Historic Jacksonville, Inc. is continuing its saga of the Jacksonville post office, the oldest continually operating independent post office in Jackson County! It’s also 1912, and Postmaster John F. Miller has moved the post office into his former hardware store at 155 W. California Street, now home to the Jacksonville Company. Miller’s father had been Jacksonville’s first gunsmith, and this 1874 brick building had originally housed his father’s “Hunters’ Emporium.”
However, John was more of a gardener. In addition to installing copper lock boxes and special windows for money orders, registry business, and general delivery, he decorated the building with flowers and plants “hanging from the ceiling and piled in corners.” The “Jacksonville Sentinel” described it as a “combination of a parlor and a greenhouse.”
The U.S. Postal Service authorities were not as impressed and eventually required Miller to remove the plants.