Essays on Sussex County and New Jersey Postal History

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SUSSEX POs ~ Len PeckAfter 1900, eleven new post offices opened in the County, of which only four remain.Culvers was established in 1903 and closed in 1904. It reopened as Culver’s Lake in 1914, onlyto close again in 1915. Cuttoff opened and closed in 1915. It was located in the same vicinity asLincoln, but Lincoln had closed in 1891. Greendell (which replaced Cuttoff in 1915) is currentlystill active. Lake Wawayanda opened in 1916 and closed in 1919. Hopatcong, opened in 1918,is still active. Sperry Springs opened in 1922 and closed 1966. Cranberry Lake opened in 1926and closed 1961, operating as a branch of Andover. Byram Cove opened in 1928 and closed in1958. Glasser opened in 1933, and is still active. Finally, Highland Lakes, opening 1951, isactive today. [11]The post office at Highland Lakes which opened on September 1st, 1951 was the last Sussexpost office to open with full post office status. The Montague post office which was reactivated in1981 is really a branch of the Branchville post office and thus does not have full post office status.From February 29th 1908 until 1981, Montague was serviced by the post office in Port Jervis, N.Y.A post office was also opened on September 9 th , 1988 at a new location in Tranquilityafter that area was serviced for a year and a half by the post office at Greendell. As this hiatuswas only a temporary situation, Tranquility retained its full status with its own postmaster whileoperating out of the Greendell post office.From the establishment of the first post office in Sussex County, on June 12 th , 1792 untilNovember 1 st , 2008, one hundred and forty-one post offices were authorized. This includes thevarious name changes and reactivations of the same post office (those closed and then reopenedat some later date), and the 16 offices now part of Warren. If reestablishments of the same postoffice, and name changes of the same post office are removed (53), there have been in total 88different post offices in Sussex. On November 1, 2008, there were twenty-five activelyoperating post offices, and one operating branch post office (i.e., Montague) in Sussex County.In Table 3 on the following pages, each post office is listed with its date of establishmentand year of closing, as well as what became of it. Post offices that became part of WarrenCounty are listed only through 1824, and are grayed out. We have not attempted to follow theirhistory. For each post office, we have assigned a reference number (at left), in order to make iteasy to find another listing. Many post offices were opened and closed more than once, and inthose cases, we have indicated by use of those reference numbers (in the far right column)where further listings of that post office will be found. An asterisk before a post office nameadditionally indicates that it was listed previously; if that was under a different name, the nameis given in parentheses; reference numbers at right will also aid in finding both previous andlater listings.Some post offices had slight name changes [e.g., Hamburg to Hamburgh and back];others had significant changes, and those are listed below:Sussex Court House >Newtown>NewtonDeckertown, Deckerstown >SussexTrade Valley>Hardwick>FredonPleasant Valley>BalesvilleSandyston>HainesvilleCoursenville>WykertownGreenville>Lincoln>Cuttoff>GreendellBeemersville>Wantage>BeemervilleGratitude>Hunt’s Mills>Huntsburgh>HuntsburgStockholm>Petauket>StockholmNorth Vernon>GlenwoodKays >Beaver LakeNJPH 202Vol. 36/No. 4November 2008 Whole No. 1725