Living on the rural free delivery route

Friday, June 8, 2018

Last week I wrote briefly about searching news items for R.F.D Route personal items in the McCook Tribune. Prior to R.F.D., persons living outside of a settlement that had a post office had to either travel to a post office or pay a private carrier to bring their mail to them. Rural farm families were isolated enough without the additional burden of not being able to get those letters from loved ones they had left behind or important legal documents and notices concerning their homesteads. Not everyone that had the power to legislate free rural delivery thought it was a good idea and consequently it took many years to implement but several merchants (such as Sears Roebuck) were in favor of giving the rural residents opportunity to order goods and have them delivered to their homes, no matter how far in the boonies they lived. The nation’s oldest agricultural organization, The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry was one of the biggest supporters of rural routes. RFD officially became an official service of the U. S. Postal Service in 1896 and according to some statistics is the largest budgetary portion of the same.

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