President's Day - February 17, 2025

To celebrate President's Day, I worked with the staff at my local public library to create an exhibit of documents actually signed by some of our early Presidents.

The documents that I chose for this were from my collection of Postmaster Commissions. I thought it might be of interest to others on the forum to prepare a version of that exhibit here. The exhibit is limited to 14 documents between the terms of Andrew Jackson (1836) to William Howard Taft (1911).

I don't have examples from all Presidents and this was all that could be accommodated in the display case that was available.

The Introduction



ANDREW JACKSON
The 7th President: March 4, 1829 - March 4, 1837



The appointment of Pruden Alling as the Postmaster at Newark, New Jersey, executed on July 2, 1836.
Also signed by John Forsyth, Secretary of State.

NOTE: President Jackson was the first President to appoint postmasters at the large offices. Although I have found no official records of this first group of appointments, the financial reports for postmaster compensation for this point in time indicate that there were fewer than 100 post offices where the postmaster was appointed by Andrew Jackson.


MARTIN VAN BUREN
The 8th President: March 4, 1837 - March 4, 1841



The appointment of Joseph O. Jones as the Postmaster at Terre Haute, Indiana, executed on February 3, 1841.
Also signed by John Forsyth, Secretary of State.


ZACHARY TAYLOR
The 12th President: March 4, 1849 - March 4, 1850


The appointment of William Hayden as the Postmaster at Boston, Massachusetts, executed on July 3, 1849.
Also signed by John M. Clayton, Secretary of State.


FRANKLIN PIERCE
The 14th President: March 4, 1853 - March 4, 1857



The appointment of William Hayden as the Postmaster at Boston, Massachusetts, executed on September 23, 1853
Also signed by William L. Marcy, Secretary of State.


JAMES BUCHANAN
The 15th President: March 4, 1857 - March 4, 1861



The appointment of Charles T. Gray as the Postmaster at Newark, New Jersey, executed on March 25, 1857.
Also signed by Lewis Cass, Secretary of State.


ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The 16th President: March 4, 1861 - April 15, 1865


The appointment of William Wilson as the Postmaster at Logansport Indiana, executed on March 9, 1865.
Also signed by William H. Seward, Secretary of State.


ANDREW JOHNSON
The 17th President: April 15, 1865 - March 4, 1869



The appointment of Samuel W. Chubbuck as the Postmaster at Gold Hill, Nevada, executed on March 2, 1867.
Also signed by William H. Seward, Secretary of State.


ULYSSES S GRANT
The 18th President: March 4, 1869 - March 4, 1877



The appointment of Charles A. Holmes as the Postmaster at Jefferson, Wisconsin, executed on July 8, 1870.
Also signed by Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State.


RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
The 19th President: March 4, 1877 - March 4, 1881


The appointment of Loren B. Hurd as the Postmaster at Springfield, Vermont, executed on April 17, 1878.
Also signed by D(avid). M. Key, Postmaster General.


BENJAMIN HARRISON
The 23rd President: March 4, 1889 - March 4, 1893


The appointment of William Yerden as the Postmaster At Fort Plains, New York, executed on May 11, 1889.
Also signed by John Wanamaker, Postmaster General.


GROVER CLEVELAND
The 22nd President: March 4, 1885 - March 4, 1889
The 24th President: March 4, 1893 - March 4, 1897



The appointment of Augusta Berard as the Postmaster At West Point, New York, executed on February 27, 1897.
Also signed by William L Wilson, Postmaster General.


WILLIAM McKINLEY
25th President: March 4, 1897 - Sept 14, 1901




The appointment of Jacob R. Grove as the Postmaster at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, executed on Jan. 1, 1898
Also signed by James A. Gary, Postmaster General.


THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
26th President: Sept 14, 1901 - March 4, 1909



The appointment of William F. Kopp as the Postmaster at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, executed on February 2, 1906
Also signed by George B. Cortelyou, Postmaster General.


WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT
27th President: March 4, 1909 - March 4, 1913



The appointment of Belle W. Bridges as the Postmaster at Mason, Texas, executed on Sept. 24, 1912.
Also signed by Frank H. Hitchcock, Postmaster General.


END OF EXHIBIT

Wonderful exhibit

Thank you for sharing.

Dianne

Fascinating pieces of history! I enjoyed seeing them. Thank you.

Good job and more importantly it is great to see a public library being will to display such items of America's past.

Patents also had presidential signatures at one time; I was once handed one signed by Thomas Jefferson as president and James Monroe as Secretary of State.

Diane: Thank you for the kind words.

Revcollector:
Virtually all government documents were signed by the proper office holder (President, Vice President, Department heads and Cabinet Members) prior to 1836. After that, many documents were secretarial signed, with these postmaster commissions being the primary exception.

But not all such documents were secretarially signed, some were still signed by the President or office holder. I suspect, but have no proof, that this may have been as a personal favor to the person who was the subject of the document.

It was not until the middle of Calvin Coolidge's term, January 1, 1927, that the postmaster commissions were issued with the president's signature printed in facsimile on the document along with other text. They continued to be hand signed by the Postmaster General (or his acting designate) through the end of the USPOD era in 1970.

parcelpostguy:
My library has always been supportive of local history, and regularly have historical displays. They have two large display cases, one usually is dedicated to local history or adult themes, while the second supports children's reading subjects.

They also have the usual local and state history reference collections to support research for amateur historians like myself. They have excellent equipment resources including a large format scanner that allowed me to make quality scans of these oversized documents you see here..

In return, I regularly find items of local interest on eBay and acquire them for their collections.

I should note that the document sizes in the exhibit here are not to scale, but vary in size. I had to resample the documents to a smaller size and resolution because of the image size limits on the forum. I hope they were all readable.

Edited to move sentence around to make better sense.

A very nice group indeed!



And Woodrow Wilson used a facsimile signature by December 1918, nearly a year before his stroke.

signed by Thomas Jefferson as president and James Monroe as Secretary of State.

That would have been James Madison who was Secretary of State to Thomas Jefferson.
cheers mark

It was about 10 years ago, so I am not surprised by that mistake.

I just finished "Washington" by Chernow so the details were fresh.
Having said that ....interesting thread and timely, mml1942 as Presidents Day is around the corner. Thanks!
mark

Great exhibit; very interesting! You do have one typo - the Secretary of State for Lincoln and Johnson was William H. Seward (not Steward).

Thank you --- corrected.

Wow!.. this post is absolutely outstanding and I loved reading it from beginning to end. Thank you for posting this mml1942