Item of ephemera with name Carrie Roby

This item of ephemera has ingredients for a recipe handwritten on a note paper that was stored in a postal ledger used at the Rocheport, Missouri, Post Office. The ingredients include eggs, sugar, jelly, flour, and sour cream. The name“Carrie Roby” is written at the end of the list; Carrie Robby Boggs (1889-1985) was a resident of Rocheport, Missouri like the postmasters Lou and Mary Slade who used this ledger to keep recipes and household hints. The paper appears to have another postal connection--it is stamped on the reverse, “St. L. & Parsons TR 6 / Jan 5 / F Schachle,” which refers to the St. Louis, Missouri, and Parsons, Kansas, railroad, and this appears to be a railway mail service stamp of clerk named F. Schachle.

Post Office Department form 1564 was issued to postmasters with the instruction that: "This book is for the use of postmasters at Rural Free-Delivery Offices to enter the names of the patrons and to record changes of address." This single volume contains several pages listing names of the local patrons on mail routes served by the Rocheport Post Office in Boone County, Missouri. Pages of the account book were also used for personal records kept by two female postmasters in the early and mid-twentieth century. One or both of postmaster Lou Slade (1859-1938) and her daughter Mary Slade (1886-1956), who succeed in the appointment, handwrote recipes in this ledger and stored clippings from newspapers, magazines, and other forms of ephemera about home economics.

The two women held the position of postmaster between 1908 and 1956 (Although the title postmistress was also sometimes used in news articles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in reference to women who held this job, that was not the official Post Office Department title.). They followed a long line of postmasters in the family at the Rocheport, Boone County, Missouri, Post Office that was established in 1833. The first in the family to be postmaster was grocer William H. Phillips in 1854-1858. He was followed by his son-in-law William Slade in 1861, during the American Civil War. He was succeeded by two postmasters, but following his death in 1869, his widow Susan M. (Phillips) Slade was appointed Rocheport’s postmaster by President Ulysses S. Grant and held the position until 1901. William and Susan’s son, also named William, became postmaster that year. Lou A. (Stickell) Slade came into the job in 1908 shortly after her husband William died. She worked as postmaster until 1938 when her daughter Mary Slade became postmaster at the very same post office from 1938-1956. Within the pages of the logbook the female postmasters Lou and Mary Slade mixed traditional domestic labor of cook and housekeeper with official duties for their postal jobs.

References:

“Blue Genes: Family of Postmasters Recognized for Service.” June 28, 2022. https://link.usps.com/2022/06/28/blue-genes/.

United State Postal Service. "Postmaster Finder.” Accessed March 3, 2023. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/postmasters-by-city.htm

Western Historical Company (Saint Louis Mo). History of Boone County Missouri: Written and Comp. from the Most Authentic Official and Private Sources; Including a History of Its Townships Towns and Villages Together with a Condensed History of Missouri; the City of St. Louis ... Biographical Sketches and Portraits of Prominent Citizens. St. Louis: Western Historical Company, 1882. (Page 1056-1057.)