Sunday the post office in McNeill celebrated 125 years of serving the community.
To commemorate the occasion, balloons were stationed outside the small post office that serves residents in the center of Pearl River County while cake was being served inside.
Current postmaster Sheila Mitchell said McNeill’s post office is a remotely managed post office, which is a post office where the postmaster does not work at the site. Mitchell is the postmaster for not only the McNeill office, but also the Carriere and Nicholson post offices. Like many of her predecessors, Mitchell was born and raised in McNeill, a community named for Pearl River County pioneer settler Daniel A. McNeill.
The McNeill post office was established on April 10, 1891, and has occupied five different locations throughout it’s history, according to an article published in the Item on April 4, 1991. It is the second oldest post office in the county, only the Carriere post office is older, being established on May 13 1887. The Picayune post office was established in Dec. 17, 1891, Mitchell said.
Prior to having it’s own building, the post office was run out of local businesses, such as hardware stores, the article states. The current location was built in 1985.
Like the other post offices in the county, McNeill’s offers all of the services people need to conduct business through the mail, such as stamps, boxes and post office boxes. The only service not offered there is delivery, which is conduced out of the annex in Picayune.
It is open six hours a day and staffed by Gayle White.
Mitchell reminds the community that it’s important to patron their local post office. If the revenue decreases too much, the post office could be in jeopardy of closing. That’s a problem becoming even more evident as people are moving toward online bill payments.
“It’s essential to use your post office because one day it could eventually close,” Mitchell said.