July 28th – King & Queen Co. Historical Society Meeting

The King & Queen County Historical Society invites the public to its quarterly meeting on Sunday, July 28th at 3:00. Andrew Graff, a land surveyor and historian, will speak about “Early Postal Service in King & Queen County”. The early post offices in the county were usually located in general merchandise stores at crossroads and were frequently named after the proprietor of the store, or sometimes by the name of the locality. When the U.S. Postal Service centralized the routing procedures in the 1920s, they required the post offices within each state to be uniquely named. It was at that time that the county lost a few of the traditional post office names because they duplicated post offices in other localities. Thus Centerville was renamed Shacklefords and Buena Vista was renamed Cologne. Most of these post offices have disappeared as the U.S. Postal Service continues to consolidate. Mr. Graff’s presentation will provide a greater clarity to the early role of the post office service.

Andrew Graff is a collector of early postal history for several eastern Virginia counties. His surveying firm Old Albemarle Surveying, LLC, is located in Charlottesville where he has been a past member of the Albemarle-Charlottesville Historical Society.

The meeting will be held in the Courtroom of the Administration Building, King & Queen Court House, VA 23085. Refreshments will follow in the Tavern Museum.