“Circleville had mail facilities at a very early day. . . . The first mails were carried between Columbus and Chillicothe, which provided the city with a regular mail service. Caleb Atwater, one of the earliest postmasters, was succeeded in January 1822 by George Wolfley. . . . “ [Aaron R. Van Cleaf, History of Pickaway County, Ohio and Representative Citizens (1906), p. 52.
To call Caleb Atwater [Figure 1] “pansophic” would be to pronounce him scholarly, erudite, and with many interests. In various stages of his life he was an attorney, state legislator, archaeologist, teacher, explorer, diplomat, anthropologist, publisher, reformer, and author. And postmaster. The role of postmaster was important to understanding Atwater. By his generous use of the postmaster’s “free frank,” or the ability to waive postal charges by signing his name [Figure 2], he was able to carry on a large correspondence with scholars and scholarly societies on the East Coast. At a time of relatively high postage fees, Atwater was able to do what many were not: carry on an extensive correspondence about topics that interested him.
Much of the scholarship on Atwater states or implied that Caleb Atwater was postmaster for a good long time. “He also was the postmaster of Circleville for many years….: But was it? A contact from the USPS throws doubt on the phrase “many years:”:
“Thanks for contacting the USPS Historian’s office.
The information we have about Caleb Atwater as Postmaster is quite limited.
He was appointed Postmaster on December 19, 1818.
He served for nearly three years, when he was succeed by George Wolfley on November 5, 1821.. . . .
The Official Register of the United States was published biennially in odd-numbered years and listed Atwater’s compensation:
1819 $135.42
1821 $ 94.50
It also listed Massachusetts as his state of birth.
I am afraid that is all I can provide about him.
[Email - Stephen A. Kochersperger, United States Postal Service, November 21, 2016]
So not quite three years But they were three crucial years for Atwater’s best known scholarly interest, the study of the prehistoric earthworks, or “mounds,” that littered the state.
Atwater (1778-1867) was a native of Massachusetts. He studied for the law, and moved from the East Coast to Circleville, Ohio, in 1815. There he set up a law practice. He added U. S. postmaster to his resume in 1818. The job of postmaster was not particularly time-consuming. The incoming and outgoing mails had to be sorted, and payments collected from recipients. Atwater had to prepare a monthly “List of Letters” to be published in Circleville newspapers. Since all mail was sent “collect,” or paid for by the recipient, Postmaster Atwater used this common tactic to track down deadbeats, the uninformed, and the impoverished who would not or could not afford their letters. [Figure 3]
Beyond strictly postal business, Caleb Atwater used the most important “perk” of his appointment, postage-free personal correspondence. “Atwater was a man of learning and of wide ranging interests,” states a recent scholarly work. A member of the Lyceum of Natural History and of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS), Atwater frequently used his franking privilege in his scholarship.
The AAS, which elected Caleb Atwater to membership in 1818, had a stated interest “in recruiting persons of information who were in a position to promote the study of mounds.” An ideal candidate for this idealistic and proto-archaeological work was Caleb Atwater. Atwater studied the mounds of south central Ohio, dashing off letters describing his finds to the AAS. All through 1818 and 1819, the letters poured in to the Society. “He wrote most of those letters in haste and carelessness. . . . Atwater’s handwriting was not always legible, resulting in mistaken place names and other errors.” I have read some of these letters, and legibility is indeed and issue. [Figure 4]
Atwater also used his frank to send reports, research, and drawings to the AAS. The publishers at the AAS not surprisingly made errors of omission and commission in publishing their final report. Errors aside, Atwater’s summation appeared in volume one of the Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society (1820), gorgeously illustrated with engraved plates. Atwater’s text was new and novel as well. Although he came to erroneous conclusions (he believed the Moundbuilders were Hindus from India), he was one of the first to thoroughly study, catalog, and categorize the mounds and their contents. The illustrations of his work in some cases provide the only views of destroyed earthworks. Circleville, his adopted hometown, was thusly named because the town was built on a large circular mound. Atwater’s note and engraving provide one of our few glimpses of a since destroyed work. [Figure 5]
Caleb Atwater gained some fame, or notoriety, through his publications, and by the time he died in 1867, he was probably better known in Europe than America. Historian Henry Howe visited him in 1846 in Circleville found him in a funk. According to Howe, Atwater was “a queer talker, and appeared to me like a disappointed, unhappy man.” With a wife and nine children to support, Atwater was by then eking out a living selling his books “by solicitation.” Yet Atwater made a lasting contribution to American archaeology. Some of the enthusiasm that propelled him is captured in his letters, and more generally, the need to communicate that those letters represented:
How anxiously have I wished for the company of someone like the person to whom these observations are addressed, so that he might participate with me in the emotions which filled my breast.
Caleb Atwater ”addressed” his “observations” partly via the free frank bestowed on him by the office of postmaster of Circleville. Whatever his accomplishments as an antiquary, and they were numerous, were in part made possible by his postal position.
[Sources:
Caleb Atwater, Description of Antiquities Discovered in the State of Ohio and Other Western States (1820); new introduction by Jeremy A. Sabloff; New York: AMS Press. 1973, p. ix.
Terry A. Barnhart, American Antiquities: Revisiting the Origins of American Archaeology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), pp. 179-83, 197-98, 204.]
Figure 2, Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
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