Introduction
The awarding of the contract for this new four-year period would lead to the most significant changes for Ralston; the settlement would not only be included as a stop on a new route, but would also acquire a new name when, in April of 1879, it would become known as Shakespeare.
As was the case with Route No. 8076 in 1857, where it has become accepted history that James E. Birch won the contract, so it has also become accepted history that the contract for the 1878 – 1882 period was won by the National Mail and Transportation Company. Again this was not so.
Advertisements for bids had appeared in November of 1877, and on March 20, 1878, the Post Office Department awarded the contract to John T. Chidester of Chidester and Co., Fort Smith, Arkansas, his being the lowest bid at $134,000. The contract was for Route No. 31454, from Fort Worth, Texas to Yuma, Arizona, seven times a week, to leave each terminus at 6:00 AM daily, to arrive at the opposite terminus within 17 days. Between El Paso and Tucson the route would include stops at Mesilla, Fort Cummings, Fort Bayard, Pinos Altos, Silver City and Apache Pass.¹³⁰ Ralston City/Shakespeare is not named, but was included in the route, as verified by various newspaper items which refer to passenger traffic between Silver City and Shakespeare.
Chidester broke the route into 4 Divisions as follows:
- Division 1 – Fort Worth to Fort Concho
- Division 2 – Fort Concho to Mesilla
- Division 3 – Mesilla to Tucson
- Division 4 – Tucson to Fort Yuma
He kept the first Division for himself and sub-contracted the other three. The National Mail and Transportation Company (NM&T Co.) were sub-contractors on Division 3, Mesilla to Tucson.¹³¹
The NM&T Co. had received its Certificate of Corporate Existence (certificate number 1323) on June 27, 1878. The Company was incorporated at St. Louis, Missouri, by James B. Price, Thomas B. Price and Frank H. Woodworth.¹³²
From the outset complaints flooded into Washington expressing dissatisfaction with the service provided by the new contractors, with the majority of complaints coming from residents of Arizona Territory. The common complaint was that under the new contractors it was taking longer for the mail to be delivered than it had under the previous contractors. Mail was now arriving at Tucson a day later than it had been, both from Yuma and Mesilla. One of the complainants wrote of the “ox-team gait” of the United States mail coaches, saying that it was now taking 108 hours for them to travel between Yuma and Tucson, and requesting that the rate of transport be increased to “60 hours from Yuma to Tucson, or five miles per hour to Fort Worth, Texas.”¹³³
Numerous Arizona luminaries wrote letters of complaint to the Postal Department at Washington, among them people such as Arizona Territorial Delegate Hiram S. Stevens, the former Governor of Arizona A. P. K. Safford, and Charles H. Lord, who wrote both in his capacity as partner in the firm of Lord and Williams, merchants at Tucson, and as Postmaster at Tucson. In his second letter, dated July 14, 1878, and addressed to D. M. Key, the Postmaster General, Lord writes:
Fifteen years ago the Overland Mail Company, run from here to San Francisco, Cal. in eight days (four-horse stages all the way); now the time is the same where there is only half the distance to be staged; from Yuma to San Francisco, Cal. is railroad … I beg, respectfully, that some means may be taken to give us a quicker mail from east to west.¹³⁴
The pleas, from not only Arizona but also California and Texas, had the desired effect. On August 5, 1878, the Postmaster General ordered that, as from the 15th of that month, the service on Route No. 31454 would be expedited, that is, it was ordered that the contractors must speed up the service. Each trip from one terminus to the other now had to be performed within 13 days. In order to purchase the extra stock and manpower deemed necessary by the contractors to fulfill this order, Chidester was granted a further $165,000 by the Postal Department.¹³⁵
In 1879, Second Assistant Postmaster-General Thomas J. Brady ordered an inspection of the mail service on the Fort Worth – Fort Yuma route. One of the Inspectors appointed was R. P. Eaton, Assistant Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service. It was he who reported on the Mesilla – Tucson Division.
Writing to Brady from Silver City on March 12, 1879, he describes the lack of cohesion between the various Divisions of the route, each “having its own schedule, regardless of the other.” Writing from Tucson on the 15th he reports on Division 3 operated by J. B. Price. He says that, between Fort Worth and Tucson, this is the best stocked so far, and gives details of how the service is provided:
Four-horse coaches are run every other day from Mesilla to Tucson, a distance of 345 miles, and the time 70 hours. On alternate days they have a horse-back service between Mesilla and Silver City, 120 miles, and from Silver City to Tucson, 225 miles, a buck-board service.
In a week or so the horse-back service will be replaced by a buck-board service…
At the end of this letter Eaton writes “the railroad is now at Stanwix, 74 miles by rail and 100 miles by the traveled road, east of Yuma, and trains running.” ¹³⁶
In Part Two of this Chapter, we will look at the arrival of the Southern Pacific Rail Road in southwestern New Mexico and how it led to the demise of mail being transported by stage coaches over the main east – west route, while at the same time leading to the establishment of new settlements alongside the rail road. In particular, we will look at the establishment of Lordsburg and Deming.
©2007-2023 Jim & Erica Parson
REFERENCES FOR THIS INSTALLMENT
¹³⁰House Of Representatives. Miscellaneous Document No. 31, 46th Congress, 2nd Session – Inquiry Into The Postal Star Service. In: Index To The Miscellaneous Documents Of The House Of Representatives For The Second Session Of The Forty-Sixth Congress, 1879-’80. In 6 Volumes. Volume 3. Page XXI. Washington: Government Printing Office (1880). Referred to hereafter as Miscellaneous Document No. 31.
¹³¹Ibid. Page 538.
¹³²Facsimile of Certificate of Corporate Existence for the National Mail and Transportation Company obtained from the Office of Secretary of State for Missouri.
¹³³Miscellaneous Document No. 31. Page XXIX.
¹³⁴Ibid. Pages XXIX – XXXI.
¹³⁵Ibid. Page XXI.
¹³⁶Ibid. Pages 542-543.
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