Hugh Finlay's Journal Analysis

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Franklin often gets credit for beginning the first system of mail service along the eastern seaboard. But Hugh Finlay made improvements that are documented in a journal kept between September 13, 1773, and June 26, 1774. The original handwritten "Journal Kept by Hugh Finlay, Surveyor of the Post Roads on the Continent of North America" is in the National Archives. Finlay’s journal is significant among the National Archives’ pre–federal records for two reasons. First, it provides a transition between the British postal system of the colonies and the U.S. postal system. Second, it serves as documentation of the antagonism that Finlay, a Crown appointee, encountered from American patriots in the period leading up to the Revolutionary