[On July 26,
1775, the Second Continental Congress established
the United States postal system. So this week for the 250th
anniversary I’ll AmericanStudy that moment and other histories and stories of
the USPS, leading up to a weekend tribute to these vital federal workers!]
On three
figures who helped shape the short-lived but enduringly iconic Western
mail route.
1)
Alexander
Majors: The Pony Express was founded by a trio of
Missouri businessmen, co-owners of a freight and drayage company: William
Russell, Alexander Majors, and William Waddell. But it was Majors who brought
his distinct identity and perspective most fully to the enterprise: he was
deeply religious, and required every Pony Express rider to carry a special-edition
Bible and sign
an oath “before the Great and Living God” that they would “under no circumstances,
use profane language, … drink no intoxicating liquors,” and so on. Given the stereotypes
of the Wild West and its occupants, images to which I would argue our cultural collective
memories of the Pony Express have often
been connected, this founding fact reminds us that histories are always
distinct from the mythos.
2)
Johnson
William “Billy” Richardson: The identity of the first Pony Express rider is
disputed by historians, with Johnny Fry the other
most likely candidate. By even if he wasn’t the definitive “first,” Billy
Richardson was unquestionably one of the handful of riders who inaugurated the
Westbound route (from Missouri to California) in April
1860, after a formal ceremony in St. Joseph, Missouri which featured
speeches by Russell and Majors along with St. Joseph Mayor M. Jeff Thompson. Moreover,
Richardson rode for the Express for its entire 18 months of operation, and
then, coincidentally but symbolically, passed away from pneumonia just a few
months after the Express went out of business in late 1861. He was buried at
Fort Laramie, a Pony Express station in Wyoming, one more telling connection
between this foundational
rider and the route’s iconography.
3)
William
F. Cody: That hyperlinked Wyoming History article traces two equally true
yet also directly contradictory facts: William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody is
without question the most famous Pony Express rider; and yet Cody never rode
for the Pony Express. As with so much of Cody’s
mythos, and of course the Wild West mythos overall, this particular myth
was very much self-constructed, with Cody frequently telling and retelling the
story of an iconic Pony Express ride he undertook at the tender age of 14. And
that story became an enduring one in the legacies of both Cody and the Pony
Express, as illustrated by author Elmer Sherwood’s
1940 children’s biography Buffalo
Bill and the Pony Express. Perhaps including Cody in this post will
mean that the fictitious association continues, but I don’t think we can
AmericanStudy the Pony Express without including such defining and enduring
myths.
Next
USPStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Postal histories or stories you’d share?
