This 1824 folded cover, offered as Lot 13007 in our Summer 2025 Auction, connects us to a prominent Newport family whose legacy helped shape the American postal system. Struck with a bold olive green Newport, Rhode Island datestamp and a fancy “FREE” in Old English letters handstamp, the cover is endorsed in manuscript by “Benj R Mumford Postmaster.” To understand the weight behind the Mumford family name, we have to look back to colonial America, to a time when the Mumford name stood for open defiance of British rule.

The King’s Mail

In 1691 King William III and Queen Mary II granted Thomas Neale the exclusive right to establish a North American postal system. The twenty-one-year patent empowered Neale:

“to erect, settle, and establish within the chief parts of their majesties’ colonies and plantations in America, an office or offices for receiving and dispatching letters and pacquets… under such rates and sums of money as the planters shall agree to give.”

The patent also allowed Neale to retain all profits from the postal operations, but notably exempted letters sent by merchants and others who chose to use private messengers. In practice, the arrangement was full of loopholes, as colonists routinely evaded Neale’s monopoly by relying on cheaper, faster local alternatives.

By 1707, the Crown had absorbed Neale’s patent into the British Post Office, placing all colonial mail under the authority of the Postmaster General in London. The message was clear: only the Crown could carry the mail.

In the colonies, that system was enforced by royal appointees, including Benjamin Franklin, who served as Joint Postmaster General of North America from 1753 to 1774. But as revolutionary tensions grew, Franklin’s sympathies shifted toward the Patriot cause, and the Crown dismissed him. His replacement was Hugh Finlay, a loyalist postal inspector sent to investigate just how much control the British mail system still had in the rebellious colonies.

Finlay’s 1773–74 journal paints a clear picture of the Crown’s waning grip. Across the colonies, locals bypassed official post offices, preferring to send letters with friends, travelers, and independent carriers. In Newport, Rhode Island, he encountered a particularly bold example of this resistance:

“There’s two Post offices in New Port, the King’s and Mumford’s, and the revenue of the last is the greatest.”

Finlay would also go on to say,

It is common for people who expect letters by Post finding none at the Post office to say ‘well there must be letters, we’ll find them at Mumfords.

The Rebel Riders of Newport

The “Mumford” named in Hugh Finlay’s report was that of Benjamin Mumford, and his relative, Peter Mumford, who operated an unauthorized mail service that directly competed with the official Crown post office. Their operation was fast, affordable, and extremely popular, especially with Newport locals who saw no reason to pay the King’s rates or trust his messengers.

That defiance soon found official support. In June 1775, the Rhode Island General Assembly, effectively declaring postal independence, appointed Benjamin and Peter Mumford as official post-riders:

It is further Voted and Resolved, That Mr. Peter Mumford be, and he is hereby, appointed the Post-Rider from Newport to Providence; and Mr. Benjamin Mumford the Post-Rider from Newport to New-London.

Rhode Island’s legislature wasn’t just hiring couriers. It was building its own communication network, separate from British control. Their orders made that distinction explicit:

They be and they are hereby directed not to receive or deliver any letters from or to any post office heretofore established in this colony.

In other words, the Mumfords were now riding for Rhode Island, but they were forbidden from handling any mail connected to the King’s post offices. The Assembly had taken a family of postal outlaws and made them official agents of the Patriot cause.

In the summer of 1813 Benjamin Mumford Sr. was intercepted by the Royal Navy while carrying letters from the southern colonies. He was aboard the HMS Rose when British forces seized his mailbag and discovered it contained communications from the Continental Congress.

The incident was widely reported. A letter sent to Benjamin Franklin on May 10, 1775, reported:

The Capt. of the Rose man of war had stopp’d a Post Rider, one Mumford, coming from the Southward, opened his mail, and found in it letters from the Congress.

The story made its way into both the New York Gazette (August 21, 1775) and the Pennsylvania Gazette (August 23, 1775), and is referenced in the Naval Documents of the American Revolution, Vol. I, p. 1197.

Despite being detained and searched by the Crown, Mumford continued riding. For him, and for others like him, carrying mail outside royal oversight was more than a convenience. It was an act of resistance, and one that helped lay the groundwork for an American postal system.

From Outlaw to Postmaster

After the war, the Mumford name faded from the headlines. The family remained a prominent family in town as the new American government took shape and the U.S. Post Office replaced the old royal system.

In 1813, the story comes full circle. Benjamin B. Mumford, the son of the rebel post-rider, was appointed Postmaster of Newport. The British once seized his father’s mail as evidence of rebellion. Now, Benjamin B. Mumford was signing his name on behalf of the United States government. He served as Newport’s postmaster from 1813 until his death in 1827, managing the mails from a house he purchased in town, a building that doubled as the local post office throughout his tenure.

Postal History Brought to Life

This folded letter is a tangible connection to a fascinating story of a family who helped shaped the American postal system. From carrying rebel correspondence under threat of arrest to managing official government dispatches, the Mumford family spanned both sides of American independence.

This cover will be featured in our upcoming Summer 2025 sale, alongside 930+ other exciting lots! Be sure to Register to Bid!