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Home / Event / YES at Academy of Tucson

YES at Academy of Tucson

Apr 22, 2019 9:00 am - 1:00 pm
Youth Education through Stamps
Stamp Discover visits Academy of Tucson
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920 N 1st Ave Tucson AZ 85719
P 520-623-6652
E info@phftucson.org

The Postal History Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting people to postal history, philately, and the world of stamps to inspire curiosity and encourage the enjoyment of life-long learning.

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George Washington Carver
Ernest E. Just
Percy Lavon Julian
Charles R. Drew
Jan E. Matzeliger
George Washington Carver
Henry Ossawa Tanner
Robert Robinson Taylor
Edmonia Lewis
Henry Ossawa Tanner
Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable
Jim Beckwourth
Bill Pickett
Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable
Allison Davis
Anna Julia Cooper
Booker T. Washington
Mary McLeod Bethune
Allison Davis
Harriet Tubman
Frederick Douglass
Harriet Tubman
C Alfred "Chief" Anderson
Bessie Coleman
Matthew Henson (with Robert E. Peary)
C Alfred "Chief" Anderson
Rosa Parks
Malcolm X
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Roy Wilkins
Carter G. Woodson
W.E.B. DuBois
Whitney Moore Young
Sojourner Truth
A. Philip Randolph
Rosa Parks
Benjamin O. Davis, Sr.
Doris Miller
Benjamin O. Davis, Sr.
Shirley Chisholm
Patricia Robert Harris
Barbara Jordan
Clifton R. Wharton, Sr.
Ralph Bunche
Thurgood Marshall
Shirley Chisholm
Benjamin Banneker
John H. Johnson
Madame C.J. Walker
Benjamin Banneker
Ethel L. Payne
Ida B. Wells
Gwen Ifill
Ethel L. Payne
Hattie McDaniel
Paul Robeson
Oscar Micheaux
Hattie McDaniel
Jackie Robinson
Jesse Owens
Joe Louis
Satchel Paige
Josh Gibson
Wilma Rudolph
Arthur Ashe
Sugar Ray Robinson
Rube Foster
Althea Gibson
Wilt Chamberlain
Jackie Robinson
Maya Angelou
Ralph Ellison
Gwendolyn Brooks
Robert Hayden
Richard Wright
Charles W. Chestnut
James Baldwin
Carter G. Woodson
James Weldon Johnson
Zora Neal Hurston
Langston Hughes
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Maya Angelou
Music Legends
Count Basie
Dinah Washington
Jelly Roll Morton
Nat King Cole
Lena Horne
Miles Davis
Ethel Waters
Erroll Garner
Mildred Bailey
Coleman Hawkins
Louis Armstrong
Otis Redding
Charlie Parker
John Coltrane
Count Basie
Musicians
Thelonious Monk
Josh White
Jimmy Rushing
W.C. Handy
Scott Joplin
James R. Johnson
Leadbelly
Jimi Hendrix
Duke Ellington
Charles Mingus
Ray Charles
Sonny Terry
Robert Johnson
Howlin' Wolf
Clyde McPhatter
Thelonious Monk
Singers and Songwriters
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Muddy Waters
Roberta Martin
Billie Holiday
Marian Anderson
Clara Ward
Bessie Smith
Ella Fitzgerald
"Ma" Rainey
Eubie Blake
Mahalia Jackson
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Alvin Ailey
Katherine Dunham
Gregory Hines
Alvin Ailey
United States philately, 1969

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Worldwide philately, 1969

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Commemorations of the 1969 moon landing

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Letters from Home

“Another week gone and no newsman yet. These months—years perhaps—will to a certain extent be a blank to us. We know nothing of what is going on the states, nothing of the political maneuvers. President’s messages, doings of Congress, elections of senators and assemblymen and the thousand and one maneuvers of the day, riots, mobs, fires, rail-road accidents—in fact I shall be a kind of Rip van Winkle & it will require the first ten years after returning to learn what has taken place while away.”

–Letter from A.W. Genung in Curtissville, San Joaquin District to “Woodward,” Dec 16, 1849, from James W. Milgram’s The Western Mails.

 

Postcard postmarked Oatman, 1911
Cover postmarked Bisbee, Arizona, 1900
Cover postmarked Florence, Arizona, 1876
Postcard picturing Jerome, Arizona
Life in the Old West

Imagine leaving everything and everyone you know and moving across the country to live in the wilderness, hoping to make your fortune in gold, silver, or copper. Living 1000 miles or more away from home, the only way to talk to your family and friends, and the only way to know what was happening outside your immediate vicinity, was through letters and newspapers: the mail.

Postcard depicting man outside a cabin in Prescott
Promotional postcard from Globe depicting two men and a child at water pump
Image of teacher and students at Mayer school
Postcard depicting a prospector sifting with a rocker box
Mules, Wagons, and Well-Worn Routes

Mail, including letters, supplies, and goods, was often freighted in by steamship from San Francisco to the port of Yuma. From there, items either continued up river or were loaded onto wagons, coaches, and pack animals and taken out to towns and camps.

The stage lines and buckboard lines that carried mail and supplies also transported passengers on a regular basis between towns, sometimes requiring at least one overnight stay. These vehicles were extraordinarily uncomfortable, however. After making the much longer overland (cross-country) trip on stagecoach, journalist Waterman L. Ormsby famously said, “I NOW KNOW WHAT HELL IS LIKE. I’VE JUST HAD 24 DAYS OF IT.”

Cleator, Arizona, undated photograph
“Prospector on the Desert” unused postcard
Wilcox, Arizona, 1915, undated photograph
“For All Points Along the Colorado River”

Steamers left San Francisco for the Gulf of California every 20 days and then traveled up the Colorado River. The port at Yuma was a major artery in the delivery of supplies to Arizona.

The steamboats transported not only mail and goods, but also people. In 1874 Martha Summerhayes traveled on the steamboat Gila from Fort Yuma to Fort Mohave. In her book Vanished Arizona, she describes the conditions:

The staterooms “were always stuffy and noisy, and in the summer they were so suffocatingly hot.” In the dining room, “the metal handles of the knives were uncomfortably warm to the touch; and even the wooden arms of the chairs felt as if they were slowly igniting… A siesta was out of the question, as the staterooms were insufferable; and so we dragged out the weary days.”

Postcard postmarked 1910 depicting the Yuma landing on the Colorado River
Unused and undated postcard depicting the Yuma landing on the Colorado River
Colorado Steam Navigation Company advertisement

 

“Fastest Time and Best Stock”

Entrepreneurs from the Tucson area, such as Pinchney Tully, Estevan Ochoa, Pedro Aguirre, Mariano Samaniego, J.D. Kinnear, and William “Curly” Neal, provided much- needed services between short distances.

Tuffy Peach delivered mail on horseback three times a week between Camp Verde and Payson from 1910-1914. His route was 52 miles long, lasted 11 hours, and required one change of horse. When interviewed by the Arizona Philatelist in 1968, he described his work:

“I often had mail piled so high in front of me that I could hardly see where my horse was treading… “But, gosh, those horses knew the mail route better than the dispatch riders. We couldn’t get lost if we tried. Our horses wouldn’t let us.”

Clinton “Tuffy” Peach, Arizona Philatelist article, January 1968. Tuffy Peach delivered mail on horseback to and from Camp Verde, Arizona and Payson, Arizona from 1910-1914.
Pedro Aguirre unused cover.
Advertisement for Walker and Kinnear’s stage company.
Photograph of stage outside Hotel Nobles.
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