Preservation of Log Post Office

In June 1974, Franklin Judge J.T. Riley decided to replace a white building whose right portion was reputed to be where J.N.C. Schenck had operated his store and post office. Schenck was appointed Territorial Postmaster in 1802 and Postmaster in 1803 when Ohio became a state. Riley donated the log post office to the Franklin Area Historical Society on the condition that it be moved before December 31, and on December 6 it was moved about two blocks south on River Street after fundraising took time. On April 9, 1976, the Ohio Historic Site Preservation Advisory Board notified the society that the Log Post Office had been entered in the National Register of Historic Places, and it is identified as the oldest standing post office on the National Register in Ohio. Protected by clapboard for almost two hundred years, the building later suffered damage from the elements for thirty years, and rings counted on one log totaled 219, indicating the tree had been alive in the late 1500s. The site also presents the broader history of the postal service in the United States. On July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress established an American postal system and appointed Benjamin Franklin the first Postmaster General of the Thirteen Colonies, beginning an organization that later developed into today’s United States Postal Service. George Washington said the Postal Service would bind the nation, and postal communications and transportation helped support business, manufacturing, and every major form of transportation in the United States. After the Revolutionary War, the Ohio Company of Associates under General Rufus Putnam established Ohio’s first permanent settlement at Marietta in April 1788, marking the beginning of westward expansion across the Allegheny Mountains from that Ohio settlement. In 1796, General William Schenck and Daniel Cooper founded Franklin, Ohio, and Warren County’s first post office was established there in 1802 with John Noble Cummings Schenck, the general’s brother, as its first postmaster. Because early towns sought post offices to gain communication, growth, manufacturing, and improved roads and transportation, this part of Ohio, including Franklin, pursued manufacturing plants and roads along the Great Miami River. The road serving Franklin’s post office still follows that route, and later transportation lines, including the Miami-Erie Canal, the railroad, highways, and the Ohio Bike Path, generally followed the old postal route established in 1802. A letter of August 5, 1802, from Gideon Granger announced new post offices in the North Western Territory at Middletown, Williamsburg, Hamilton, Franklin, Dayton, and Staunton and requested the name of a suitable postmaster for each.

Franklin, Ohio · United States