Finding Aids for
Post Office Department Records
at the
National Archives & Records Administration

by Mike Ludeman

The National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC holds millions of individual records relating to the United States Post Office Department. These records are organized into NARA Record Group 28. Some of these records have been digitized, and may be found on the NARA website, while others can be found on Stamp Smarter.

However, knowing what records might exist, and how they might be useful in your research, is often difficult. To assist the novice (and even the experienced) researcher, NARA produced a series of Finding Aids back in the 1950s to describe and summarize many of these records relating to the Post Office, and the Postmaster Generals and their Assistants.

I’ve never found these detailed Finding Aids on the NARA website, so I have brought them here to Stamps Smarter for the philatelic community to use to begin their research. The information found within these documents can assist the researcher look further on the NARA website to see if some of these have been digitized and made available on-line.

Click on drawer below to download PDFs.


Records of the Post Office Department
    Arthur Hecht, NARA: 1961
Download
Records of the Office of the Postmaster General
    Arthur Hecht; Revised by Forrest R. Holdcamper NARA: 1957
Download
Records of the Office of the First Assistant Postmaster General
    Frank J. Nevert & Arthur Hecht, NARA: 1951
Download
Records of the Office of the Second Assistant Postmaster General
    Arthur Hecht, NARA: 1955
Download
Records of the Office of the Third & Fourth Assistant Postmaster General
    Arthur Hecht, NARA: 1959
Download
Master Location Register for RG 28 NARA, 1990s Download
War Department Collection of Civil War Records
     Elizabeth Bether, NARA, 1957
Download