United States Postal Museum Marshall, Michigan
The United States Postal Service Museum is the second largest Postal Service museum in the U.S., second in size only to the National Postal Museum.
At left is an Annex to the Postal Museum which is located across the street from Marshall Middle School.
To visit the U.S. Post Office Museum, which is in the basement of the main post office is by appointment only. Call 269-781-2859.
The museum is located in the basement of the United States Post Office and can be accessed through the entrance on Madison Street. The Post Office building, a Greek Revival architectural style with a copper roof, was constructed in 1932 of Marshall sandstone. The interior may be viewed during regular post office hours. The idea for the downstairs museum occurred during Marshall’s 1987 historic home tour. At that time postmaster Mike Schragg displayed a number of old postal artifacts throughout the building. Many people thought that the entire post office was a museum rather than an official working post office. After the tour Mike Schragg began organizing the collection of postal antiques in the basement.
Source: http://www.michigan.org/property/michael-w-schragg-post-office-and-us-postal-museum
Hours: Open by Appointment.
Admission: $5.00 (Group rates on request).
Curator: Michael Schragg
Housed in a 1932 Works Progress Administration post office building, this museum building is an architectural gem. Collecting for this museum began in 1987, and has grown into the second largest Postal Service Museum in the country.
As you wander through the six rooms of the museum, you will experience two centuries of postal history, including:
* Old post office window units and lock boxes
* Early 1900s horse-drawn mail buggies
* Inner-workings of a railway mail car
* The first postage stamp and earlier stamps
* V-mail (WWII letters)
* A 1931 Model A mail truck
* Photographs of ancestors who pioneered mail delivery
US Postal Museum. 202 East Michigan Ave., Marshall, Michigan
269 781 2859. By appointment only. A wonderful collection of Postal memorabilia housed in the Marshall Post Office. This unique museum shows life has changed in the past century and a half. Second largest in US, 6 rooms and annex building with 3 mail buggies and 3 vehicles on display.
Source: facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/USPostalServiceMuseum/
Beth Martin is the Marshall postmaster. Her father Michael Schragg was the postmaster for twenty-five years. He started the museum in 1988 and when he retired, he stayed on as curator of the museum. Schragg began by purchasing a brass mailbox and other items. Some of the items were in the historic Marshall post office in the historic town. Martin says, as people in other post offices started hearing about it, they would say, ‘Oh do you have one of these? Do you have one of those?’ And, so they would start sending things to him.
Martin says that when people come through on tours, they sometimes donate and that is what is keeping this museum running.
Source: http://wmuk.org/post/neither-snow-nor-rain-museum-shows-what-it-took-get-your-mail
MARSHALL – Mike Schragg is truly a man of letters.
He’s also a man of postcards, even those made of leather and tree bark, and a man of stamps and of letter boxes that are made of metal and, yes, glass.
And he’s a man who knows and embraces and wants to share the history of the American postal system that at one time was the lifeline of a growing and endlessly curious country.
“This is my passion,” he said.
Indeed, Mike Schragg, the postmaster of the Marshall Post Office from 1979 to 2002, has the postal service in his blood and for nearly 20 years has also been the curator of the United States Postal Service Museum in the basement of the Marshall Post Office.