Greetings! My name is Jenny Lynch, and I’m the historian of the United States Postal Service. I worked in the USPS Historian’s Office for twenty years before being promoted to the top job in 2012. My favorite thing about this job is that I get to learn something new, every day.
I’m not planning on retiring any time soon, and I don’t ride a motorcycle anymore, but you never know what life has in store. Last Tuesday, my seemingly perfectly healthy mother had a massive heart attack (grateful shout-out here to the ambulance crew and doctors who saved her life!). Life is fleeting, and every new day is a gift. One day, I will move on.
With these thoughts in mind, and in full acknowledgment that my mastery of the office is a work in progress, I’d like to give a few words of advice to my future replacement, the next USPS historian.
Do’s and Don’ts
Do:
- Use qualifiers and hedge words to build factual statements when available records don’t support absolute statements. Some good ones are: known, apparently, according to, reportedly, as early as, by, and at least. For example, from our Women Mail Carriers papers: “The first known appointment of a woman to carry mail was on April 3, 1845. . . . At least 18 women reportedly carried mail on contract routes in the 1890s.”
- Adopt a critical approach to published histories. Assume that most sources are not trustworthy. The most-repeated claims and “facts” are often the least likely to be true.
- Cite your source when providing information to a customer. For example, “according to Hawaii, Its Stamps and Postal History (Meyer, 1948), Honolulu’s first Postmaster, Henry M. Whitney, was appointed in 1850.”
- Strive to maintain the past tense when writing about history, and stick to the facts. In general, avoid speculating and making opinion statements.
- Do the best you can with the resources on hand. You may have got the job partly because you’re a detail-oriented perfectionist. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re occasionally overwhelmed by competing priorities and half-done tasks. Just do the best you can.
Don’t:
- Wear white, and wear beige or light gray only if you like taking risks. The day you wear white will be the day you receive a rusty circa 1900 cast-iron mailbox or a 19th century Post Office account book with a crumbling binding. Dirt- or rust-colored clothing — with a pattern or print, if you can pull it off — is best at hiding stains. Stick to machine-washable clothing, if possible.
- Wear skirts or dresses often, or at all. Pants are more practical. Efficiently managing artifacts and researching records in dusty archives at various shelf-heights may require bending and stooping.
- Take notes only on where you find the answer to your research question. Also note down all the places you looked, but didn’t find the answer — otherwise you may turn over the same stone in the future, again and again.
- Throw away your research notes. Save your notes. Even though 60% of your research results might not be immediately relevant, chances are they’ll come in handy someday.
That’s all I have for you, future me. Goodbye and good luck.
Jenny Lynch is the Historian and Corporate Information Services Manager for the United States Postal Service.
My name is Sherry D. Scott and I would like to apply for a postal historian position. I am an EAS-17 Supervisor in the Cleveland, Ohio Plant. I have a B. A. and M. A. in Liberal Arts from Ursuline College in Pepper Pike, Ohio.
It is my goal to use my degrees in the USPS, and it is one of my dreams to become a postal historian since I started my stamp collection at the age of 8 years old.
I would appreciate any information on how to apply for the position of a postal historian.
Thank you in advance,
Sherry D. Scott.