Women have been transporting mail in the United States since the late 1800s. According to the United States Post Office archive, “the first known appointment of a woman to carry mail was on 3 April 1845, when Postmaster General Cave Johnson appointed Sarah Black to carry the mail between Charlestown Md P.O. & the Rail Road “daily or as often as requisite at $48 per annum”. For at least two years Black served as a mail messenger, ferrying the mail between Charlestown’s train depot and its post office.”
At least two women, Susanna A. Brunner in New York and Minnie Westman in Oregon, were known to be mail carriers in the 1880s. Mary Fields, nicknamed “Stagecoach Mary”, was the first black woman to work for the USPS, driving a stagecoach in Montana from 1895 until the early 1900s. When aviation introduced airmail, the first woman mail pilot was Katherine Stinson who dropped mailbags from her plane at the Montana State Fair in September 1913.
The first women city carriers were appointed in World War I and by 2007, about 59,700 women served as city carriers and 36,600 as rural carriers representing 40 per cent of the carrier force.
These are what postwomen looked like from between the 1900s to 1910s.
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