State

Oldest Postmaster Ills office is Ilia'll in I lie moun¬ tains of Western iN'orfli C arolina and he lias held the office ever since 1882. without regard to ad¬ ministrations. К у LULA M. WL1 К JEFFERSON T. HAYES. 75 years old. claims the distinction of being tin- oldest active post- inaster in North Carolina from tin* standpoint of length of service, and the second oldest in the entire I'nite.1 States. Postmaster Hayes lias served the office of Tomotla. Cherokee County, fifty-six years. I'ost master¬ ship hits 1м*еп a habit of this family through the generations a family trait, so to speak. George \V. Hayes. Sr., father of the present postmaster, was the first postmaster to he api>oiiited when the Tonmtla office was established some years previous to the beginning of the War Between the States. The post office was necessarily discontin¬ ued during the war. and when it was re-established in 1 StiS. George W. Iluyes, Jr., served as postmaster about t wo years. The original Hayes home, which was built in 1855 when George \\\ Hayes, the pioneer, first settled in Cherokee County, and which has fur¬ nished quarters for the little moun¬ tain postofiice ever since, has been the home for years of the present venerable postmaster and his family. Tomotla. in a rural community five miles east of Murphy, and 120 miles west of Asheville, is just oil' the Ashe- villc-Murphv highway. The postoffice serves about forty families. With the discontinuation of the postofiice in ISfil, George W, Hayes, the pioneer, enlisted for service, be¬ came captain of the 22d North Caro¬ lina Cavalry, and served until 1SH4. While en route to Raleigh, at that time a tedious, tiresome journey, to attend a session of the General As¬ sembly, he was stricken ill. and passed away while stopping over in Franklin. Post offices in Western North Caro¬ lina were few and widely separated when Jefferson Hayes took charge of the Tonmtla office in 1882. The changes and the improvements in the postal service in his native moun¬ tain country in the last 5ti years are recounted in interesting manner by the veteran postmaster. In the early days of his career, two days were consumed in transporting the mail from Asheville to Murphy, a striking contrast to the six-hour journey between the two cities today. "Not until the Southern Railway ex¬ tended its lines through the scenic Nantahala gorge to Tomotla. did the horseback rider mail carrier give way to modem transportation," Postmas¬ ter Hayes recalled. Many Hardships Many stories of hardships which confronted the horseliack carriers in the winter season are related by the 75-year-old official. Paved high¬ ways and snow scrapes had not come to the Western North Carolina mountains in the early years of his career; and frequently the mail car¬ rier and his horse were unable to cross the bleak Nantahalas when snow drifted deep between Franklin and Murphy. "Many a time have 1 had to knock the mailman's feet loose from the frozen stirrups of his saddle," he remembered. "Citizens would travel for miles, on foot or horseback on the day that the weekly newspaper was due. for with no telegraph or telephone con¬ nection, and no such thing as a daily newspaper, the arrival of the weekly paper was an event of no small im¬ portance. "We hail no central accounting office then. At the end of the quar¬ ter we settled with the mail con¬ tractor. taking his receipt. In turn. I took his receipt and sent it in with my quarterly report. Postmasters were given sixty per cent of all post¬ age stamps sold." "I was allowed fifteen minutes to look over the mail, all of which was in one big bag, before sending it on to Murphy. On bitter nights, the car¬ rier was served lunch and hot coffee at our home while he tarried to await Jefferson T. Hayes, the 75-year-old postmaster of Tomotla, Cherokee County. the sorting iff the mail for the final stretch of his ride." The Hayes home which houses the little postoffice i> situated on a hill overlooking the broad Valley River valley, a short distance off the high¬ way and many visitors find their way to this spot where hospitality is tin- watchword. The late George W. Hayes, father of the present Tomotla postmaster, served in the North Carolina legis¬ lature for sixteen years, and was among those who introduced the bill that brought the first public high¬ ways into that section of the moun¬ tain country. Tomotla is an Indian word, the meaning of which is not known by Postmaster Haves. Citizens of the community and patrons of the office link it always with the name "Jeff" Haves, one of the best known men in Cherokee Countv.