Harvey the answer to your question is quite simple.
The postal services were run by humans!! Large numbers of them! No impersonal machines were relied upon.
They took an interest in their jobs.
Of course there was also less of a population, communities were smaller and everyone knew everyone. Unlike the isolationism of today.
This auxiliary marking gives a clue. Cities kept a directory of names and addresses to help them deliver the mail.
It was a smaller word, back then, even as recently as the early 1950, and run by humans who understood responsibility and ethical behaviour as requirements of Democracy. My father was the editor of a small, weekly newspaper in New Mexico. One day he received a letter addressed to “Bob Ingraham / New Mexico”. At that time, New Mexico’s population was less than a million.
Bob
Back in the day there was a lot less mail and a lot more employees to sort it.
Mail was sped up by any physical means available.. sorting and postmarking on a moving train or trolley. Shipping across cities by pneumatic tube etc.
The addressing of mail to just a name and city eventually became a problem and old customs are hard to break. Note they used the below slogan cancel message well into the 1930s!
Where I lived growing up, there was only 80 people in the town, we had a general store that was also our post office and one gas station, living in Nevada as I did was easy, everyone knew everyone else.
I see an awful lot of older covers with very simple addresses - like Joe Bloe, Halifax, or similar very simple addresses and it makes me wonder how stuff like this ever got delivered. Also I've seen thinks like Mary Smith, town, where the mail was obviously sent from the same town. Also some of the writing is done in gorgeous script, almost like calligraphy, but flowery to the point of being almost unreadable. I remember once as a young person ordering a comic I missed from the Marvel headquarters and using writing as opposed to printing getting the comic back addressed to Joseph Hailarpe instead of Joseph H. Wolfe. How did the mail clerk ever figure out it was for me? Those people in the post offices back then must have had magical powers, a la Harry Potter, in order to accomplish what they did. Think about how difficult some of those envelopes were to read, absolutely amazing!!!
re: How did mail years ago ever get delivered?
Harvey the answer to your question is quite simple.
The postal services were run by humans!! Large numbers of them! No impersonal machines were relied upon.
They took an interest in their jobs.
Of course there was also less of a population, communities were smaller and everyone knew everyone. Unlike the isolationism of today.
re: How did mail years ago ever get delivered?
This auxiliary marking gives a clue. Cities kept a directory of names and addresses to help them deliver the mail.
re: How did mail years ago ever get delivered?
It was a smaller word, back then, even as recently as the early 1950, and run by humans who understood responsibility and ethical behaviour as requirements of Democracy. My father was the editor of a small, weekly newspaper in New Mexico. One day he received a letter addressed to “Bob Ingraham / New Mexico”. At that time, New Mexico’s population was less than a million.
Bob
re: How did mail years ago ever get delivered?
Back in the day there was a lot less mail and a lot more employees to sort it.
Mail was sped up by any physical means available.. sorting and postmarking on a moving train or trolley. Shipping across cities by pneumatic tube etc.
The addressing of mail to just a name and city eventually became a problem and old customs are hard to break. Note they used the below slogan cancel message well into the 1930s!
re: How did mail years ago ever get delivered?
Where I lived growing up, there was only 80 people in the town, we had a general store that was also our post office and one gas station, living in Nevada as I did was easy, everyone knew everyone else.