The Postmaster Finder

The Postmaster Finder is a useful database if you are researching U.S. Postmasters or Post Offices. You can look up a Postmaster by city or search the database by Postmaster name. This database has entries from 1971 or in some cases, earlier. Another interesting part of this website is links to other useful resources for researching the postal service at the National Archives.

The Postmaster Finder database can be found at: https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/

To find the Postmaster in a city, select the link Postmasters by City

I searched for New York, New York.

And was rewarded with 96 entries (on 5 pages of results), going back to 1775.

If you know the name of the Postmaster and not where their Post Office was, you find out where they served by selecting the link Where Served to search for Postmasters by name.

The link for County and the link for State will let you search for Post Offices in those locations. Be sure to read the notes to the right of the search fields because they give helpful hints about how to search and what may not be included.

Another feature allows searching for locations by a range of ZIP Codes. To search by ZIP Code use the first 3 digits of the from ZIP Code and to ZIP Code. In the example below, I searched using the first three digits of a ZIP Code where I had lived in both the From and To fields.

The FAQ is worth exploring for suggestions to learn additional information about Post Offices, such as the origin of their name or their original locations. https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/postmaster-finder/postmaster-finder-faq.htm

One answer has a reference to the paper ” What’s in a (Post Office) Name?” found at:

https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/post-office-names.pdf

“Sources of Historical Information on Post Offices, Postal Employees, Mail Routes, and Mail Contractors” can be found at: https://about.usps.com/publications/pub119.pdf

Enjoy researching your Postmaster ancestors!