For more than two decades, Lucinda Annie Robertson carried the United States mail through Pleasantville, Iowa, in one of the simplest ways imaginable: with a wheelbarrow.
Four times each day, regardless of season or weather, Robertson reportedly pushed the mail from the Pleasantville Post Office to the railroad station about a mile away. She had begun the work when her husband, who held the government contract to transport the mail, became ill and could no longer perform the job himself.
Because Robertson could not physically carry the heavy mail loads, she improvised. She placed the sacks in a wheelbarrow and pushed them to the train.
What began as a temporary solution became a way of life. Her husband eventually became a permanent invalid, and Robertson continued fulfilling his mail contract while also caring for him at home. After his death, the federal government allowed her to keep the route.
By 1902, Robertson was 71 years old and had reportedly been making the trip four times a day for 21 years.
The job paid only $100 annually, yet the income represented nearly all she had to live on.
Despite her age and the physical strain of the work, Robertson said she intended to keep carrying the mail for the rest of her life.
There were days, however, when determination alone barely seemed enough. After decades of pushing the same wheelbarrow over the same mile of road, she admitted that sometimes she felt as though she could not manage another step.
Mail By Wheelbarrow
PLEASANTVILLE, Iowa. — Four times daily for 21 years, summer and winter, in fair weather and foul, Lucinda Annie Robertson has trundled a wheelbarrow bearing the United States mail from the Post Office in Pleasantville, Iowa to the railroad a mile away.
She took the job when her husband, who had the contract to carry the mail, fell ill and because she couldn’t carry the load she introduced the wheelbarrow.
When her husband became a confirmed invalid, she kept the contract for him and nursed him, too, and at his death the government wouldn’t take the job away from her. It is worth just $100 a year and it is almost all her living.
She is now 71, but she vows she’ll carry the mail till she dies.
“But some days,” she says, “it seems as though I could never drag myself and that old barrow another step.”
Source: The Olneyville Times. Olneyville, Providence, R.I. January 17, 1902.
