Tacoma Post Office Unit, Sign Donated to Watt Center
Mrs. Lela Skinner Bailey, postmistress, hand stamped envelopes for a final time at the U.S. Tacoma Post Office on November 30, 1963.
Now 62 years later, the post office unit that rested on a table in her kitchen and the post office sign are part of the local history collection at the Watt Center for History and the Arts.
Longtime Tacoma residents, Dan and Sandy Kemp Mumma, were, until recently, caretakers of the postal unit. It was an ideal collector’s piece for Sandy who served stints as postmaster at the Bethesda and Barnesville post offices.
Tacoma native and resident Marie Bundy has carefully protected the sign that was attached to the wall of the side porch of Bailey’s home until the office was closed. These items join the Tacoma postal stamp that was donated to the Watt Center in 1995.
The final day of operation at the Tacoma Post Office was dutifully recorded in photos and words in a front-page article titled “Tacoma Post Office is Closed” in the former Barnesville Enterprise.
The Tacoma Post Office opened on February 16, 1887, with William Stanton as the first postmaster, according to Emma E. Laughlin in her 1941 book, A Study of the Origin of Places Names of Belmont County, Ohio With Some Early History.
After the post office was shuttered by the U.S. Postal Service, the post office unit was relegated to the the barn until an estate auction about 45 years ago. At the Watt Center, the reunited artifacts will join other postal history items paying homage to U.S. and local postal history.
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