Daily AncestorPostmaster
A postmaster was the person in charge of a local post office, handling the mail and its money for the town.
The postmaster headed a post office, supervising its clerks and letter carriers and setting carrier routes. In the United States the post was an appointed office and was long given out by the party in power as a reward.
Women served as postmasters from colonial times, more than a century before they could vote, and many more were appointed in the late 1800s. A woman postmaster may be written postmistress.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1870 to 1940 census
Mrs. Lydia Hart, 52, Postmistress
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Daily Ancestor. "Postmaster." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/postmaster. Last checked 2026-10-10.