On the rainy morning of November 4, 1927, local officials of the Railway Mail Service awoke to the alarming realization that their smooth-running, mail-carrying and mail-distribution-enroute machine, insofar as large areas in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and the whole state of Vermont were concerned, had been wrecked and put out of service over night. 

     Immediately, Superintendent W. F. Yarrington of the First Division Railway Mail Service and Superintendent R. P. Williams of the Second Division, whose headquarters are at Boston and New York respectively, wired or otherwise got in touch with their field assistants, postmasters, post office inspectors, railway postal clerks and others wherever communication was possible. Like General Grant's, their orders were brief and laconic, —"Move the Mails." Nor did post- masters and other employees, who could not be reached, sit idly by and wait for orders; for everyone in the Mail Service, from the humblest employee up to the Postmaster General is imbued with the spirit that the mails must be moved. Even members of Congress who were in, or rushed to their stricken states, lent valiant hands. 

     The readers who are not intimately familiar with the transportation of mails should keep in mind that letter mail and newspapers, however great in quantity, are relatively but a small part of the bulk of mail now carried. Parcel post, added to the mails in 1912, is handled by carloads on many lines and on some of the larger trunk lines is hauled by trainloads. In times of flood, or other disasters, when other means of transportation cannot function, parcel post shipments increase largely and immediately. This fact is a tribute to the post office, unconscious perhaps, yet it signifies that the people feel sure that the post office will deliver the goods. Whatever happens the Post Office Department places no embargoes. 

     In spite of the wonderful development of the Air Mail Service, we still have to depend upon the railroads for carrying most of our bulky, long-haul mail. What then can we do when the railroads are washed away over night? Why, we simply turn back three-quarters of a century or more to the lone foot and horse-back courier in some instances; in other cases, where feasible, to the very latest mode,—the mail plane; and with every conceivable manner of transportation between the two. 

     Here we will inject a little information that is probably known to comparatively few people, but important to the proper understanding of our tale. There is a relatively small group of postal employees, not more than 18,000 in the whole country, designated as Railway Postal Clerks. This group is headed by the General Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service whose picture helps to adorn this little volume. Mr. Fisher is a native of Vermont; he grew up in the Railway Mail Service. He knows his job as must all men in this branch of the Service. What perhaps is equally important, he knows men and likes them, and in return, no General Superintendent was ever better liked by his men. 

     The larger number of these transportation experts distribute mail enroute in railway post offices, or post offices on wheels; an increasingly large number of these men work in Terminal Railway Post Offices, located at large mail gateways where the distribution of parcel post, too bulky for distribution enroute, is mostly performed. Others are assigned at the larger railroad centers to direct the transfer of mails passing through their particular city or station. 

     For closer administration purposes, this important group of postal workers is divided into fifteen geographical divisions and subdivided into districts within each division, headed by division superintendents and chief clerks, respectively. 

     We have gone into this subject of the Railway Mail Service somewhat extensively in order that the uninformed reader may grasp its importance, but more particularly to show how well fortified against flood and disaster the Post Office Department is by having a trained corps of transportation men always available. These are the men, so to speak, who are sent ahead to spy out the land. 

     If the Mail Service is important in normal times, it is a thousand times more important in times of distress and disaster. Bound with red tape, as all government activities are supposed to be, there is yet a flexibility to the Post Office Department, particularly in times of a great catastrophe. 

     The Postal Laws and Regulations, the Daily Bulletin, the General Orders and other literature, calculated to instruct postal employees on subjects as wide apart as the current rate of exchange between the United States and New Zealand, and the proper method of transmitting live queen bees through the mails, were submerged in the flood. The emergency demanded that mail-carrying contracts ordinarily advertised and awarded to the highest bidder, should be knocked down to the first bidder who would take the mails and his life in his hands. 

     Directing and coordinating from their headquarters, the two Division Superintendents affected were assisted by post office inspectors, postmasters of the more important offices and chief clerks of the Railway Mail Service, all of whom were authorized to hire such means of transportation as were available for the movement of the mails. At their elbows, however, there was usually a railway postal clerk with his uncanny knowledge of post office locations. Say, for instance, that a courageous truck driver has been hired to carry mails from Burlington to Montpelier over some circuitous route he has never traveled. He surely would know he should carry mails for Montpelier, but what post offices and connections can he deliver enroute? Here the railway postal clerk whose workshop is marooned in the flood steps out again in his true light, loads the mail truck in order of post offices enroute, buckles on his '45, encloses his registered mail in a special pouch and takes his seat beside the automobile or mule driver, as the case may be. 

     However, it is not the purpose of the editor to write the Mail Story of the Flood. Let us get right into the heart of the flood and hear what the postmaster at Waterbury, Vermont, has to say. He prefaces his story with the apology that he is not a writer. 

    "On the night of November 3, at about 6 P. M., R. D. carrier No.3 came to me and said that his car was in the water this side of the Winooski Street bridge, where the water was over the road at that time, and asked if I would come and tow him out with my car. He secured about 150 feet of rope and, with another helper, we went down there, only about five minutes run from the office. He put the rope around his body and started through the water for his car. When he got about two-thirds of the way to it, the current took him off his feet. The other fellow and myself pulled him in in true fishermen style. We then asked him if he had brought his mail collections with him when he first came out and said that he had but that his overcoat with about $40 in money was in the car and he wanted to try it again. I recommended that he leave his car where it was, come back and change his clothes and get dried out, and he accepted my suggestions. When the waters finally went down, his car was about a quarter of a mile down the river but happily on the bank instead of in the bed of the river. 
 

    "For the next few hours the water rose at the rate of approximately five feet per hour and at the high point was some few inches above the ceiling of the office. When I went back to the office the water was then about five feet deep in front of the door and rising so rapidly that there was nothing to be gained by entering. The lights all went out at about 7:30 and from that time on I will not attempt to tell you anything that happened until we were able to get back into the office on Saturday, November 5. 

    "It was late in the day before we entered and there were no lights except lanterns. On Saturday night, November 5, a detail of  one officer and four soldiers arrived from  Fort Ethan Allen with a portable wireless outfit, and informed us that they had come in through the route known as Smuggler's Notch, a trip of about 75 miles covered to get 15 miles. Sunday morning I opened a post office in the Rialto Theatre with a notice that mail would be dispatched north and south at 1 P. M. You should have seen the people mail letters when they knew that we had no postage stamps and I had told everybody that I would see that this mail went forward. At one o'clock we closed the mail and I sent the messenger on his way with mail for Montpelier and Barre, with instructions to continue on to Barre if there were no service for Burlington by the way of Smuggler's Notch, picking up first class mail from the following offices on his way out—Waterbury Center, Moscow, Stowe and Morrisville, and arriving at Burlington at about 6:30 P. M. after traveling over roads which in many cases appeared to be impassable. 

    "All day Friday, November 4 and Saturday, November 5, I had tried to get in communication in order to report conditions at this office, without success, but when I arrived at Burlington Sunday night, I found the postmaster and post office inspector of this district, and they advised that they could send telegrams from Burlington, so I left it to the Inspector to report conditions, took all the first class mail for Johnson, Morrisville, Stowe, Moscow, Waterbury Center and Waterbury and started back, arriving at Waterbury about one o'clock Monday A. M. While in Burlington I made arrangements with the postmaster to run a relay truck up what is known as the B & L Line as far as Jeffersonville where his truck would meet a truck coming from Stowe, having already made arrangements with the postmaster at Stowe to relay our mail through Smuggler's Notch to Jeffersonville. This arrangement was carried on for about a week, two trips per day. At the end of that time the state had repaired the bridges down the Winooski Valley so that it was possible to run a truck from Waterbury through to Burlington. On November 14 the Mt. Mansfield Electric Railway began operations again and we started in running a Graham truck from Waterbury to Burlington, and practically all of the mail going into the district bounded by Hardwick, St. Johnsbury, Newport, North Troy, Hyde Park and Morrisville from New York and Burlington district was handled through this office in this manner, as well as mail out the same way. It is true that on this route down the Winooski Valley we had troubles with bridges and were obliged to carry the mail across a bridge about a mile and a half below this village for a couple of days, due to high water carrying out the false work under the temporary bridge, and I want to tell you it is some job to lug a ton and a half or two tons of mail across a bridge of this sort on your back, with the thermometer down close to zero and the wind traveling like the Spirit of St Louis! 

    "Making our connections to the south through Montpelier was another proposition. For three days, beginning November 6, this was handled by a man on foot, as there was no other way. However, on the 9th, an old log road through what is known as Middlesex Notch was made passable provided anyone had the courage and nerve to tackle it. Of course, you are not supposed to count getting stuck four or five times as meaning anything against being passable. Two men covered the route from Waterbury through this Notch to Middlesex twice a day and sometimes three times a day up until about December 1, when the bridge across the Winooski River at the south end of the village of Waterbury was opened for light traffic. Then it was necessary for the truck which ran from Montpelier to Middlesex to meet us about a mile this side of Middlesex where the state was putting in a new temporary bridge of about a 225-foot span. At that point all of the mail had to be carried across a suspension bridge about five feet wide which had no side rails of any kind and where there was plenty of water underneath and also plenty of current. This was another job that any one would not seek as the suspension bridge was built primarily for the use of the workmen on the bridge. This new bridge was to be opened for traffic not later than December 12, and we had visions of our mail rolling through merrily in trucks from then on. But, lo and behold, on December 8 the Lord said 'Let it rain' and, boy, I want to tell you it rained some more and our nice pile bridge at the south end of the village of Waterbury, covering a span of 175 feet, went sailing down the river while the new temporary bridge just this side of Middlesex was being completed. This meant more trips through Middlesex Notch for the next two or three days until they were able to get a scow ferry going just above the bridge that had been here at the south end of Waterbury village. 

    "Beginning Monday, November 7, our city carriers made their regular deliveries twice a day; but please do not think it was any easy job to get out and locate people, representing some 200 or 250 homes, who had been obliged to move out in the dark hours of the night and who, when they came back, found everything they had, ruined, and who were obliged to stay with friends and neighbors who live on higher land. These boys worked long and faithfully and I can assure you that the people of Waterbury have reason to appreciate what these fellows have done, and I know they do. But please do not overlook the fact that the only way the merchants of this town had of getting goods in from any distance was by parcel post, and right here I might say that our Christmas rush of parcel post started early in November this year, only we will have to leave the Christmas out.

    "One of our carriers on Route 1 has a Ford that can actually swim, or at least he has put it through water that no car is supposed to go through. I am sure that if Henry Ford knew what this car had done, he would stop buying ships from the Shipping Board and go to buying up old Fords!  For the first few weeks after the flood a carrier on Route 1 was obliged to make 40 miles a day to cover his route, which is supposed to be about 22 miles, and this could not all be done with the car. In fact, for a week or ten days he had to walk some five or six miles each day and it wasn't dry walking either, and there were no sidewalks! 

    "A carrier on Route 2 had to take his mail across the Winooski River in a rowboat, hire a team and cover his route in this manner for several weeks, and just because he had a team didn't mean that he could ride all the way for, in order to get around the route, he had to make a detour up over what a great many people would call a mountain and where there was no road to speak of. On this part of his route he would get out and pull with the horse. 

    "Carrier on Route 3 covered part of his route with an old wreck of a Ford that he picked up after the flood, part of it with a team and some seven or eight miles a day on foot. However, the people are getting their mail and that is, I believe, what is wanted. 

    "Everything in the office with the exception of the safes was completely scrambled when we got 1n there and we had a beautiful layer of fine mud over everything with all of six inches of it on the floor; no running water for two weeks; no electricity for ten days; yet on November 9 we moved back into the office and were operating in regular form. 

    "During the period from November 13 to November 30 we used regular army mule teams and escort wagons on five or six different occasions to haul parcel post from Middlesex over the mountain through what is known as Middlesex Notch to Waterbury. This is the same trip that we made with the Ford every day, but on several occasions there was such a lot of parcel post to be handled that it could not be done with the Ford so we commandeered four mule team hitches from the Service Company of the Seventh Field Artillery who were on duty in this town. After the first trip, when they came in with two escort wagons loaded full, the mule skinner made the statement that he had driven over roads in all parts of the world but that this was the worst blankety-blank road he ever had seen and that he wouldn't make the trip again for anybody. However, the army officers prevailed upon him to change his mind. 

    "On Monday, December 19, our ferry at the south end of the village froze in and from that day to the 23d, we were obliged to carry all of the mail going up and down this valley across the Winooski River on a plank walk consisting of two 12-inch planks laid side by side, another one laid over the crack in the middle, the ends resting on the tops of piles that had been driven in the river. This nice little board walk covered about a 50 foot span and on several occasions we put across all the mail that a ton and a half Graham truck with a good large body could haul. On several trips there were upwards of 150 sacks and packages to put across, and please bear in mind that we had to do this four times a day as there were two trips from each way. This was accomplished without the employment of any additional outside help by my going down myself and taking an auxiliary clerk and an auxiliary carrier with me. We also had the assistance of two truck drivers and two temporary railway mail clerks, one of whom was on duty with each truck. 

    “We sent our damaged post office stock to Washington for credit and the Department checked us only eight cents shy on over $9000 worth of stock returned." 

     This postmaster cautioned us at the outset that he was not a writer. He closes with this—“If you can make any kind of a story out of this article, you're good and my hat's off to you in a literary way, " Keep your hat on Mr. Postmaster, We shall not attempt to improve your style. We are just wondering what you might have done had you been real literary. 

     As a usual thing, floods hit the dwellers in the lowlands the hardest, but this particular flood played no favorites; in proof of which we are now going up into the Berkshires and let the postmaster at Becket, Mass. who has tried to hide himself in the third person, tell you what happened. 

    "The postmaster on one side of the deluge with the office on the other, anxious about the safety of his office, tied a message to a stone and threw it across the flood to his daughter on the other side, instructing her to place a guard over the office until he could reach it. The message came back that there was no need of a guard as no one could reach the office, it now being lodged in the middle of another stream which runs through the village. When the water had subsided so that it was possible to get into the office on planks, five feet of water still keeping things afloat, the postmaster made effort to salvage the mail matter, assisted by mail carriers equipped with hip rubber boots. It is believed that all of the mail, with the exception of a few pieces of parcel post, was saved. More than $2000 were contained in envelopes addressed to the Becket tax collector, and checks and money orders, though water soaked, were legible. 

    "One of the most thrilling experiences was that of the assistant postmaster. He failed to leave his home quick enough and was caught by the water, which rising rapidly, forced him to the second floor. The main and ell parts of the dwelling separated when the house was struck by a big tree and the water which followed threw him from the hallway into a bedroom where in water up to his chin he was swept from his feet many times, and by chance succeeded in grasping a window frame and drew himself to the roof of the ell from which place he was rescued by men who noted his predicament. 

    "Becket was not without mail service for a single day during the flood period. The night of the flood the postmaster went to Pittsfield with a pouch of mail, secured an emergency supply of stamp stock and brought a pouch of mail back to Becket with him. On the following day his daughter drove her car to Pittsfield with mail and returned with the pouch and parcel post sacks made up in the Pittsfield office for Becket, Through the courtesy of the Boston & Albany Railroad, the postmaster used the baggage room at the station until a temporary office was installed in the town office building on Washington street. 

    "A World War veteran rural carrier by going afoot and carrying his pack over many miles of flooded area gave almost perfect service. 

     The railroad was unable to give any service from late Friday afternoon, when their tracks were undermined west of the Becket station, until the following Monday when the railroad company arranged for a bus service twice a day between Pittsfield and Becket. This service was given until Tuesday, November 15, when rail service was reestablished. The postmaster at Pittsfield met the emergency in relation to registered mail by either bringing it to Becket or sending some of his clerks with it until orders were issued allowing registry service via bus. 

    "Meantime the Becket postmaster was having his troubles from lack of fixtures. For a few days he used a makeshift set of call boxes made from one section of badly damaged boxes from the damaged office and a rural carrier's case which the flood had broken and torn from its table or desk. Not long was he left in this condition as the postmaster at Hinsdale sent him a serviceable set of call boxes. Congressman Treadway certainly knows his district; he immediately recognized these call boxes as having formerly done service in Stockbridge. The postmaster at Lee brought a call window, money and stamp drawer. Necessary supplies and forms were brought in by the Hinsdale, Dalton, Lee and Pittsfield postmasters. An urgent appeal to the postmaster at Lee for twine brought the next morning a ball of twine, saved and wound by the postmaster of Otis, weighing 14 pounds and 2 ounces." 

     The ball of re-wound twine is a fine example of New England thrift, at which the post office dog as shown on the preceding page seems to be casting a questioning eye. 

     While the Boston & Albany Railroad was badly hit in other places, it was at Becket the keystone dropped out of the arch. 

     The postmistress at Hinsdale, seven miles west of Becket reports eleven days without trains, and citizens who had many times complained to the railroad company about the nuisance of many shrieking locomotive whistles sighed for the return of that familiar sound. She continues: 

    "Early in the afternoon of that eventful day I commandeered a man with a car and collecting our outgoing mail, went with this hastily summoned messenger to the post office at Pittsfield, Mass. to see what they could do to help us out. I found the officials most willing to render all possible aid, and they already had some mail for us. They took our pouch of first class mail and worked it so that there was very little delay. The next day I made the trip again and brought back a good load of mail. 

     This was Saturday, and by Monday the Boston & Albany Railroad Company had arranged a bus schedule, so that we received and dispatched two mails each day until train service was resumed. With the service above mentioned there was not one day when we did not receive and dispatch mail. On our rural route one bridge was washed away, but was replaced temporarily so the carrier would make his regular trip. 

    "We found as a rule the people who were most concerned and upset because there were but two mails each day were those who receive the least mail. The business people were thankful for the two mails, and we received many words of commendation because of our efforts to get the mails up from Pittsfield. 

    "We all vied with one another to render assistance to the postmaster at Becket, and I never have seen a person more grateful for aid. I was fortunate in having about 80 spare letter boxes and sent these, together with what forms for reports and stamped envelopes I could spare, over to the office at Becket. 

    "Any report of this disaster should not be closed without mention of the noble work of the officials at the Pittsfield post office. The service they rendered can never be properly estimated. They handled all the first class mail and registered mail for Dalton, Hinsdale, Washington and Becket for several days; also the registered mail for the full eleven days. With all our mail being transported by bus, we had no means of getting registered mail except going to Pittsfield for it. Several times the post-master at Pittsfield, or one of his clerks, came up with registers for all the offices above named." 
 

Source:  Mail Story Of The Flood, November 1927, Samuel J. Pease, Editor, Chief Clerk, Railway Mail Service, Boston Mass, October 1, 1928, Printed by The Concord Press, Concord NH; prepared by Tom Dunn, January 2002
[Provided by Tom Dunn]