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Sun Apr 22 23:59:54 EDT 2007
House Article
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This is what I transcribed form the hard to read copy of the ar-
ticle I was given. I am going to be getting in touch with the
original owner's son soon ( I hope ) to get the skinny on the
more history...sorry for any typos - I did this pretty fast.
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Bayou Country Community News Vol. 5., Issue 38 Sept 22-28, 1984
IBERVILLE POSTMASTER REFLECTS
This week, the postal service may officially finalize closing the
Iberville Post Office and change the Zip Code of Residents from
70746 to 70776, according to postal officials in Baton Rouge.
Residents will receive mail from St. Gabriel, as they do now, ad-
dressed to Iberville.
Actually the post office in the villiage of Iberville closed a
year ago, when the postmaster, Mrs. Louis G. Hoffman retired.
Her memories continue to remain.
"When I first came out here," she said, "it was a little strange
to me, to be living in the country. i was born and raised two
blocks from Third Street, and I never thought I would ever leave
Baton Rouge to go to the country. But the odd part about that
is, that I have two sisters and one brother, and all of us, when
we left Baton Rouge, we went to live in the country. My olders
sister went to Hawaii. She lived there for forty-two years.
She's back in Louisiana now."
It was an abrupt awakening to become a postal employee. When she
got married, her hustband had been running the post office but
now had begun to teach.
When I got married, and we were on honeymoon for two weeks, she
says, they came home-came here (to their house in Iberville), and
"I said, said, 'Well, what I am gonna do?' and he said, "Well,
you're gonna work in the post office, and the store. Surprise'"
"I said, 'Well, I have never sold anything before'".
Later, Mr. Hoffman was to become principle of St. Gabriel School
and then Super-intendent of Schools for Iberville Parish. He re-
tired a number of years ago. And she got her first lesson on the
job. She had been a nurse, had graduated from nursing school at
the Lady of the Lake Medical Center, and now she was the new
postmaster.
It was really different to come out here and sell five yards of
material or a pair of [past-margin] (shoes?), or a pound of lard
or a pound of [past-margin], or a pind of rice. Sometimes it (?)
a nicle of rice, or a nickle of beans because that is all they
had to spend for the day, she remembers.
She became the Postmaster in 1951, and retired on October 31 of
last year. [off-margin] her was Joe Burns, who had asked the
post office to be established, since the residents of Manchac had
to walk all the way to St. Gabriel to get their mail. Then came
[off-margin] Hadell, and the thrid postmaster was her husband.
But the mail service was the only thing located in the small
building her husband had build next to the house.
We had a general merchandise stor, and we had the only telephone,
she says. People would come day or night to use the phone. They
would come to the Post Office for their mail. I used to write
their letters, read their letters to them, and make their money
orders - they used Sears & Roebuck quite a bit.
"One of the most interesting things, when I first came out here,
was to ship hides, furs. They'd bring them to the post office,
and I'd put them in sacks to package them and mail to them to St.
Louis."
"Before I came out here they used to sell moss. Moss was the big
product years ago. They used to sell moss to Mr. Hoffman. He'd
ship it."
Highway 30, or known as Nicholson Drive in Baton Rouge, provides
access for Ibervill residents today. At one time, though, there
was only a gravel road and residents had to go down the road to
the river road to take the seventeen mile stretch to Baton Rouge.
So mail was not carried by truck.
"We had to go to the railroad track," she says, "and they would
throw our mail off in pouches. For them to get our mail, we had
an iron arm that we would attach the pouch to, and they would
grab it (from the train) as they passed."
"One day , we had a man that lived on the place that usually took
the mail, and after he had attached the mail pouch to this crane,
a train passed, loaded with .... [the rest is cut off of the
page];
Caption under picture of front of house: "The Hoffman's home, lo-
cated next to the Iberville, La. Post Office, was built by Mr.
Louis G. Hoffman many years ago our of cypress walls, and some of
the floor was built out of pecan.
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