Swan's Island: Six miles east of ordinary

The following is an extract from The History of Swan's Island by Dr. H. W. Small.

POSTOFFICES

For some fifty years after the settlement of this town there was no postoffice here Such mail as was received stopped at the postoffice either at Deer Isle or Mount Desert and was brought to this island when a sail boat chanced to visit those places This was very inconvenient to the settlers and often the delivery was long delayed or the mail lost The first office was established in 1844 and Benjamin Stinson was appointed postmaster The mail at this time came to the island from Brooklin once a week and the mail carrier was to be paid by subscription but as many received little mail interest in the enterprise soon waned and the burden of carrying the mails fell mostly to the lot of the postmaster Few newspapers were taken here at that time Letters were merely folded and secured with sealing wax no envelopes were used Postage was charged according to the distance the letter was sent It often cost twentv five cents or more to send a letter to some places even in this country The postage was collected when the mail was delivered Mr Stinson was succeeded as postmaster by James Joyce in 1852 and after him Joseph W Staples was appointed The mails during the last two appointments and a long time subsequent were carried to Tremont

The receipts of the office were all the department allowed for the compensation of the postmaster and mail carrier The pay was so small that great difficulty was experienced in getting a mail carrier and it was carried so irregularly that a large part of the outgoing letters from which the revenue came was sent off by private conveyance So the receipts of the office were small indeed In 1861 Cornelius Wasgatt was appointed postmaster after which the mails were carried much more regularly When he moved from the island Mrs Mary Gott received the appointment. After her resignation Isaac W Stinson a grandson of the first Swan's Island postmaster was appointed and at the present time the office is held by Capt William Herrick As the town increased in population and the amount of mail became much larger it proved inconvenient for one office to accommodate the whole island

So in 1884 an office was established at the eastern side of the island called Atlantic Mrs Durilla Joyce was appointed postmistress She held the office until 1897 when she was succeeded by Llewellyn V Joyce In 1897 a new office was established in what was formerly school district No 4 and was named Minturn Mrs Arwilda Newman was appointed postmistress After the mails became somewhat larger than at first they were carried to Tremont twice a week when the weather would permit a sail boat to cross the bay Later they were carried daily The department established a mail route and paid the mail carrier

In 1894 this old mail route was discontinued and a steamboat company contracted to bring the mail daily from Rockland to Old Harbor This is a much more direct route than when it went by the way of Tremont and thence by stage to Ellsworth We have now daily communication with the city and daily papers are received on the day of publication In no other way has the improvement been greater than in the management of the mails which is so vital to the business interest of any community. (Small, 235-237)