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The Post Office
"One had only to stroll
past the little country post-office to feel the
glamour of the place and meet a host of
interesting characters. In those days the
post-office was little more architecturally than
a magnified dog kennel, but at nine o'clock of a
summer morning it was the social centre for an
animated half hour or more.
The smart equipages of
summer residents were drawn up in front of it.
Old family carryalls loaded with children in
care of their black mammies jointed the
procession, and pretty girls and their escorts
on horseback drew rein in the shade of the
locusts arching the road.
One half expected to
find "Mars' Chan" and "Meh Lady" among them, for
the families represented here were sprung from
the old Virginia stock and showed their birth
and breeding both in feature and in charm of
manner.
There was much visiting
back and forth among the carriages while they
waited. Picnics and parties were planned,
invitations given and accepted, recipes
exchanges and gossip passed from group to
group."Annie
Fellows Johnston,
In her autobiography,
Land of the Little Colonel (1929)
So many scenes in the Little Colonel stories take
place at the Lloydsboro (Pewee) Valley post office.
Records show a Post Office was established at Pewee Valley,
Kentucky on February 8, 1856. It was discontinued on
February 18, 1861, re-established on March 1, 1861;
discontinued on November 2, 1861; and re-established
November 26, 1861.
Early maps show that the post office was originally
located at the railroad station.
But for most of the Little Colonel stories anyway, the post office
was just across the square and a little way down Central Avenue.
You'd pass it on the way to The Beeches
and Edgewood.
Fannie Craig (Miss Allison, center) and Mrs. Henry Lawton (Mrs.
Walton, right) at the post office
(during the Little Colonel days)
Charles Calvert, early postmaster
From The Little
Colonel at Boarding School,
Chapter 5
From the depot it
was but a few steps to the post-office. One had only to cross
the road, pass the country store, and stroll a short distance
along the shady avenue. There it sat by the wayside, a little
box of a room, that always made Lloyd think of a dove-cote; for
the first time she had been taken there her grandfather had
explained that all the little square places where Miss Mattie
was putting the letters were pigeonholes. Presently when Miss
Mattie opened the window and handed him a letter from one of
those places, she cried out with a little squeal of delight
which made every one smile, "Oh, white pigeon wing flied out fo'
you, grand- fathah!"
Afterward it grew to be a byword that they
always used between themselves, when one carried home a letter
for the other. "Pigeon wing for grandpa's baby," he would call
fondly, even when she had
grown to be a tall girl; and "White pigeon
wing flied out fo' you, grandfathah deah was the cry if she were
the bearer of the missive.
From the post-office door, looking
across the road to a grassy ridge beyond, one could see the big
inn that the year before had been turned into a home for old
Confederate soldiers. Farther on was the wide green slope of the
churchyard, and the little stone church with its ivy-covered
belfry. The manse stood just behind it. Next to that was the
cottage with the high green gables and diamond-shaped
window-panes, where the Waltons had lived one summer while their
new house was being built. And next to the cottage was the new
house itself, set away back in the great grove of trees which
gave to the place the name of "The Beeches."
From The Little
Colonel's Knight Comes Riding,
Chapter 5
The road in front
of the post-office was almost blocked with carriages. On summer
mornings like this nearly every one in the Valley found some excuse
to be at the station when the mail train came in; for while they
waited for the delivery window to open, there was time not only to
attend to the day's marketing, but to meet all one's friends. At
such times the little box of a post-office was the very centre of
neighbourhood sociability, and since everybody knew
everybody else, the gathering was as informal as a family reunion.
At some point, but still during the lifetime of Annie
Fellows Johnston and possibly before the end of the Little Colonel
stories, the simple old post office was replaced with a somewhat larger
building as seen below, probably during the 1920s:
From left to right: Lilian Fletcher Brackett, Virginia Hoge San,
Charlotte Matthews Osbourne, Hollie Jacob, Annie Fellows
Johnston, Dr. Peyton Hoge, Mary G Johnston, Donald Jacob.
Photos by Kate Matthews.
Even this post office did not survive the progress
of the 20th Century. It was eventually demolished and the site
is now the entrance drive to St. Aloysius Church.
The following is a list of Pewee Valley postmasters and
their dates of appointment from 1856 to 1945 (taken from
an exhibit posted at the current Pewee Valley Post Office on
Highway 146). We believe that Postmistress Mary Calvert,
sister of Postmaster Charles Calvert, may have been Annie
Fellows Johnston's model for "Miss Mattie," the postmistress
in the "Little Colonel" stories.
- Charles F. Smith February 8,
1856
- Francis M. Crow August 28, 1857
- Samuel H. Crum November 23,
1858
- Thomas Smith November 23,
1858
- William H. Hudson April 9, 1861
- William Butler November 8,
1861
- Luther Howard November 26,
1861
- William J. White April 3, 1866
- Henry M. Woodruff February 13, 1871
- Charles A. Calvert September 9,
1889
- William N. Jurey May 3, 1893
- Charles A. Calvert June 21, 1897
- Mary Calvert June 26,
1897
- Charles A. Calvert April 16, 1907
- E.H. Swann April 25,
1914
- Anna B. Lipscomb March 5, 1919
- Anna D. Shelman November 4,
1920
- Charles W. Robinson February 22, 1922
- Imogene Baumuster-Kilgus July 16, 1935
- Cornelia L. Snyder January 25,
1945
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The
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House Party
The Little Colonel's
Holidays
The Little Colonel's Hero
The Little Colonel
at Boarding-School
The Little Colonel in
Arizona
The Little
Colonel's Christmas Vacation
The Little Colonel, Maid of
Honor
The Little Colonel's
Knight Comes Riding
Mary Ware, The Little Colonel's
Chum
Mary Ware in Texas
Mary Ware's Promised Land
Check our home page for more titles by AFJ on other sites
The People & Characters:
The Little Colonel, Papa
Jack and Mrs. Sherman, The
Old Colonel, Two Little
Knights of Kentucky,
Two Little Knights of Kentucky(2),
Uncle Sidney & Aunt
Elise, parents of the Two Little Knights of Kentucky,
Grandmother McIntyre,
Aunt Allison, The
Waltons, Rob and Anna
Moore, Betty,
Joyce Ware,
Jack Ware, Mom Beck,
Walker, Katherine Marks,
Gay Melville,
The Lees of Arizona,
Small Parts
Their Final Resting Places
The Places: in Pewee (Lloydsboro) Valley:
Map,
Map 2,
Where it all began, The Locust,
The Beeches
Edgewood,
The Little Colonel's Cottage,
The Railroad Station,
"Lloydsboro Seminary",
Clovercroft, The
Post Office, Churches,
The Haunted House at Hartwell Hollow,
Confederate Home
Rollington,
Minor Places In Old Louisville:
The Culbertson
Mansion, "Home of a Hero" Elsewhere:
The Cuckoo's Nest (Indiana),
Lee's Ranch,
Camelback Mountain &
Hole-in-Rock (Arizona),
San Antonio and
The Little Town of Bauer (Boerne),
Texas,
The Gate of the Giant Scissors (France)
Letters from Annie
Fellows Johnston and "Mrs Walton"
Scrapbook
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Cooking with The Little Colonel
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