Waterford holds onto its post office in Lower Waterford, which serves people across a wide area, even some in New Hampshire. In the 1800s the town had four post offices: Upper Waterford, then simply called Waterford (the location's under Moore Dam Reservoir now), Lower Waterford, Gaskill (in a house on Route 18 near Stiles Pond), and West Waterford on Duck Pond Road.
A recent response to a post on this blog started a conversation about the West Waterford one, and the person writing to us said, "It's a piece of furniture and it's in my mother's home in western Massachusetts." Of course, calling a post office a piece of furniture was wild -- but understandable, since what the correspondent meant was that her family has the sorting cupboard from the old West Waterford post office. The family descends from the Carpenter branch who hosted this post office in the past:
West Waterford [Post Office], Caledonia County, Vermont
Established on January 5, 1856
Discontinued on February 28, 1902 (mail to Saint Johnsburg) [sic]
Reestablished on April 8, 1902
Discontinued on June 30, 1905 (mail to Saint Johnsburg) [sic]
Postmasters Appointment Dates
Through June 30, 1905
Amos B. Carpenter January 5, 1856
James W. Curtis April 21, 1862
Amos B. Carpenter October 31, 1862
Edwin L. Hovey December 11, 1863
Amos B. Carpenter August 25, 1864
Cosbi B. Carpenter August 13, 1884
Cosbi B. Carpenter (Reappointed) April 8, 1902
Mabel H. Carpenter July 16, 1903
Here is Amos Bugbee Carpenter, from Men of Vermont:
And here is the "piece of furniture" mentioned -- we are so grateful to the family for sharing these images with us:
The correspondent also shared this portrait of Ezra Carpenter, a son of Amos B. Carpenter and Cosbi Bowman Carpenter and husband of Mabel Hovey Carpenter, the last postmaster for this office.
Just for fun, here are many of the family members (you can find Ezra, can't you?) in a collage image from Amos B. Carpenter's own book, A Genealogical History of the Rehoboth Branch of the Carpenter Family in America ... (1898).
