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The small room at the right of this house once served as the West Brookfield post office . In 1890,Alden Boyce, post master, posed in front of his house located behind the West Brookfield Church .The barns and connecting shed (with outhouse) are long gone, the hill behind is covered with trees ,the road is lower and recent renovations and expansion have made this house unrecognizable as th ehome of Lynn and Alice Wakefield .

CHAPTER IVPOST OFFICE HISTORY

by Elinor Gray and Deborah Gage MacAskillIn 1784 when Brookfield was still mainly wilderness, the Vermont legislature passed an ac t

establishing five state post offices . These were taken over by the federal postal system in 1792 .Twenty-six years later, in 1818, Brookfield got its post office, followed by East Brookfield in1829 and West Brookfield in 1833 .

There is a sad lack of information about the early Postmasters of Brookfield . We do know thenames and dates of all who have served in this capacity, beginning with Horace Street, who wa snamed Postmaster on Dec. 8, 1818. A handsome framed list can be found in the present post of-fice just outside the Village . Familiar old Brookfield names include Abbott, Upham, Morse andParmenter . Old records indicate that the post office was almost always part of the local genera lstore .

In Brookfield, as in most other parts of the new country, much of the early traveling was don eby horseback . The mail in those early days came by horseback, then in carts and later still i nstagecoaches . Then another form of transportation became possible ; a railroad was constructedthrough Central Vermont and Brookfield mail was dropped off in Randolph and brought t oBrookfield . This manner of carrying mail continued until about 1916 when the first motor car swere used .

It appears that around the mid 1890's a new form of mail delivery was formed by the U .S .Government . This was the beginning of the rural mail route for distributing the mail to th efarms. One of the early routes to be started in Vermont was in this town . Papers and letters in-dicate Deborah MacAskill 's great-grandfather, Clayton B . Fisk, wrote many times t oWashington, D .C. until the route was approved . To do so, Fisk had to obtain signatures for apetition . He was able to get about 50 names and carried the mail for 13 years on his horse, "OldGray ." The faithful horse and Fisk were stayed from their appointed rounds only once durin gthis period .

A fourth grade composition by Harold Gage's daughter, Dorcas, recalls that "Old Gray" als osaw duty as transportation to church on Sunday . The horse always made a stop at every mailbox ,even on the Sabbath .

Old Gray put in more than 50,000 miles during his career on the mail route alone, enough t o

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"Clayt" Fisk, first rural carrier in Brookfield .(D . MacAskill)

circle the earth twice. The composition recalls the other horses which covered the route—a blac kMorgan named Daisy, a trotting mare named Babe, a Morgan named Bell which was afraid o fopen umbrellas, a bay named Ned, and a western saddle horse called Bess who could be ridde nand driven .

Fisk invented a special sleigh called a "pung" for hauling mail through the drifts between Ran-dolph and Brookfield . The flyweight vehicle had three-inch-wide runners, allowing it to skip overdrifts, rather than having to plow through them . The rig was heated by a kerosene lantern be-tween the driver's feet .

Miss Jessie Fiske drove the first motorized mail route in Brookfield in 1913 . During the winter ,however, the Tin Lizzie was replaced by a four-hoof-drive model .

A Brookfield resident who remembers the mail route personally is John Harford, who fo rseven years drove "the stage," as it was then called around 1910. The route ran from Randolphto East Braintree to Brookfield Center to Brookfield .

A woman named Jennie Smith just would not pay three cents, which was the new fee for a let-ter . "The service we get ain't worth it!" she stormed, and would righteously post her let-ters with a two-cent stamp. However, her granddaughter, Pauline, was in cahoots with th ePostmaster, and later supplied the missing postage .

A carrier received the sum of $200 .00 a year which was raised to $300.00 in 1897 . Carriers wereplaced on civil service with regular leave and sick leave benefits . They also had substitutes . Oftenthe carriers had to do their own road repairs in order to get the mail there . As late as 1941, accor-ding to a paper by Dorcas Gage, "Even in winter each year now it is not possible to make th ecomplete route by car so horses are still used . "

In 1920 Willie Keyes began his career as the second rural carrier, continuing for 37 years untilhis retirement in 1957. At the beginning of his new employment he was told, "The first seve nyears are the worst ." The seventh year was when the 1927 flood struck, creating many difficul tsituations for the carrier . Mr . Keyes relates, "Due to the flood the north end of the bridge o nMain Street in Randolph was washed out and a temporary foot bridge was constructed and 3 or 4of the Randolph Postal Clerks would bring the Brookfield and Randolph Center mail across t omeet the stage and exchange sacks . One day I was at the end of the bridge during this transactio nand the outgoing mail was heavier than usual and more than they could carry . A citizen from thi sside of the river was going for groceries at the same time, with a wheelbarrow . The clerk in chargeasked for the loan of the wheelbarrow, but was refused . The clerk promised he would have th ewheelbarrow at the grocery store by the time the citizen had his groceries selected and paid for i f

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the citizen would oblige . Still, nothing doing . Then the clerk said, `In the name of the Unite dState Post Office I commandeer that wheelbarrow for transporting mail .' That is the only time Ihave known of a wheelbarrow being commandeered for carrying mail . "

Julian Hill had served as Willie 's substitute since 1948 . He became the regular rural carrie rfrom 1957-1983, serving 26 years . The present rural carrier is Richard Kibby .

Aside from the addition of the East Hill section in 1973, which had been served by Randolp hCenter, today 's route is basically the same as the original route that began in 1902 .

Papers in the Historical Society files indicate that a post office was started in East Brookfiel din Jan ., 1829, discontinued on Dec . 31, 1906, only to be reestablished on Jan . 1, 1907 . DeborahMacAskill remembers it being housed in the Austin house (now Martin's) in East Brookfield .The Postmaster was Beatrice Martin . The post office was closed in May, 1954 .

On June 14, 1833 the first post office in West Brookfield was started . It moved to Snowsvill ein 1836 . Thereafter, a second post office was approved and began serving the public in 1889 . I twas discontinued in Feb ., 1907 .

Bernice Davis and her husband, Perley, bought the general store in Brookfield in 1925 fro mLouise Morse and with it the fourth class post office . When Bernice asked why the wives of th estorekeepers were named Postmasters, the reply was that Postmasters could not hold a town of -fice .

As stated earlier, the mail reached Brookfield once a day in the late afternoon from Randolph .Also, a pouch was brought from Williamstown by the RFD carrier . Money orders were themeans of purchase for Sears and Montgomery Ward, as this was before checking accounts wer eused to any extent .

Christmas was the only holiday when mail was brought early in the day . If the weather wasbad and the carrier (who often had to do the clearing of the roads) was late, Perley would don hi ssnowshoes and deliver Christmas presents to the postal patrons .

During May of each year the route had to be inspected to see if a post needed to be straighten-ed or a box replaced . This was done to make the patrons more aware of the appearance and als ofor the convenience of the carrier .

In 1959 (and again in 1964) the government wanted to close the fourth class post office, mak-ing a rural station available instead . Many of the town residents signed a petition and wrote t oSenators George Aiken and Winston Prouty to protest the idea . A telegram to Herbert Reastated :

Advised by P .O . Department no further actions will be taken at this time towards the discon-tinuation of Brookfield Post Office .

Signed ,George Aiken, U .S. Senato r

New Post Office in use since January, 1983 .

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In 1973 the post office, which had been part of the general store for over 100 years, was movedto the southeast corner of the Town Hall where it stayed until the increased volume of mail forc -ed it to find larger quarters . The new post office was built in 1982 just down the road from th eFirst Congregational Church of Brookfield and was opened on Jan . 28, 1983.

It seems that the present Postmaster, Elinor Gray, and Clerk, Deborah MacAskill, are carry-ing on a postal family tradition in Brookfield . Elinor is related to former Postmaster EllsworthChase and carriers Willie Keyes and Julian Hill . Deborah is related to carrier Clayton Fis kand former Postmaster Harold Gage .

Horace StreetPOSTMASTERS

Dec . 8, 181 8John Smith June 5, 182 0Noah Paine May 20, 184 1A.W. Bigelow July 27, 1842S. Spear July 3, 1845Salmon H . Smith June 19, 1849Benjamin P. Abbott April 20, 1855Calvin L . Whitcomb Sept . 27, 1855Owen W. Abbott May 26, 1857George Davenport April 15, 1858William F . Laselle Jan . 28, 1862Zenas W. Upham Apr . 22, 1864Justus Edson June 25, 1864Norman W. Frink April 15, 1870Daniel Morse Jan . 3, 1879Vernon C . Goodrich Apr . 3, 188 6Daniel Morse May 2, 1889James W . Parmenter May 11, 1889Frank P . Lamson April 8, 1893William H . Sprague April 15, 1897William J . Blodgett May 21, 1897James W. Parmenter Sept 6, 1899Edgar E. Martin July 15, 1907James W. Parmenter Mar . 12, 1908Louise P . Morse Feb. 13, 1914Ellsworth W. Chase Oct . 13, 191 7Louise P . Morse Mar . 8, 1919Bernice M. Davis Sept . 22, 1925Elizabeth D . Harrington Oct . 1957David T . Rea Oct . 1959Phyllis L . Lemery Aug . 31, 1962Harold F . Gage July 1, 196 5Elinor J . Gray Feb. 23, 1974