SANTA CLAUS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 24, 29 January 1929, Page 18

SANTA CLAUS

TOWN IN INDIANA

A BUSY POSTMASTER

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, 23rd December.

If an American child posts a letter, addressed simply, "Santa Claus," it is quite likely he may get a reply through tho mail. For Santa Claus is a small town of 100 inhabitants, four miles east of Lincoln City, Indiana, near where Abraham Lincoln spent his boyhood. ;:k. ■ .-' v -The(village was' founded in 1846 by Thomas' Smith, a surveyor. It . was christened Santa' Fe, and for several years boro that name. In due time, it was decided to apply for a post office. The postal officials replied that there was another town in Indiana known as Santa Fe, and the name must bo changed. They kept the "Santa" in the name and called, the .village Santa Claus. The name, Santa Fb is still used by some of tjh'e old-timers. ; ; Stamp collectors send letters,'enclosing stamped addresses, to the postmaster, asking him to deface tliem with the Santa'; Claus postmark and return them. During' Christmas season, the postmaster,- Mr. James F. Martin, says that parents, wishing" to make Yuletidc moro realistic, often mail boxes ;of addressed and stamped letters to him for his official postmark. Every year he receives letters from children, asking him to. remember them at' Christmas. Those letters from children come from foreign countries as well. If he has time, the postmaster answers some of them, to give- a pleasant sensation . to youthful believers in the Christmas saint. He has been postmaster there for 'twenty-six years, and his father was postmaster y before him.