Adams Express Company.

[Robert Gray]

Founded by Alvin Adams in Massachusetts in 1854, the Adams Express Company played a significant role in delivering mail, parcels, and valuables for both sides in the Civil War. With its subsidiary, the Southern Express Company, it served as a paymaster for both the Union and Confederate armies.

Credits:
1) Stereoview of Adams Express office at unknown location. (Oxxbridge Galleries)
2) Adams Express office at Chattanooga, TN. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-02124)
3) Adams Express office at Bermuda Hundred, VA. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-
cwpb-02164)
4) Boston soldier's package receipt, dated Nov. 20, 1863. (Brown Auction, LLC)

The photos I tried to attach to this thread would not load. My apologies. I may try to post them separately.

 

[CWdiaryPA]

If it's of interest, I located two mentions of Adams Express in my work. First was written by my grandfather Ephraim, hospital steward of the PA 110th, in April 1862, VA. Btw, surprisingly, mail back then was faster than today. A letter from South Central PA. to Winchester, VA. took just two days.

"Thursday 24

Quite frosty this morning and cool all day. We was making some preparations to move. I sent my trunk to the Adams Express Co to send home as I did not need. I sent two cannon balls one grate shell 1 bomb shell & balls and it is cool this evening the mud is drying up very much. I wrote a letter to [illeg. initials, maybe JN] Burket. Cool this night"


(Except of letter)
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

"Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson."

 

[gary]

How did they deliver packages? Say a sharp shooter was ordered to carry a Sharps in lieu of his heavy, target telescope rifle. He packages it, labels it and pays the express company. Did they have a chain of depots/stages with which to make their delivery? Did they act like modern day Fed Ex and contracts out routes? Did people have it delivered to their home or did they have to go to the Express Office to take delivery?

 

[Robert Gray]

Founded by Alvin Adams in Massachusetts in 1854, the Adams Express Company played a significant role in delivering mail, parcels, and valuables for both sides in the Civil War. With its subsidiary, the Southern Express Company, it served as a paymaster for both the Union and Confederate armies.

Credits:
1) Stereoview of Adams Express office at unknown location. (Oxxbridge Galleries)
2) Adams Express office at Chattanooga, TN. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-cwpb-02124)
3) Adams Express office at Bermuda Hundred, VA. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-
cwpb-02164)
4) Boston soldier's package receipt, dated Nov. 20, 1863. (Brown Auction, LLC)

The photos I tried to attach to this thread would not load. My apologies. I may try to post them separately.

 

[CWdiaryPA]

How did they deliver packages? Say a sharp shooter was ordered to carry a Sharps in lieu of his heavy, target telescope rifle. He packages it, labels it and pays the express company. Did they have a chain of depots/stages with which to make their delivery? Did they act like modern day Fed Ex and contracts out routes? Did people have it delivered to their home or did they have to go to the Express Office to take delivery?

Here's some info. here: https://sullivanpress.com/6-15-sending-money-home/
It seems it was an early FedEx type system: "using a combination of railroads, stagecoaches, and special couriers"

 

[gary]

Muchas gracias CWdiaryPA.