Man of letters

Published on Friday 21 April 2006 00:05

Q MY GREAT-great-grandfather lived in Dysart and the 1851 Census shows his occupation as a "Letter Carrier and Deliverer". Are there any archive records from the 1800s which might show the structure of the Post Office regarding postal districts, head Post Office areas and staff records which might show my relative? A Ness (by e-mail)

A The Post Office system in Scotland effectively began in 1695 with an Act of the Scottish Parliament which set up the General Post Office of Edinburgh and appointed Robert Sinclair of Stevenson as Post Master General of Scotland. This post was merged with the English position after the Union of Parliaments in 1707, essentially creating a unified postal service for the whole of the British Isles. The first mail coach in Scotland began in 1784 and from 1847 the railway system was used for transporting mail.

There are several avenues to take if you are trying to trace the career of an employee of the postal service. The National Archives of Scotland holds a number of different records relating to the Post Office in Scotland, but the most useful for the family historian are the establishment books. These list the salaried staff, from 1803 to 1911 (NAS ref: PO1/15-65). The books are arranged by post-towns, naming all the staff in the main post offices, including letter carriers, but do not name sub-postmasters. They do not contain a lot of detailed information, but they do give the date of appointment, position and salary of the members of staff. The volume which records postal staff in 1803 also has later annotations.

Further records of the Post Office can be found in the British Postal Museum and Archive in London. They hold appointment books and minute books, the latter containing a series of Scottish minutes from 1842-1920 (BPMA ref: POST 37), after which there was no separate series for Scotland. The minute books are generally arranged by geographical location and record notable events, including references to individuals. In these records you are only likely to come across the name of an individual letter carrier if something noteworthy occurred. The appointment records which they hold start in 1831, when a centralised register of all employees was begun. These are essentially indexes to the Postmaster General's minute books and can lead to a brief precis of the minuted papers submitted to head office at the time of appointment. When searching these records you are looking for the point when a person began working for the Post Office and a rough idea of the dates will help. More information about the records held by the British Postal Museum and Archive can be found at www.postalheritage.org.uk

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