Definition
A postmaster is a federal officer appointed to administer a local post office, responsible for receiving, forwarding, and delivering mail and other matter passing through the postal system, and for conducting such additional business as is committed to the office under the postal laws.
Two tiers of appointment historically governed the office: postmasters at offices where annual salary or compensation exceeded a fixed threshold were appointed by the President; those at lower-compensation offices were appointed by the Postmaster General. Bouvier notes an additional residential requirement — postmasters must reside within the delivery district for which they are appointed.
Postmaster General. The head of the Post Office Department and, historically, a member of the President's cabinet. The Postmaster General exercised appointment authority over lower-tier postmasters and supervisory authority over the postal system as a whole.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The head of a post office; also, the administrator of an electronic mail system; a scholar at Merton College, Oxford (portionist); historically, one who supplied post horses to travelers.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who has charge of a post office and the distribution and forwarding of mails; also, one who has charge of a station for the accommodation of travelers and supplies post horses.
The common meaning tracks the legal meaning closely in its core sense, but the legal definition carries additional freight: postmaster in law is an office of the United States government, not merely an occupational description. The legal term therefore implies a body of statutory duties, appointment procedures, liability rules, and federal employment status that the ordinary word does not convey. Researchers should also note the Wiktionary sense of an email system administrator — this modern usage has no legal significance in historical corpus sources and should not be read back into historical materials.
Why It Matters in Research
Postmaster is primarily a term of federal administrative and postal law, and its significance in the Law Mind corpus is tied to that institutional context. Several research traps are worth flagging.
Appointment mechanics shifted over time. The threshold salary separating presidential appointment from Postmaster General appointment changed across the nineteenth century. Researchers using Bouvier's figure of one thousand dollars as the dividing line should confirm which statutory period they are examining, as Congress revised postal compensation structures repeatedly. A source citing "presidential appointment" may reflect a different statutory moment than one citing "Postmaster General appointment" — they are not necessarily in conflict.
Liability of postmasters. A significant body of case law and treatise discussion concerns the personal liability of postmasters for lost mail, misdelivery, and negligence. Because postmasters were federal officers but often operated in circumstances closer to local agents, courts and commentators debated the scope of their sovereign immunity and their personal accountability. This is a live research thread in both equity and common law materials in the corpus.
The Postmaster General entry in Black's 2nd Ed. identifies him as a cabinet officer. This status is relevant to materials discussing executive power, appointment and removal of officers, and early administrative law — particularly in connection with debates over whether postmasters were "inferior officers" within the meaning of the Appointments Clause.
Do not conflate the office with the physical post office (the place) or with postal agents, carriers, or clerks, who held separate and distinct positions with different legal duties and status.
The modern U.S. Postal Service structure, created by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, substantially changed the nature of the postmaster role and removed the Postmaster General from the cabinet. Historical dictionary sources predate this reorganization entirely and describe a different institutional reality.
Historical Dictionary Support
The four source dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition: a postmaster is a federally appointed officer who manages a local post office, receiving, forwarding, and delivering mail under the postal laws. Rapalje & Lawrence specifies presidential appointment for all postmasters; Bouvier refines this with the salary threshold distinguishing presidential from Postmaster General appointments, which is the more precise and useful statement. Black's (both editions) keeps the definition functional rather than structural, emphasizing the officer's duties rather than appointment mechanics.
Bouvier adds the most substantive legal detail — the residency requirement and the bifurcated appointment authority — and is the most useful starting point for questions about the nature of the office itself. Black's 2nd Ed. is notable for the subordinate entry on Postmaster General, identifying him as a cabinet officer, which Black's 1st Ed. omits.
None of the historical sources address the personal liability question in any depth, the removal-power debates that would later become central to administrative law, or the Civil Service dimensions of postal employment that emerged in the late nineteenth century. Researchers working in those areas will need to look beyond dictionary definitions to treatises and case reporters.
Jurisdictional Note
Postmaster is a federal office; the position and its legal incidents are creatures of federal statute and do not vary by state. State law may intersect in narrow ways — for example, governing real property leased for post office use or resolving questions of local criminal jurisdiction on postal premises — but the core legal definition is uniform and federal.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Post Office; Federal Officers and Appointments; Administrative Law (Historical Development).