Adams Express Company

The pile of old papers handed down from generation to generation and now finding itself in my hands has quite a few folded scraps of yellowed paper–letters, clippings, recipes, and so forth–whose context and relevance I don’t know. They’re interesting in the own right, as artifacts from two centuries ago, and their endurance is fascinating. How have these old letters and receipts managed to survive for so long? And, more importantly, why have they survived for so long? I toss my own papers every day. If I should stuff a few of them into a vault for 150 years, will future generations be fascinated by them? Will they be imbued with importance merely because of their age?

I unfolded a scrap of paper that was a handwritten receipt from the Adams Express Company, marked Army and Soldiers Package Express. James S. Patterson was dropping a package off at the Perrysville office–now Port Royal, which I consider my hometown–on May 25, 1865. The package was to be shipped to McVeytown, just up the railroad tracks in Mifflin County.

James S. Patterson was brother to John Lyon Patterson, my great great great grandfather and husband of the aforementioned and wonderfully named Ellie Stoneroad Patterson. He’s family, but not an ancestor. And that makes me wonder why his receipt for a package sent in 1865 survived all these years, tucked into family correspondence and passed from one generation to the next, and down to me.

I don’t know what this package was. I don’t know why it was sent. And I don’t know why the receipt has survived all these years. Perhaps it was saved merely by accident, with each generation keeping it because it was a survivor. Whatever the case, its story was taken to the grave, probably more than a century ago. And it will continue to survive, because I am surely not going to throw it away as merely an insignificant piece of paper. After all, it’s lasted this long.