MOORESVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — From the brick fireplace to the screen door, nothing about the Mooresville post office is typical.
Postmistress Lisa Crane says more than once she’s had to help a confused visitor whose GPS brought them to the minimal mainstay.
“[I say] Yes, it’s a real post office, I know it doesn’t look like one!” Crane said.
It is the oldest operating post office in the state, and it’s one of many well-preserved pieces of history the township of nearly 70 people maintains.
“We tell people when they come visit our 1840’s post office, they’re actually visiting our new post office, because the original post office was housed in the tavern: the 1820’s tavern,” Mayor Nikki Sprader said.
Visitors can walk down the street and around the corner to see the tavern that Sprader is talking about. The town itself was incorporated in 1818, before Alabama existed.
“What you see today is actually what they truly laid out in 1818. I tell people we are a Tic Tac Toe board with an extra street north and south and east and west,” Sprader said.
While the post office may not sit in the center square of that Tic Tac Toe board, people who live there say it is the focus of all things Mooresville. It operates as it did 200 years ago. There is no delivery, meaning each person living in town must come get their mail. That task brings daily interactions with neighbors.
“It really is the heart and soul of our community,” Margaret-Anne Crumlish said.
Crumlish’s ties to town date back more than a century. She picks up her mail from the same set of glass P.O. boxes that her ancestors used.
“We have ancestors actually that go back to the eighth generation in the area, before Mooresville was incorporated, so our family has been getting its mail from these little hand-painted boxes for a very long time.”
Crumlish said she passed that tradition on to her son, making sure he knew from a young age the significance of something so many outside of this town could consider a ‘chore.’
“He was learning how to walk and he would toddle up here and get the mail,” Crumlish said.
Postmistress Crane said seeing the children is just one perk of the job.
“I never imagined a place where you could interact with the people so much. You know everybody’s names, you know their children’s names, you know their pet’s names,” Postmistress Crane said.
Crumlish said the post office personifies the beliefs of those living in this historic town.
“The common thread is community and love of the town,” Crumlish said. “Our tagline is ‘history lives.’ Not only are we maintaining history and historic buildings, but we are a living, breathing, thriving little community.”
