In early colonial times, correspondents depended on friends, merchants, and Native Americans to carry messages between the colonies. However, most correspondence ran between the colonists and England, their mother country. It was a very hard work to handle so many letters like that. In 1639, the first official notice of a postal service in the colonies appeared. The General Court of Massachusetts designated Richard Fairbanks’ tavern in Boston as the official place of mail brought from or sent overseas, in line with the practice in England and other nations to use coffee houses and taverns as mail drops. Local authorities operated post routes within the colonies. Then, in 1673, a monthly post was set up between New York and Boston. The service was of short duration, but the post rider’s trail became know as the Old Boston Post Road, part of today’s U.S Route 1. William Penn established the first post office in 1683. In the South, private messengers, usually slaves, connected the huge plantations.
After the Boston revolution in September 1774, the colonies began to separate from the mother country. A Continental Congress was organized at Philadelphia in May 1775 to establish an independent government. One of the first questions before the delegates was how to convey and deliver the mail.