In honor of Women’s History Month, we're sitting down with USPS Historian Jenny Lynch to dive into the history of women in the Postal Service. We’ll talk about the first female postmasters, mail carriers and clerks, and how their contributions have helped shape what the Postal Service is today.
March is Women’s History Month! In honor of this observance, our hosts Dale and Yasmine sit down with USPS Historian Jenny Lynch to talk about women in the Postal Service and the vital—often unsung—roles they’ve played from the very beginning. We'll discuss the first female postmasters, mail carriers, and women working in the Postal Service Headquarters. We'll also talk about the challenges they’ve overcome, and how their contributions have helped shape what the organization is today.
Dale Parsan:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Mailin’ It! The official podcast of the United States Postal Service, I'm your co-host Dale Parsan.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
And I'm Yasmine DiGiulio. In this episode, we're gonna talk about women at the Postal Service and the vital and often unsung roles that they've played from the very beginning. What I find so interesting is how the struggles that women have faced and overcome over the years at the Postal Service, really mirror the perceptions and prejudices that women have fought in society as a whole during that period of time.
Dale Parsan:
Absolutely Yasmine. There are plenty of stories that we'll get into that serve as examples to your point, and here to serve as our guide along the way is USPS historian, Jenny Lynch. Mailin’ It listeners will remember Jenny from our episode on how the US Postal Service became America's first communications network. Welcome back to Mailin’ It!,Jenny.
Jenny Lynch:
Thanks. I'm excited to be here,
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Dale and I really enjoyed speaking with you last time about the Postal Services very early days. So we wanted to start this conversation by talking about women who have served as postmasters. You know, it's a really important job and there's a lot of responsibilities and it seems like it's one of those jobs at the Postal Service that women were able to fill from the very beginning. I'm thinking of Mary Catherine Goddard from the 1770s and 1780s. So how common was it at that time for women to serve as postmasters?
Jenny Lynch:
In the 1700s, it was not common for women to be postmasters. We know of only a few examples. Mary Catherine Goddard was probably the most famous she was master of Baltimore from 1775 to 1789. She was the only woman postmaster in office when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first American postmaster general. So we consider her to be the first woman postmaster in the US. But arrival for that title might be Sarah DeCrow, who was the first woman appointed postmaster under the constitution. She served as a postmaster in North Carolina in the 1790s. The most interesting record we have about her service is probably some letter she wrote to the postmaster general, where she kept trying to resign from the position because it just paid so little. She ended up staying on as a, almost as a public service, just so her community could keep getting mail until a gentleman was replace her. But Mary Catherine Goddard and Sarah DeCrow, they were outliers. Few women served as postmaster really until the late 1800s.
Dale Parsan:
We've spoken about Mary Catherine Goddard before on Mailin’ It, about how she was the first female postmaster in the US. Tell us a little bit about how she got that position and why she's so important to history.
Jenny Lynch:
Well, she was a printer. She learned the printing trade from her brother, William Goddard. She and her mother, Sarah helped William run a print shop in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1760s. And then they both took over the business when William left to establish a printing shop in Philadelphia. In the 1770s, William moved to Baltimore where he started the city's first newspaper, the Maryland journal, and Mary Catherine moved there in 1774 and then took over the print shop when he moved on to yet another venture. By 1775, she was also serving as postmaster and she continued to print the Maryland journal and kept the post office running even during the Revolutionary War when she had to sometimes pay the post writer out of her own pocket to keep the mail moving. And in January, 1777, Congress commissioned her to print the first copy of the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signers. With British troops closing in on Philadelphia, Congress had evacuated to Baltimore the previous month.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Did Mary open doors to a lot of other women?
Jenny Lynch:
No, women early on - women postmasters were rare. For example, in 1825, out of more than 5,000 postmasters, total, we know of only eight who were women. By 1862 more than 400 women as postmaster, but they were still less than 2% of the total number.
Dale Parsan:
Wow. So what kept the number so low? Was it because in general that women at the time didn't work outside of their homes?
Jenny Lynch:
I think that was a big part of it. Until modern times there was a lot of social pressure for women to get married, have children and stay at home, but there were also other factors. Through much of the 1800s, married women could not own property. They were legally dependent on their husbands. And candidates for postmaster had to post a bond before taking office. They had to find bondsmen who were willing to vouch for their credit. That could be problematic for people who didn't own anything that could serve as collateral. And in some cases too, politics was a factor. Until women won the right to vote in 1920, most women didn't have much political influence and until the 1970s postmaster positions were sometimes awarded almost as a political favor or reward.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So how were women able to get around the prevailing prejudices at the time to start taking on these roles within the Postal Service?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, some women did have political power, even if they didn't have the right to vote. For example, newspaper publishers. We talked already of Mary Catherine Goddard. Another example is Anne Moore. She published a newspaper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and was postmaster there for more than 20 years from 1829 to 1850. And in fact, at one point she was the fifth highest earning postmaster in the state. And that was especially significant because Pennsylvania had the most post offices of any state. And at some smaller offices women were sometimes appointed simply because they were the best qualified and there were no better candidates. Many women got experienced running post offices unofficially because it was common for family members to serve as sort of unpaid assistance. And most postmasters didn't get any allowance for hired help. So mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, all ran post offices, unofficially as needed. In fact, the longest, the longest serving woman postmaster was Molly Stewart. She was appointed postmaster of Oxford, Maryland at the age of 18 following the death of her father. He had been the previous postmaster and she served for, I think from 1877 to 1940, over 60 years.
Dale Parsan:
Whoa, that's pretty impressive. There were certain special circumstances throughout the Postal Services, long history when more women were able to serve as postmasters. Can you give us an example of that?
Jenny Lynch:
Yeah. the Civil War was a turning point. Right after the Civil War, many more women served as postmaster in both the south and the north, but for different reasons. In the south for several years, potential postmasters had to take a loyalty oath, essentially swearing that they'd never helped the Confederacy and fee Southern men could take that oath. In the north postmaster positions were sometimes given to the wives of union soldiers who'd been killed during the war. And Ulysses Grant, when he was president, he favored the appointment of war widows as postmasters to give these women, you know, who'd made this great sacrifice just means to support themselves and their children.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So were women able to build on that success or did it kind of return back to the status quo afterwards?
Jenny Lynch:
Now after the Civil War, the number of women postmasters did gradually increase. By the early 1890s, nearly 10% of postmasters were women. By world war II, about 40% were women. And by 1986, more than half of all postmasters were women. Today, I think the number is 54%. It's worth noting though, that, although there were exceptions, until recently the largest post offices, for example, Chicago and New York were run exclusively by men. Until almost the end of the 20th century. I think Chicago got its first woman postmaster in 1987 in New York in the late 1990s.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Wow. So Jenny, although today the Postal Service is very proud of the diversity of its workforce, am I right in assuming that opportunities for African-American women didn't really open up until after the civil rights era? Were there any African-American women postmasters before the 1960s?
Jenny Lynch:
Yeah. Yeah. The history of African Americans in the Postal Service is long and fascinating and really it's a whole nother podcast topic. But to answer your question… Yeah, the first to African American woman that we know of was Mrs. Anna Dumas. She was postmaster of Covington, Louisiana from 1872 to 1885. The best known was probably Minnie Cox. She served as postmaster of Indianola, Mississippi starting in 1891 and ended up making national news headlines about 10 years later. So what happened was in the fall of 1902, some white citizens of the town demanded that she resign and they threatened her. They wanted a white postmaster and she did resign out of fear for her safety. But when president Theodore Roosevelt learned of the circumstances of her resignation, he refused to accept it. Rather than let prejudice local citizens dictate who could be postmaster and who couldn't Roosevelt ordered the local post office to be closed. Mail service to Indianola resumed only when Minnie Cox's four year term expired. And she adamantly refused to reappointment. One of her bondsmen who was white, but had been a loyal friend to her was appointed in her place.
Dale Parsan:
Wow, powerful. We've been talking so much about postmasters and, and working onsite at the post offices, but it seems in the 1800s, women were more likely to just be in, in postmaster positions and, or work as postal clerks than they were mail carriers. Why was that?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, traveling could be dangerous and women were widely considered to be the weaker sex in need of protection. Mail carriers often traveled by themselves through rough country and they kept regular schedules and that could make them targets for thieves or, or ne’er-do-wells. The first woman mail carrier we know of was Sarah Black and she was a mail messenger in Charlestown, Maryland in the 1840s. Mail messengers carried mail between train stations and post offices. So in this case, her route was less than a mile. Mail was carried longer distances by star route carriers. And these are people who transported mail between post offices, under contract. And the first woman star route carrier we know of was Polly Martin. She drove a mail wagon between two towns in Massachusetts from about 1860 to 1876. And we know about her years of service because of a newspaper interview she did for a Boston newspaper. Polly Martin, she remembered having to shovel her horse through snow drifts and during winter… Once she was stopped by a gang of, would be robbers. A man stepped in front of her mail wagon, grabbed her horses' reigns. She pounded him in the face with her horse whip and ended up running over his legs. And the mail got through that day.
Dale Parsan:
Wow, I certainly would not call Miss Martin delicate or frail by any means. How many women served as star route carriers in the 1800’s?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, we don't really know. There are no postal records of these carriers. Usually they worked for whoever had the contract to carry mail on a particular route. What we do know we learn from other sources, for example, that newspaper article about Polly Martin. We do know from other accounts, there was a woman in New York - Susanna Bruner carried mail on Long Island in the 1880s. And Minnie Westman - she carried mail on a 20 mile route west of Eugene, Oregon, also in the 1880s. But the most legendary woman star route carrier was Mary Fields also known as Stage Coach Mary. She drove a mail wagon in Montana in the late 1890s.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
We mentioned Stage Coach Mary in a recent episode, she was the first African American woman known to have carried mail. So skipping ahead, a bit to when letter carriers began delivering mail to customers in towns and cities, what restrictions did women face there?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, until World War I, women didn't deliver mail in cities. There was a woman in Idaho who took the civil service exam to be a letter carrier in 1908. She passed the test with flying colors and she was next in line for appointment, but a headquarters official ruled that she couldn't possibly do the job because postal regulations required city letter carriers to wear trousers as part of their official uniform. And at the time women couldn't wear pants,
Dale Parsan:
Wait, why couldn't women wear pants?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, it sounds strange to us now, but it was illegal in many parts of the country for women to wear pants. So here's a crazy example, Dr. Mary Walker, she a very progressive woman for her time. She graduated from medical school in New York in the 1850s. She worked as a surgeon for the US Army during the Civil War. She crossed battle lines to treat patients and was even taken as a POW. She's the only woman to have been awarded the medal of honor for her service during the Civil War. And in fact, the Postal Service issued stamp in her honor in 1982. So this famous doctor who was practically an American hero, she was arrested and thrown in jail several times for daring to wear pants because she was a woman.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
We can put that into context by pointing out that some post offices had special ladies delivery windows for women to pick up their mail. Some post offices has even had separate entrances for men and women. So what eventually changed? Did women just have to wait until they were allowed to wear pants?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, the uniform requirement didn't apply to rural carriers - carriers who deliver mail in the countryside. They could wear whatever they wanted. Rural free delivery began in the late 1890s. And we know that a few women were serving as rural carriers by 1899. In 1904 there were more than 100 women rural carriers, but in context, that was a very small number. There were more than 24,000 rural carriers that year. Still, it was a start. In cities, the big game changer again was war which brought manpower shortages. So women were first tested as city letter carriers in 1917 during World War I and were hired as regular city carriers the next year. And by the way, they, they wore skirts even though skirts weren't part of the official uniform until 1955, which just proves that poster leadership could be flexible when it needed to be. During World War II, women also delivered mail in cities. But after the war, most of the women were let go. In the 1950s, fewer than 1% of letter carriers were women.
Dale Parsan:
Jenny, I suspect that it wasn't as easy as just changing the dress code. What other obstacles did women have to overcome to become letter carriers?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, for one thing in cities, delivering mail was a very physical job. Until the 1950s carriers made multiple daily trips. They might have walked up to 20 miles a day and they were required to carry up to 50 pounds of mail at a time. And in addition to the physical demands, you know, there was the social pressure for women to get married and essentially stay at home with the kids. Until the 1970, most women didn't work outside the home. In fact, from 1902 to 1921 postal policy prohibited the appointment of a married woman to any civil service position. And if a woman employee in such a position got married, she would lose her job.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Why would they lose their jobs if they got married?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, it was a different time. The postmaster general at the time explained that he thought that after marriage, women should quote, “Stay at home and attend to their household duties.” And it wasn't just the Postal Service. It was government-wide. In fact, an official at another federal agency stated that not hiring women was quote “In the interest of women themselves because every time a woman is appointed to a clerkship in, in one of the departments, she lessen the chance of marriage for herself and deprives some worthy man of the chance to take unto himself a wife and raise a family.” Because of that policy, some women postponed marriage, there was even a case of a woman divorcing her husband to keep her job. And during the great depression, a similar policy was enforced.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Wow. So we've talked about women working as postmasters and mail carriers. When did women first work at Postal Service headquarters?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, women first worked as clerks at headquarters during the Civil War. During the war, the amount of undeliverable mail called dead letters, nearly doubled. Clerks at headquarters were swamped, trying to return undeliverable letters to their senders. In 1862, Congress authorized 25 more clerks in the dead letter office. And at least 10 women were hired that year. They were paid half what the men earned and worked twice as hard.
Dale Parsan:
Did women find other jobs at Postal Service headquarters or were they limited to just the dead letter office at that time?
Jenny Lynch:
No, they, they soon worked in other offices. Twice as productive at half the salary was a very attractive formula. By 1879, nearly 19% of headquarters employees were women, including all of the clerks in the dead letter office. Although federal law allowed equal pay for equal work, it didn't require it. And very few women were paid as much as the men. The percentage of women workers increased and the paid disparity decreased. By 1906, nearly 26% of positions at headquarters were filled by women. And on average, they earned just 9% less than the male workers.
Dale Parsan:
Well, that rate of change is kind of encouraging. So when did women start to rise into management positions at postal headquarters?
Jenny Lynch:
Oh, that that happens slowly. The first woman in a policy level position at headquarters was Dr. Beatrice Atchison. She was named director of transportation research in 1953. She had a PhD in math and she saved the post office department millions of dollars in transportation costs just by figuring out how to transport mail more efficiently, but it was really in the Kennedy era that things began to change.
Dale Parsan:
How did president Kennedy change things?
Jenny Lynch:
So well in 1961, he created a presidential commission on the status of women chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt. Among other things the commission studied and documented discriminatory employment practices and advised on how to eliminate barriers to equal opportunity. And Kennedy felt the federal government should lead by example. So in 1962, he ordered that federal appointments and promotions be made without regard to sex.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
That seems like a really big, positive step forward. How did that end up playing out over time?
Jenny Lynch:
So one consequence of Kennedy's order was a big increase in the number of women delivering mail in cities. Many people saw their first woman letter carrier in the sixties. The number of women city carriers jumped from just over 100 in 1960 to more than 3,600 in 1967, by 1972, the number more than doubled again to nearly 8,000 and it kept climbing. And today more than 62,000 women deliver mail in cities, that's about a third of the total. And even more women delivering rural areas - more than 69,000, which is 56% of the total number of rural carriers.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So we've spoken about the Postal Inspection Service and a few of our episodes. When were women allowed to join the Postal Inspection Service?
Jenny Lynch:
So the first women postal inspectors were hired in 1971. But for context, the FBI hired its first women agents a year later in 72.
Dale Parsan:
Wow. So setting a bit of a trend. Did women face any setbacks as they started to rise in the ranks of the Postal Service?
Jenny Lynch:
Oh yeah. It was not all smooth sailing. In 1973, shortly after attending a new women in management course at the postal training academy, women had headquarters formed an action committee to convince senior management, to support the advancement of women workers. Their first meeting was packed - more than 100 women met in the headquarters cafeteria. The following week, the headquarters newsletter featured a front page story on the meeting. The day after the story ran, the newsletter was abolished. Then word came down that permission for future meetings at headquarters was denied.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
That seems like a pretty big setback. And it seems like management at the time was really trying to send a strong signal about how high they would let women rise in the organization.
Jenny Lynch:
Yeah, yeah, it was. But the women, they didn't give up. They organized by posting signs in the women's restrooms and they continued to meet in a nearby building. And soon the group sent a letter to the postmaster general, noting the quote “dramatic absence of women in top management positions.” They asked that he appoint a federal women's program coordinator to promote compliance with the equal employment opportunity act.
Dale Parsan:
I suspect that women were successful in getting the Postmaster General's attention, right?
Jenny Lynch:
They were ultimately the postmaster general agreed to meet with the women and he agreed to their request. In 1974, the Postal Services first national women's program coordinator was appointed and its women's program was officially launched. And the women's program really encouraged women to advance and seek advancement within the ranks. In 1979, the first woman assistant postmaster general was appointed Nancy George. And in 1985, Jackie Strange was appointed deputy postmaster general, the highest ranking woman to that time. And she was a 40-year postal veteran who climbed the ranks from working part-time at a post office in Georgia to managing the Postal Services entire Southern region. And she persevered against great odds. You know, although the culture was changing it was still an uphill battle for women to advance into management.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I'm guessing though, that as more women advanced to these higher level positions at the Postal Service, it became easier for others to follow. Is that true?
Jenny Lynch:
Yeah, definitely. When the Postal Career Executive Service, what we call PCES was created in 1979, less than 3% of postal executives were women. By 1999, 20% of the executive positions were filled by women. That rose to 29% in 2006 and today 39% of postal executives are women. And of course in 2015, Megan Brennan smashed the glass ceiling at the Postal Service when she was appointed our 74th Postmaster General.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So Jenny, you shared some really interesting stories about the history of women throughout the history of the Postal Service and a lot of the advancements that they've made. Is there anything that you've learned that particularly inspired you?
Jenny Lynch:
So one thing that's inspired me in reading about the history of women workers is just realizing what a world about opportunity the Postal Service offers… How much women and men can achieve in the organization if they want to advance in their career. So the first woman, deputy postmaster general, you know, she started her postal career working part-time at a small post office. Our first woman postmaster general, she started delivering mail. She, when she started, she was one of tens of thousands of other letter carriers, but through hard work dedication, and just having a passion to serve, she became postmaster general. I don't think there are many private companies or even government agencies where an employee can start, you know, on the ground floor and just through attitude and aptitude and hard work rise to the highest levels. It makes me proud to work for the Postal Service. And the Postal Service, I think is a great equalizer. We serve everyone; in a sense we are everyone.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I love that sentiment. Has there been anything that really surprised you throughout all of your research?
Jenny Lynch:
Well, it's hard to pick just one story. One of my favorite parts of my job is really learning a about American history as I researched postal history. It's fascinating. One story that surprised me was learning about Katherine Stinson. She was one of the first women in the US to get a pilot's license. She got her license in 1912 and at that time, planes were made out of fabric and wood and like wired together. And although she was, she was never a regular airmail pilot, she did fly a couple of airmail trips in 1918. And in one of them, she broke two American aviation records, one for distance and one for endurance before she crash landed in a muddy field. And the endurance record she broke, she'd actually set it herself the previous year. So her story impressed me. And crash landings, I was surprised to learn were very common in the early years of aviation, you know, which, and the Postal Service was a, a great pioneer there. But yeah, Katherine Stinson was just a fearless flyer. She was a stunt flyer flew exhibitions worldwide. They called her the flying school girl because although I think she was in her early twenties, she looked like she was about 16. So she actually, when World War I started, she volunteered or, or tried to sign up to fly for the Army in Europe. They wouldn't let her because she was a woman. So instead she volunteered with Red Cross. She went to France and drove an ambulance during the war.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Well, Jenny, thank you so much for joining us. It was really inspiring to hear these stories of women throughout the history of the Postal Service and, and how they've contributed to the Postal Service that we know today.
Jenny Lynch:
Well, thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having both of you.
Dale Parsan:
Gosh, we covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time with Jenny. One of the points she made that really stuck out to me is how rural delivery actually created opportunities for women to join the Postal Service. My Did You Know, for this episode takes a closer look at the beginnings of rural delivery, or as they used to call it rural free delivery.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
It's hard to believe rural delivery wasn't introduced until almost 1900.
Dale Parsan:
Let's start off by understanding what the us was like then better. Based on my research, 1890, nearly 41 million Americans lived in rural areas. That was approximately 65% of the population. To give the audience an idea of how much that has changed, Yasmine, would you mind taking a guess at what that percentage is today?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
The fact that you're asking me means it's gonna be a surprising number. So I'm gonna go with roughly half of that.
Dale Parsan:
It's actually a lot lower percentage wise. The 2010 census reported that about 19% of people lived in rural areas of the United States. That works out to be roughly 60 million people.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Okay. So I was way off. So how were all of those people living outside of cities getting their mail before 1896?
Dale Parsan:
Well, while people living in cities got free home delivery starting in 1863, people living in the country were mostly getting their mail much like they did in old colonial dates, meaning they had to go into town and pick it up.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
That seems unfair, especially if there were days when farmers couldn't get into town to collect their mail.
Dale Parsan:
Rural Postal Service customers felt the same way at that time. They wanted a system for delivering mail to their communities. The idea for rural free delivery was born when in addition to hearing concerns from rural customers, postmaster general John Wannamaker decided it made more sense for one person to deliver mail to 50 people than for 50 people to have to come into a single location.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
That does make sense, but something tells me it wasn't easy to make that happen.
Dale Parsan:
It wasn't. In fact, the road to rural delivery was about as bumpy as the country roads the Postal Service needed to travel to get to those communities. Bills were introduced in Congress in the early 1890s to pay for rural delivery, but they were shot down as being impractical and too expensive.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
What changed that?
Dale Parsan:
Well by 1896, the Postal Service was able to cobble together roughly $40,000 from Congress to set up rural free delivery as an experimental service. It began in October in three communities in West Virginia, not coincidentally, that was the home state of the postmaster general at the time. Within a year 44 routes were operating in 29 states.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
The Postal Service probably had to staff up quickly to meet this growing demand. I guess that's one of the reasons the Postal Service was willing to hire women to be mail carriers as Jenny mentioned.
Dale Parsan:
It is, but the Postal Service needed more than carriers. It also needed good roads and a network of standardized mailboxes. In the early days, farmers would put out a strange assortment of containers to collect their mail, including large pails syrup cans, and even cigar boxes to fix that the Postal Service decided a standardized mailboxes. They published specifications that included what the size of the mailbox could be, that it had to be weatherproof and that it had to be easy for carriers to open and close, even when carriers were wearing winter clothes.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Well, Dale, that was a lot of info and a good Did You Know. If yours is wrapped up, I've got another one in keeping with the Women in Postal Service history theme.
Dale Parsan:
By all means.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
My Did You Know, is about a woman who worked as a clerk at post office department headquarters during the Civil War.
Dale Parsan:
One of the women in dead letter office?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
That's right, her name was Lavinia Ream, and she was the first woman to receive a federal commission, to create a statue. Better known by her nickname, Vinny, as a teenager, she was one of 10 women hired to work at the dead letter office in 1862. She moved to DC from Wisconsin, with her family during the war and took the Postal Service job to help support her family. While she was in DC, she met the sculptor in residence at the US Capitol and impressed him with her abilities. Soon, she was working part-time to create sculptors of congressmen and generals passing through the Capitol.
Dale Parsan:
She must have been really good at her job.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Dale, she was so good that she was commissioned to create a bust of none other than president Abraham Lincoln. The statue she created was so realistic that in 1866, Congress awarded her a $10,000 commission to create a life sized marble statue of Lincoln to be placed in the US Capitol. She was only 18 years old at the time. She was the first woman and the youngest artist to receive a federal commission for a work of art. After spending some time in Europe where her full size model was transferred to marble, she did delivered her masterpiece, which was unveiled at the Capitol in 1871.
Dale Parsan:
Impressive. Does she have any other work in DC that people can look out for?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
She does her statue of Admiral Farragut is on display at Farragut Square and she created statues of former Iowa Senator Samuel Kirkwood, and a native American named Sequoia. Both are part of the National Statuary Hall collection here in DC. I read that she would've been more prolific, but she took a long break from sculpting after she got married. Apparently her husband discouraged it.
Dale Parsan:
Well, that turned out to be everyone's loss. And that does it for this installment of Did You Know?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
So Dale, what stood out to you about our conversation with Jenny today?
Dale Parsan:
Oh, Polly Martin, the first woman's star route carrier. She's my new hero. I want Hollywood to produce a docu-series on this Martin's journey with the Postal Service. I think the audience would be really get a kick out of seeing all she went through between braving weather, going up against would be robbers, all to prove that she belonged at the Postal Service.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I would definitely watch that.
Dale Parsan:
How about you?
Yasmine DiGiulio:
I think for me the stories of all the obstacles that women face to work for the Postal Service really resonated with me, especially as a woman who obviously now works for the Postal Service and is also currently wearing pants. It's easy to take the opportunities that I have now for granted when really it's the result of all of these generations that came before us. I really appreciate that Jenny was able to share so many stories with us today of women working against these sort of societal expectations to serve the country through the Postal Service.
Dale Parsan:
Could not agree more.
Yasmine DiGiulio:
Well, that wraps up this episode of Mailin’ It. Don't forget to subscribe to Mailin’ It wherever you get your podcast to make sure you don't miss the next episode, and follow along on Instagram @USPostal Service, Twitter USPS, and on Facebook for updates.