How to Relive Our Glorious Past Through the U.S. Postal Service

The art of letter writing has undoubtedly taken a hit since the advent of the internet. You’re more likely to get a text with abbreviations, misspellings and emojis than a well-crafted message opining on the state of the republic or musing to a faraway love.

It’s no surprise that progress would render putting quill to parchment obsolete. But we can still enjoy a blast from the past courtesy of the Pony Express — or at least the U.S. Postal Service.

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Two letter delivery services that relish the turn of an artful phrase and seek to preserve American history are resurrecting the practice of receiving good old-fashioned snail mail. Letterjoy.co and HistorybyMail.com offer subscription programs to send readers old-timey letters written by some of America’s most well-known figures.

The online companies have mined the offline archives to come up with carefully curated series. Topics vary but span the gamut of American history from the founding of the United States to national security in the mid-20th century. The services rotate topics among issues, such as historic inventions, American wars and foreign diplomatic relations.

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History By Mail, a self-described “time machine allowing you to step into the past and experience history in a whole new way,” has collected letters from authors such as George Washington, Emily Dickinson and Rosa Parks.

Letterjoy’s collection includes the likes of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Abraham Lincoln as well as a variety of writers, including abolitionist Frederick Douglas, aviator Amelia Earhart and convicted Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

History By Mail also sells prints, timelines, charts and even historic cartoons, while Letterjoy offers postscripts written by researchers who provide background and facts about each letter.

Both seek to enhance the recipient’s experience by creating careful reproductions of the originals, which History By Mail says are designed to “mirror the look and feel of the original piece, down to the ink tone, paper color, and texture.”

“The letters themselves are fascinating and wonderfully curated, and the accompanying writeups are detailed and well-researched and written and provide excellent context,” Hal Bryan, a self-described “student of history,” said of his Letterjoy subscription, which he received as a Christmas present in 2022.

“I come away from each letter and article having learned a lot, and, in many cases, inspired to learn even more," he told AARP Experience Counts. 

Letterjoy was founded in 2017 by Michael Sitver while he was a political science major at the University of Chicago. Sitver said the idea dawned on him when he was studying state and American institutions and political philosophy.