William Henry Wallace - Postmaster

Reverse:

W. H. Wallace Sr. 

in his 86th year of age

in his easy chair a 

Christmas present from 

his dear friend Mrs. J. N. McCullough 

for the high esteem 

in which he held her 

departed husband 

and who was his teacher 

when a little boy in 1830.  

 A date, December 1897, is also written on the back.  This is either a mistake or perhaps it is the date the note was written.  It is not the date the photograph was taken because W. H.  Wallace wasn't alive in December of 1897; he died in September.

~ Steubenville Morning Star, Sept. 11, 1897

W. H. WALLACE DEAD
The oldest Postmaster in the United States Expires Yesterday Morning

Appointed Assistant P.M by Gen. Jackson in 1830 and served under thirty-four Postmaster Generals including the Present Incumbent - the end of a busy life.  William Henry Wallace, Sr., of Hammondsville, this county, who claimed the distinction of having held the position of postmaster continuously longer than any other official in the United States, died yesterday, aged 86 years.

**********

William Henry Wallace was born in Frelighsburg, in the Province of Quebec, Canada, December 2, 1811. His mother’s people originated in Germany and his father’s people in the land of William Wallace. His maternal grandfather laid out the town where William H. Wallace was born, and called it after his own name.  He was a surgeon in the British Navy and descended from the same stock as Victoria.  Mr. Wallace’s father (Sir George Wallace) was a prosperous merchant and manufacturer in Canada.  When the War of 1812 broke out, being an American, born in Massachusetts, and having never sworn allegiance to the Crown, he closed up his business and left for the United States, eventually settling in Baltimore, Maryland.
Source: Ohio's Oldest Postmaster Biographies

This paragraph seems so full of possibilities yet it creates more questions than answers for me …

Question 1 - William Henry Wallace was born in Frelighsburg … his maternal grandfather laid out the town where W. H. Wallace was born … called it after his own name … so does that mean his grandfather was Dr. Abram Freligh?

Question 2 -“his father’s people came from the land of William Wallace.” … is this a reference to Scotland?

And finally
Question 3 - there is a reference to being “descended from the same stock as Victoria.” …  QUEEN Victoria? 

~ W. H Wallace (1892)
“Just 73 years ago (1819) in the city of Baltimore, I witnessed the hanging , for robbing the United States mail, of the noted Haire and his co-worker, then the greatest robbers of mail.  Then it was a death penalty to rob the United States mail.  Shortly after was another hanging in the same city that I witnessed.  Hutton and Hull robbed the mail not far out of the city, and murdered the driver, Heaps.  Heaps and his family lived in the city, and his children were my playmates.  There were no express lines, the mail being the only public mode to send money.  The villains stopped the mail coach in the night with none but the driver aboard.  He was ordered to give up the mail.  This he did; but it was concluded, fearing detection and arrest, to take the driver’s life by shooting and stabbing, each taking a hand.  Then they tied the two horses by the lines to a tree, and made off with the mail.  They visited the city next day and were arrested.  Hutton was an old offender, and young Hull inveighed as an accomplice.  He was only about 20 years old; had studied medicine in Utica where his father, who was a druggist, lived.”

I think what surprised me the most about the above paragraph was the realization that William Henry Wallace would have been about 8 years old when he witnessed the first hanging … and a year later at age 9 he was headed over the Alleghenies.  

“My first trip over the Alleghenies from Baltimore to Brownsville was in the month of August 1820 in my bare head and bare feet.  The sun was hot, and so was the pike road.”

In 1821, when he was 10 years old, W. H. Wallace came with his parents to Jefferson County, Ohio.

In 1825, at age 14, Wallace was placed in a store on Yellow Creek and later that same year he went to New Lisbon where he remained for 3 years.  At the end of that time he returned home and during the winter he taught school on Hollow Rock.  One of his pupils was J. N. McCullough, who became First Vice President of the Pennsylvania railroad and whose wife, many years later would present Mr. Wallace with the gift of an easy chair.

At the close of the school Mr. Wallace accepted a position in the general store and shipping house of A. G. Richardson, of Wellsville. In June, 1830, A. G. Richardson was postmaster at Wellsville, Columbiana County, Ohio, and W. H. Wallace was his assistant.

The village of Linton, at the mouth of Yellow Creek was a small hamlet for several years prior to 1831.  A man named Jacob Groff kept a small store there and  in 1831, William H. Wallace, then 20 years of age, entered into a partnership with Mr. Jacob Groff.  Upon his application a post office was established there.  Mr. Groff was made postmaster and Mr. Wallace, his assistant; their partnership continued for 3 years.

William Wallace:
“My first trip on business to Philadelphia was 61 years ago (1831) by mail stage, and I returned home via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as far as it was built.  The road was made to Ellicott’s Mills, thirteen miles; with strap rail; two horses tandem; capacity of coach twelve or fifteen; rate of speed ten miles per hour.  This mode was continued until finished to Frederick, when I was again a passenger; next, pony sized locomotives from Baltimore to Cumberland, thence by mail stage to Brownsville, PA. I crossed the Alleghenies twenty-six times before the railroad traversed them.  The robbery of the mail stage was common and for safety at times postillions (someone riding the left front horse in a team) were brought into requisition.  The common way of carrying money by person was to encase it in a leather belt, or silk bandanna handkerchief and placing it around the body next to the bare hide.  Stockton and Stokes of Baltimore were the fist stage owners that I have any recollection of more than seventy years ago, the next Reside and Slaymaker over the Baltimore route.”

“I visited Washington 58 years ago; was formally introduced to General Jackson at the White House by a member of Congress, and had a good little talk.  He had in his hand a two-cent clay pipe, which he had been smoking.  I also had a good talk with Henry Clay. One day when the House was not in session my member of Congress seated me on the speaker’s chair, saying, Now you can say you have sat in the speaker’s chair.”

While living in Yellow Creek, William Henry Wallace married Miss Matilda Nessly, the daughter of John and Elizabeth Nessly.  They were married April 9, 1835 and would have 5 children; 3 sons (Rodney G., Homer N. and W. H. Jr.) and 2 daughters whose names I have yet to discover.

William Wallace stayed at Yellow Creek 8 ½ years.  In 1839, he moved 3 miles further down the river and in honor of his son Homer, called this new place “Port Homer.”

W. H. Wallace was appointed postmaster of Port Homer by Postmaster General Granger in 1841.

Port Homer grew into a prominent shipping point for the products of the numerous distilleries, flour mills and salt wells in the area. Although steamboats were in operation, flatboats were less expensive and were the favored carriers for down river shipments. Boat building, milling, salt boiling and distilling employed a large force of men, and the river warehouses were filled, the products providing employment to hundreds of men.

In 1851 Mr. Wallace sold out his Port Homer business interests and moved again, this time to a small settlement laid out on the property of Thomas Hammond.  Here Wallace opened a store.

At some point Mr. and Mrs. Wallace went to New York to purchase merchandise and on the trip, they were faced with the problem of where to have the supplies shipped since the town had no name.  It was Mrs. Wallace who suggested the name, Hammondsville; gave the location as four miles above Yellow Creek, and Hammondsville it has remained.

Rich deposits of coal and clay were discovered on the Hammond land. W.H. Wallace and his sons, Rodney and William developed these interests. I presume through the Hammondsville Mining and Coal Company, of which William Wallace was the manager. When the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad was built through town in 1852, they mined and shipped large quantities of coal along with coke and brick.

In 1864, W.H. Wallace purchased the Hammond House, and moved his family into it. The family then consisted of W.H. Wallace and his wife, his son, Homer, and his wife, son Rodney and wife and daughters, and son W.H. Jr.

The panic of 1873 seriously affected the town , but the effects were mitigated by the four large stores of W. H. Wallace and Sons, which carried on trade in every branch of business in a fashion seen in the department stores in cities today.  In addition, Wallace and his sons published a newspaper whose main objective was to advertise their business.

And of course W. H. Wallace was again appointed postmaster in Hammondsville, this time by Judge Hall.

According to W. H. Wallace …
Old time rates of postage were figured thus:  for a single letter carried 30 miles, 6 ¼ cents, called then a fip; up to 80 miles, 10 cents; up to 150 miles, eleven pence (12 ½ cents), up to 400 miles, three fips (18 ¾ cents); 400 miles or to any part of the United States, 25 cents.  Storekeepers in those early days were in the habit of taking all kinds of country or farm trade for goods, and where a post office was connected with the store, it was common to take produce for letters and papers, as for goods.  The prices of produce varied some seasons, but butter and eggs were always low in summer, the prevailing price being 6 ¼ cents a pound for butter and 5 cents per dozen for the eggs.

To illustrate: to pay postage on a 25 cent letter it required the amount of the following articles separately:  4 pounds of butter, 5 dozen of eggs, 2 bushels of oats, 2 bushels of potatoes, 1 1/3 pounds of common coarse wool, a little over 2/3 bushels of wheat, and other articles in proportion.

To illustrate the cost of the expense of correspondence: Suppose a farmer and family communicated with a New York correspondent and had to receive 32 unpaid letters, he must sell a good milch cow to foot the postage bill, for $8 would buy a good cow.  It made it obligatory upon the postmaster, as far as it was possible for him to scrutinize every letter, and if it consisted of two pieces of paper, then double the postage was charged.

“I have traveled in the stage when it took three days and three nights to reach Philadelphia from Pittsburg.  One newspaper of small dimensions in the county town for the whole county was a rule, and many in the county never scanned its columns; and if they did, the general or far off news did not come under their eye.  Then farmers and farmers’ sons were dubbed clodhoppers.  Ask them the governor’s name and they could not tell it.  I know of families of some prominence in the county when I was a boy that never saw a newspaper.”

Mr. Wallace continued to be postmaster until his death, September 10, 1897, having served sixty-seven years in the three offices for a longer period than any other postmaster in the United States.