Records of the Division of Money Orders

Records of the Division of Stamps

Records of the Division of Newspaper and Periodical

Mail

Records of the Division of Parcel Post.

Records of the Bureau of the Fourth Assistant Postmaster
General

Records of the Immediate Office of the Fourth Assistant
Postmaster General

8

I. Numerical classification scheme for the general records of
the Office of the Fourth Assistant Postmaster
General .

V.

Numerical classification scheme for the general records

of the Division of Rural Mails

• 39

INTRODUCTION

The Continental Congress established a national postal system on July 26, 1775, and selected Benjamin Franklin to serve as its first Postmaster General. The system was known as the General Post Office until the early 1820's, after which it was usually referred to as the Post Office Department although departmental status was not officially conferred until the passage of the organic act of June 8, 1872.

The Postmaster General was assisted at various times by Assistant Postmasters General, who were responsible for specified functions. By 1891 this functional organization had developed into four bureaus, each supervised by an Assistant Postmaster General. The Bureau of Accounts, established in 1921, and the Bureau of the Chief Inspector, established in 1939, completed the pattern of bureau organization that survived until the Department was reorganized on August 20, 1949, in accordance with the President's Reorganization Plan No. 3.

The records described in this inventory are a part of Record Group 28, Records of the Post Office Department, and amount to 737 cubic feet. They consist of all the records of the Bureaus of the Third and Fourth Assistant Postmasters General, the Bureau of Accounts, and the Bureau of the Chief Inspector that were in the National Archives on April 1, 1959. The records of the Office of the Postmaster General are described in Preliminary Inventory No. 99 and the records of the Bureaus of the First and Second Assistant Postmasters General are described in Preliminary Inventories Nos. 36 and 82, respectively.

The relatively small volume of extant records of the four bureaus covered by this inventory is accounted for by the fact that the Post Office Department has taken advantage of an act of 1881 (21 Stat. 412) and later acts, which provide for the disposition of useless papers by executive departments. The Department has disposed of nearly all of the administrative, supervisory, and operating records of the four bureaus, with the exception of those now in the National Archives and the current records retained by the Department. The tendency has been to retain records in summary form, to dispose of detailed records regarding individual post offices, and to publish detailed rules for the conduct of all post offices and their personnel in the Postal Manual (formerly in the Postal Guide), the Postal Bulletin, and the Postal Laws and Regulations. Some of the series described in this inventory are being preserved to illustrate the management techniques of the Department, for example entries 6, 43, 46, and 53.

The descriptions of the records of the four bureaus were prepared by Arthur Hecht and Fred W. Warriner, Jr., of the Industrial Records Division, National Archives, with the exception of entries 24 through 32 and related appendixes II, III, and IV, which were prepared by Charlotte M. Ashby of the Cartographic Records Division, National Archives.