consistently and conscientiously do so, I believe it would be for your individual advantage to become a Republican” and Brother Joseph, after due consideration, did become a Republican and was appointed Stratham’s 2nd Postmaster on March 23, 1864 by Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States and served faithfully for 23 years.  He was for many years Town Clerk and Treasurer and served the people of Stratham with zeal and fidelity.  At his death in February 1887, I think I can truthfully say that he had not one enemy, for the town grieved at his passing.  And may I, in tribute to the memory of Joseph S. Staples, whom I personally knew, dedicate and quote these lines.
 

  “So when a good man dies
   For years beyond his ken
  The light he leaves behind him
   Shines along the path of men.”
 

 Mr. Staples was succeeded by his daughter, Mrs. Ella K. Staples who conducted the office upon the same high level as did her predecessor.  However, she resigned after a service two years and Albert C. Lane was appointed on January 26, 1889.  On the following June, the 26th, the people of the town were greatly surprised to learn that the Post Office, over night, had been moved to the store of George H. Odell and Mr. Odell named Postmaster.  At first this was thought to be a grocers dual, but latter the real cause became known in the person of one Kitty Redington, who for some years was a summer boarder, coming from Washington, D.C. Kitty was well aquatinted with the powers that be, and Kitty gently purring around these persons, caused them to scratch out Mr. Lane’s appointment.  Mr. Odell somewhat improved the office by giving the patrons of the office a glass front letter box. Mr. Odell served until July 1893.  The administration at this time had changed as Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, became president, and Edgar R. Smith, being of that faith, was appointed Postmaster on July 22, 1893.  For a time, however, the Post Office remained in Mr. Odell’s store, later to be moved across the street into the Old Taylor House near the site where the Wiggin Memorial Library now stands.  During Mr. Smith’s administration, a sub Post Office was established at Stratham Depot, called Riverside, with Andrew J. Edmunds as Postmaster on February 3, 1894 and continued for nine years when it was discontinued on January 17, 1903.   In Mr. Smith’s term as Postmaster was also established (through the efforts of the late Hon. Richard M. Scammon) the rural delivery on December 15, 1900, with Marshal S. Chase as its first carrier resigning on February 1, 1901, when Harry T. Smith was appointed and served until September 1, 1902, when Leslie A. Cook was appointed and served for a period of 31 years until the route was discontinued on October 31, 1933, then to become a part of a route from Greenland Post Office with Richard D. Moody, the first carrier.  In all these past 49 years of service of the Rural Delivery, through the springtime mud, and the heat of summer and the cold and snow of winter, these carriers have, with but a few exceptions, left our mail at our homes every 24 hours, and to these gentlemen, the people of the town owe their sincere thanks for this superb efficiency.  In January, 1903, Mr. Smith, after a service of ten years, resigned and on January 20, 1903, Albert C. Lane was commissioned Postmaster for the second time.  Now Mr. Lane had retired from the grocery business, and he was not unlike the gentlemen who drew the elephant at the church fair with no place to keep it.  However, the Selectmen offered to him the Hearse House, on condition that he remodel it at his own expense and find a storage for its only tenant, the Hearse.  On examining the Hearse, Mr. Lane could find no return address and therefore dispatched it to the Dead Letter Office as his first official act of his 2nd administration, but it got no farther than the Elms Hotel Stable, where it remained for a few years.

 Now, much has been said and written concerning Stratham’s Funeral Coach; here, ladies and gentleman, is the history of its life in Stratham.

 In the early 1889’s the town voted to purchase a hearse and appropriated the sum of $600.00 for the same, and named the Selectmen as purchasing agents.  Now these gentlemen where very efficient officers of the town, good and prosperous farmers, but their experience in the purchasing of a carrier for the dead was of a limited nature.  However, they proceeded to Boston to perform the mandate of the Town.

On their return with the vehicle, one of the town’s citizens remarked that it had been in cold storage since the days of Ami Wiggin, one of Exeter’s first undertakers; other refused to have their relations carried from the scene of the obsequies to the quietness of the Church Yard; even the horses became unmanageable when they glanced behind and saw what was following them, and while the Town Fathers where endeavoring to obtain animals of limited vision, someone appropriated the town’s harness and from then on, marked the retirement of Stratham’s Town Hearse.

 And may I add that the voters conceive this purchase in good faith, yet born by adoption as it was, it soon became an outcast from society, and now has passed in the oblivion of forgetfulness.

 In 1905, The Selectmen sold the hearse to Ralph Meras of Exeter for $5.00, who dismantled it.  A portion of the glass side was sold to the late Judge Ernest Templeton to cover his desk upon which he doubtless recorded the dead issues as judge of Exeter’s Municipal Court.

The forgetfulness of this Funeral Coach does not in any sense refer to Albert C. Lane as Postmaster as he served as such, a period of 35 years very satisfactorily to the people of Stratham, and for many years was Town Clerk and Treasurer performing these duties with efficiency, honesty, and integrity.  Mr. Lane resigned in August 1937.  And may I add that a faithful servant like Mr. Lane is above price.

On August 5, 1937, Mr. Frank W. Tuck became Postmaster and has served as such for the past 11 years with the same degree of efficiency as his predecessors.  With Jebulon Wiggin serving 42 years, Joseph S. Staples 23 years and Albert C. Lane 35 years, and others of lesser periods, the average tenure of office of these seven Postmasters had been about 18 years.  While in all these 127 years, no one of these Postmasters had betrayed his or her trust, a record that some of our sister towns cannot claim.

Through the thoughtfulness and generosity of one of Stratham’s most respected and elderly citizens, Mr. Fred W. Severance, whose desire it is to present to the town the portrait of his Maternal Grandfather, the late Jebulon Wiggin, Stratham’s first Postmaster, to be hung upon the wall of the Wiggin Memorial Library and to forever be in custody of the Trustees of said Library, it is now my pleasant duty to do so in behalf of Mr. Severance, and I trust that you Ladies and Gentlemen will accept unanimously this Historical Souvenir, Connecting as it does, the Stratham of today.  And as it hangs upon the wall of the Library may it face the opposite side of the street where Jebulon Wiggin, in his life time, kept the little Country Grocery Store and opened Stratham’s first Post Office on May 30, 1822, beside the King’s Highway.  And may future generations of the boys and girls of Stratham, perhaps as yet unborn, as they pass in review of this portrait, pause, ponder and reflect that of such as he and his associates not only made possible the Stratham of long ago, but the Stratham of their day and generation and may they then, and there, even as did their forefathers, resolve to preserve and protect America and her institutions and pass on to prosperity a Town Government as Abraham Lincoln once said “of the people, by the people and for the people, which shall not perish from the earth.”

The most recent change for the Post office came as it switched from its location across from the Fire Station next to the Country Store.  It is now located in a brand new facility just down the street on Rout 108.  The new building was constructed and started service in December of 1997.