Mail Delivery Time in the Early 1800s
In the early 1800s a Philadelphia merchant kept records of the time it took for him to receive his mail from both Cincinnati and New Orleans. He provided the United States Gazette a copy of his records in 1832 to show how the delivery time changed over the years. While this is certainly not an exhaustive analysis (based on a sample of only one!), graphing the changes does show how improving transportation systems in America during that time significantly decreased (at least for this east coast merchant) the time it took to receive his mail from two distant cities. In most cases the merchant received his mail from the two cities between the minimum and maximum days as represented for each year. The plots were made in R using dumbbell plots in ggplot2.
According to the plot below, between 1819 and 1823 it could take up to 20 days for mail to travel from Cincinnati to Philadelphia. Beginning in 1824 the maximum days began to decrease so that by 1832 the maximum delivery time was less than ten days, half of what it was only ten years earlier. By 1832 it could take as little as five days. The decrease in delivery time is reflective of improved travel across Pennsylvania and Maryland to the Ohio River in Pittsburgh, and also vastly improved steamboat travel down the river to Cincinnati.
Given the longer distance between New Orleans and Philadelphia, there was a much wider delivery time than from Cincinnati. Notice in the plot below how the delivery time went up from 1822 to 1827, but after 1827 it dropped significantly for similar reasons. It is unclear why between 1824 and 1826 delivery could be done in as little as 12 days.
