Good evening. Thanks so much for coming out my name is andy grayville director of the Clemen Center for southwest studies here at smu let me start by thanking many people or at least a few of them who have helped make this evening possible starting m with our friend at the center for president ial history withor whom are cosponsoring this event tonight. Particularly jeffrey ankle Brian Franklin and ron that spitz i want to thank ruth and who coordinates things on our end for the Clemen Center so my pleasure to introduce Cameron Blevins who braved last nights weather to fly in from denver teaches digital humanities at the university of colorados campus in the mile high city before moving to front range he was assistant professor of history at Northeastern University in boston, and a core faculty member at the schools mu lab for text map and networks. They learned last night cameron is a nativity of the nutmeg state for those of you anybody knows what that is number of you ii was hoping i ws going to be able to enlighten you. Although he bolted for palm trees and sunny skies of Southern California when he study at Pomona College as an undergraduate. He liked west so much that he moved up interstate 5 to stanford where he completed his ph. D. In history and in 2015. He is already boasted impressive publication record and tonight hes here to discuss with us his most significant accomplishment to date just paper trails the u. S. Post in the making of the American West. Published earlier this year by Oxford University press. Following lecture cameron will be happy to take your questions afterwards for books to purchase outside i think the drill is to buy them outside and then to bring them back here so cameron can sign them. So pleads joine me in welcoming Cameron Blevins. [applause] all rightl i think im all set here can everyone hear me all right justan wanted to make sure thank you so much for coming here tonight also i want to start by just thanking andy, obviously, in the Clemens Center for inviting me along with Brian Franklin and center for president ial history. Ruthnt and elmore has been fabulous organizing this so i want toan thank that and thank l of you for coming. Before i get started can i get a show of hands here how many folks have sent or received a handwritten letter ince the last two . Weeks . Okay. How many folks have been to their post office in the last two weeks . Okay. How many folks collect stamps . Im in trouble. Okay. Just getting sense for where everyone is coming from and interest here so i wanted to see what that was like first. Oh, good so were actuall going to start and slightly dichght place that is the Salt River Valley in central arizona. It istr about 100 miles east of present day phoenix, and were going backk in time to september of 1886, obviously, its arizona in september so the extremely hot it isly about 100 degrees ot september 8th, 1886. Wii going to zoom down to the house of benjamin and mary curtis in the middle of the Salt River Valley in the ranch and Benjamin Curtis is sitting there mary is napping and benjamin sits down to write a letter. Now, benjamins life at this point had involved kind of no existence actually born in ohio youngest of four siblings. Four excuse me three were orphans at a very young age kind of scattered to live with relatives across the country. Briefly served in civil war underage at the time was in the navy. After the war started moving west across the railroad eventually settled in Northern California worked as a store clerk spent some time trying to open up his own store. Made orange grove in Southern California, and then eventually relocated again to the middle of arizona to start a ranch this was in the 1880s. This is where he met mary 21yearold neighbor actually, and they got married after a very short courtship and a year later she gave birth. And this is when he sat down to write a letter. His letter is written to his two older sisters who lived in San Diego California at the time. And he wasan basically sharingne the news saying your little niece is sleepily nicely and mother is doing nice also last sunday at 1 30 we were happy by arrival and went on to report trying time for any mother and mary stood is bravely although it is 100 degrees here, now in this room, she was not complain but it is just a sweet as ever. And my personal favorite part, we think it is just a nice etion day to be born although it doesnt take after his father with plenty of hair on the top of its head as you can see beaning men had a pretty severe receding hair line and closed with the most touching part oh okay try that again. There we go. Now for its name. Mary says she shes dellia would do nicely and this letter was addressed to his older sisters and henry telling them theyre naming their baby after her aunt or excuse ment her aunts. This is especially poignant these again are orphans they lost their own parents the last remaining generation and this was the first member of the next generation. And this connection across arizona over to Southern California connecting these family members together this particular piece of paper here. Partrt of a collection of dozens and dozens of letters between the curtis siblings and housedded a Huntington Library in Southern California in pasadena i read every single one of these letters. And basically they span from 1840s orphaned all way to the 1890s to remarkable collection. These letters are many ways the paper trails of the past. And at the historians we come across paper trails all of the time. Everywhere often in our area like Huntington Library and were trained to read, analyze these pieces of paper right squeeze eachig and every one for every last bit of information. Every piece into the past and reward with richness of detail letters like this one offering these intimate glimpses into past lives. Experiences of long dead people. All right a new parent citying downwn in 100 degree heat to wre a letter cracking jokes about his hairline but also sharing his deeply meaningful moment with people he loves. But we are hittorians not recognizing exactly how paper trails were generated in cases oful letters in general that brd and butter of the Historical Archive understand thesece piece of paper t have to travel from point a to point b. That without this journey without this paper physically traveling from benjamins table in Salt River Valley to sister letter boxis about 400 miles awy this paper is just a scrap of paper that is what gives it meaning. And i noticed in reading all of these pieces of paper written by the excuse me the curtis siblings they kept mentioning other stuff. Other stuff thats passing between them, traveling through the mail. Mary and Benjamin Living on their ranch subscribe to half a dozen newspaper and magazines dofrom across the country from places like san francisco, chicago, new york, and nearby city in globe benjamin subscribe to american agriculturalist farming magazine mary subscribed to a womens magazine. All of this stuff and those letters they mention other things. Asking them to sending fiction but good. Sending by mail benjamin asked for mother and fathers photo. Mention them sending silk excuse me silk flannel napkin ring and suitable breast pin muslin a bundle of san diego papers all of this material traveling across that distance. And that provided all of these connections to benjamin and mary. And the importance of it grows even more remark whbl you stop for a second to zoom out and think about where theyre living at the time. I cannot drive home to you how remote Salt River Valley is. This is the rugged western back country that you see in hollywood films right . When he moved there two years he was a bachelor and he wrote all he had for company was cows and his horses and nearest doctor was 30 mile horse ride away in a city of globe. He was alone except that he wasnt the male connected him to the family that he left behind in the lighter world. All right he was able to use the male to stay connected. He wrote this letter in september 8th, three days later september 11th, he walked out his front door and walked about 15 minutes to the nearest post office less than a mile away. Dropped it off again on september 11th, four days later, on september 15th that showed up in the san diego post office. Four days to go from the middle ofas nowhere, arizona, to san diego right . Traveling again 400 miles away across mesa desert and mountains and unkedis up in hands of his sister. Allot of this means that that hd to travel across a network of offices and mail routes thatne connected these two placs that traveled across a network that wasas arguably most expanse Communication Network on the planet at the time the u. S. Post. So what i would like to argue here this is the core subject of my book is that you cannot understand the United States in the late 19th century and particular you cant understand this process of western expansion that define this era as millions of americans poured westward into all of these remote place like the Salt River Valley without understanding the role ofut the u. S. Post in this process. So a little context for you three years later postmaster general of the United States john is basically the head of the entire u. S. Postal system. Reported that in annual report to congress visible form of federal government to every Community Every citizen talk about about the u. S. Post the only one that toughs the local life, social interest, and Business Concern of every neighborhood. And went on to share 58,999 post offices and 669 rksz 766 kilometers of rail routs operating the United States. But what do those numbers mean right we can dismiss this as hyperbole a bureaucrat trying to advertise what his department is doing. And im wonder if i said 28,000 oror if i said 88,000 it probaby wouldnt have made that much of a difference to you. Were not that good at understanding some of these numbers when theyre operating at this scale. So a part of what my research has done is try to understand what some of these numbers mean. And to do that ive turned to a method broadly known as digital history this has a kind of loosey goosy umbrella term about using computers and technology to study, teach, or communicate about the past and some way. Now i think as this point if the last year and a half is taught usny anything in many ways we ae all digital historians interacting with the past learning about past in large part through screens but in my case of this project, i was specifically using data using quantitative data to try to conduct Research Look for patterns and then visualize patterns about the past in this topic. So you can start to understand what side u. S. Post was in 1889. This was a showing on the excess of here the number of excuse me the length of mail route and kilometers on the y access number of post offices by Different Countries across the world. The United States is a complete outlier it has several times the number of postr offices several times the length of mail routes operating in 1889. But i was also able to use a different data stamp and that much of this book basically is due this man richard hes a prolific was a prolific stamp collector also historic and passed away before i had a chance to discover all of his work but he spent decades of his life collecting information about nearly every post office that operated in the United States throughout his history. And he created a data set of about 166,000 post offices. And i stumbled upon his who recollect i was a graduate student i said about excuse me spent 80 dollars to his widow at the time who mailed me a cd. And then i was able to basically receive all of the data for my entire Research Agenda so thank you richard. [applause] best 80 ive ever spent and, obviously, owely him quite a bi. So what he did was he went back into the archives looked at microfilm reels u. S. Postal system captured information at the time they reportedded information about every post office and he transcribed this into a spread sheet out of data right having the name of the post office, the state and county where it operated, and the years when it was opened and then closed. Incredibly rich data now his goal was to provide a kind of standardized list of post offices for stamp collectors to try to evaluate how rare a particular letter or cover as theyre knownwn was a bit originated as a particular post office. Im less interested in stamp collecting i have to admit but this is a Historical Data set and so what i did was i took this t data and then before details basically had to use kind of Computer Programming to try to figure out where those 166,000 post offices were located. And again not going to go into all of the about to walk through computer code but ill spare you that torture. The end result, though is 166,000 post offices looks like on a map. Again, roughly speaking not complete but most post offices that operate in the United States. Over its entire history and what we can do also now that we have these post offices is start to drill down and specific years to see what it looked like at different points in time. This is what 58,999 post offices operating 1889 looks like. So postmaster general john said basically it is the only entity that touches Business Concern and social life with every neighborhood every community. It wasnt really exaggerating with some exception there was a post office in nearly every community in the United States. C so you can start to understand how this individual post office that was serving in this case Benjamin Curtis connected hem into aim National System of information spreadti across the country gave him access to all of these different places. So again, constant spanning information network. It was huge. It was expansive. But we could a little use this data to look and study how this network got to this point. Because if benjamin moved to Salt River Valley even ten years before, he would not have been able to sending letters to his sisters. That connectivity that depended on u. S. Postable to expand into distance places in lock step with american settlers like Benjamin Curtis and youre about to see that with really fine grain detail. This is expansion of the u. S. Postal system starting on the east coast, obviously, kind of narrow bands, and then again moving in conjunction with americans and in the 1840s you start to see this kind of explosion of post offices in the far west lining up with a seizure of territory violence seizure of territory from mexico during the Mexican American war. And the eventual occupation of land by settlers. So this system is able to move incredibly quickly across the vast territorys and again into the distant distant corners of the west. O also what i noticed it wasnt anding but and on top of them post offices that either change names or locations or dishelicopterred entirely inti 1884. And if you go through each year youre seeing hundreds an hundreds of post offices shutting down across the western United States. Really the entire country. And in fact if you compare just in a 25year quarter century period leading up to 1889, post offices that were newly opened versus post offices that were shut down almost looks like ghostly skeleton of the other one so this process of expansion is also extremely unstable. Or it is opening up all of these thousands of places but also withdrawing from many of those places almost simultaneously. So over 25 years 48,000 u. S. Post offices either closed, changed names or moved locations across that time period. Roughly 1,900 post offices every year. If you look at some of these offices it is remarkable how we cannily they shut down. This is example from arizona open on february 26th, october 9th, shut down. What is going on . Well, if you also look at the people who are running these post offices its just as unstable an the late 19th century during this period, about one out of every six postmasters across the country was either removed or resigned or died in office every single year one out of six. But this followed particular patterns in case iemg showing postmasters bhorp who were removed by office from the administration what youre seeing is that the post Office Department is operated by the executive branch, president city, so whrefer presidency changes political parties, from republican topu democrat, you se a giant spike in the number of postmasters whoas removed from office. And a political machine basically theyreac saying okay democrats come in were going remove a bunch of republican postmasters install local democratic operators. Right and vice versa so this work force is also incredibly unstable as well. Alll of that adds up to a idea f a web thats able to quickly expand into different places that then also contracts, pull back, withdraw. Had is not what at least i tend to think of when i think of government institutions. Right fast o moving nimble but also incredibly unstable. So who c