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Rural post offices remembered at Bushwhacker Museum
The imperiled status of small-town post offices has added urgency to the Bushwhacker Museum's work on an exhibit with artifacts from Montevallo, Richards, Horton and Metz.
Featuring the letters slot and 80 boxes, an old wooden structure from Metz known as a "postal unit" is so far the star of the display, along with a rural carrier's hackney carriage from Montevallo and a carrier's sorting desk and front window section from Richards and Horton.
"It is of great relevance at this time because they're talking about closing a lot of the rural post offices, including Metz's," Museum Coordinator Will Tollerton said Friday. "We certainly feel it is important to preserve some aspects of all the rural P.O.'s in Vernon County, if possible.
"Like the grocery stores and churches, they were the center of these small communities."
Showing postmarked letters from area towns of a half-century back and further, Tollerton said early-day stamps are another focus. "Stamp collecting was a big deal for many years," he said.
Madge Baze of Nevada, Metz' postmaster from 1953-1988, collaborated about donating the artifacts with her children, John of Rich Hill, Edward of Independence and Lora Johnson of Nevada, who took her mother's place in Metz and was later postmaster in Horton and Richards.
"There were a lot of people in Metz at one time," Madge said of the current-day town of 70 people 16 miles north-northeast of Nevada. "We had three grocery stores, two filling stations, two restaurants, a lumber yard, a barber shop and a pool hall.
"Until the early 1970s, my late husband Dryden published the last hand-set newspaper in Missouri, the Metz Times. Based on the volume of mail and income, we went from a fourth class post office to third class.
"We owned the building the post office was in and we had to buy our own boxes. We're glad the museum wanted to take it (the exhibit) because it was just sitting there."
Madge said Henry and Myrtle Ransom owned one of the grocery stores and the Geiger family another.
She said T.J. Longabaugh ran the lumber yard and one of the restaurants was Morrison's.
Two weeks ago, Bushwhacker volunteers and board members joined John Baze to load everything and take it to the 212 W. Walnut St. museum. They were Gary Headley, Ed Morris, Jim Erpenbach, Stafford Agee and Tom Ramsey.
Tollerton showed the mail hack driven by Jasper McCollom over the rough 12-mile route between Montevallo and Milo from 1924 until his death in the early 1930s. Tollerton said the RFD (Rural Free Delivery) system started in the 1890s and boasted 54,422 routes.
He said McCollom's children stored the black carriage with a cab in a shed until donating it in 2007. He said the carrier made $1,620 a year and provided the hack, which was drawn by two mule teams.
Like many Southwest Missouri towns, Metz got its name from post office-related deliberations.
According to the 2005 book "Nevada & Vernon County's Heritage," its original name, "Pleasant Valley," was rejected because another Missouri town had it. "Postmaster D.P. 'Uncle Dave' Swearingen in 1870 appointed three leading men to do the christening," the book says.
"A meeting was held, and though loath to give up Pleasant Valley, they decided to leave it to the good judgment of Uncle Dave, who favored a short name. He had been reading the Weekly Missouri Republican about the Franco-Prussian War and Gen. Archille Francois Bazaine's capitulation at Metz, France.
"Boys, I've got it!" he said. "Let's call 'er Metz."
"All right!" responded the men. "The postmaster pulled a jug from under the counter and passed it around, after which the dogs were called and all joined in a raccoon hunt in the Osage bottoms."
The 2005 compilation says the Metz area was settled when Jesse, Moses and Allen Summers came from Kentucky to Reed's Creek 1 1/2 miles east of present-day Metz in 1829. It is considered the county's first settlement.
A 1955 collection, "The Vernon County Story," says "Old Metz" was moved in 1890 to its current site to be near the Missouri Pacific Railroad.