Convoy planning 150th anniversary bash

Editor’s note: Convoy will be celebrating 150 years as a village July 11-13, in conjunction with Convoy Community Days. In the months and weeks leading up to the celebration, a series of articles will be shared on the News page of the VW independent.

VW independent staff/submitted information

A road known to many people has a more familiar name now and local mail service wasn’t always a given. More details are shared below.

Stagecoach Road

It soon became a known fact that if people expected to make this area their permanent location a few roads would be necessary. So a stagecoach road was marked so that mail could be carried to a small settlement named Tully and the post office was in John Lare’s home. Without too much imagination, those who know where the Stagecoach Road was can follow it on a ridge from the John Miller Sr. farm west. There is a strip through a woods where the trees are shorter and other evidence of its location.

By 1838, the Stagecoach Road was completed. It had been an old Indian trail and was a natural formation. Even then, with no stone on it, traveling on it in very wet weather, especially spring, made the surface rutty. Stagecoach Road was later renamed Ridge Road and is now known as Lincoln Highway.

Conestoga wagons, made in Conestoga, Pennsylvania, traveled this road. Fastened to the rear of these wagons was a tar bucket, which held tar to grease the spindles and axles of these vehicles. It was from these containers the old saying arose, “You might go along and hang on for a tar bucket.” Though times were extremely hard for these first settlers, they remained strong and sure of their goal to form a good town.

Johnny Appleseed followed the Ridge Road through the township and planted trees on various farms.

Today, Tully Township is crossed by the four lane Highway, U.S. 30. If you are on U.S. 30 traveling west and look off to your right (north) you will notice how the road is a definite ridge in the township. It is said that Lake Erie once was up to this ridge and when it subsided there was a definite drop in land formation. Thus, that side of U.S. 30 is somewhat lower and slopped than the other.

Mail Service

As pioneers moved into this watery area, there arose a need for communication with friends and relatives who were left behind. Consequently, an attempt succeeded in establishing a stagecoach road on a ridge or higher land level north of Convoy.

John Lare’s home seemed a desirable location for families to call every week or two to pick up any mail that might arrive, so Mr. Lare became the first postmaster February 3, 1851. He also kept a small supply of groceries. When the Stagecoach Road became impassable due to rain or deep snow, Mr. Lare traveled by horseback into Van Wert through the swamp and wilderness and brought back the mail in saddlebags. This was no easy undertaking every three or four weeks as it entailed some dangers on the route. Sometimes his horse would have to swim across the creeks and marshes. Bears, wolves, panthers and many other wild animals roamed in the dark wilderness.

Mr. Lares’s post office was called Tully, named by one of the first settlers, Mrs. John Morse, after her hometown, Tully, New York.

On January 26, 1897, another post office was established a mile west of Tully Post Office and was named Sport. This postmaster walked into Dixon twice a week to get the mail, a round trip of about ten miles.

Another post office was established at the north edge of what is now Convoy where several patrons could pick up mail left by the stagecoach, which never came into Convoy. It stayed out on Ridge Road.

After Convoy was platted and named the post office west of town was moved to Convoy and the name was changed from Tully to Convoy on July 25, 1872.

By 1890, two “Star Routes” were established out of Convoy. One route to Union Township and the other to Middlebury.

Later, when rural free delivery was to be made possible, settlers and patrons were skeptical. When told their mail would be brought to a mailbox, which patrons were to provide in front of their homes, they wondered if that was possible. To this day Convoy has two rural routes with 650 deliveries and 550 post offices boxes.

To commemorate Convoy’s 125th Birthday, (1874-1999) the Convoy Post Office provided postmarks to books, special collectors items, and envelopes. Crestview seventh grade student Brad Orsbon drew the cancellation artwork. He received several postmarked items for his efforts in creating the pictorial cancelation.