Site of First Post Office in Wise County, Odessa
Newark, Wise County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Established Sept. 8, 1855. First white settler in Wise County, Benjamin B. Haney, was the first postmaster. Second was Martha E. Marshall, appointed Dec. 5, 1856; third, Nathan Huff, served from March 16, 1860, until office was discontinued on Dec. 5, 1866. David C. Haynes and William Quagle, contractors, brought mail every Saturday by stagecoach from Birdville (25 mi. SE), arriving Odessa 12:00 noon. Stayed at George Wilmouth Inn two hours, arriving in Birdville 8:00 p.m. Second post office, Newark, opened 1893, after another Odessa was founded in Ector County. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Wise County's first post office, called Odessa, opened here on September 8, 1855, with the county's first settler, Benjamin B. Haney, as postmaster. Contractors carried the mail by stagecoach every Saturday from Birdville, twenty-five miles to the southeast, pausing two hours at George Wilmouth's inn before the long return. The office closed in 1866, and a new one—Newark—opened nearby in 1893 after a second Texas town claimed the name Odessa.
Why it matters
The site marks how the postal service and its stagecoach routes carried the first threads of connection and settlement into the North Texas frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-1850s, North Texas sat on the edge of the settled frontier. Texas had joined the Union only a decade earlier, and settlers were pushing west and north from older communities into prairie and cross timbers country that was still contested ground. Wise County itself was newly organized in these years, and its population was thin and scattered.
For people living that far out, a post office was a lifeline. It connected them to family back east, to newspapers, to business and to government. Getting a post office usually meant a community was being recognized. In remote places it was often the first official institution to arrive.
The years that followed were hard ones. The Civil War disrupted the national mail, since the seceded states ran their own postal system during the conflict, and frontier counties in North Texas faced danger and uncertainty through the war years. The Odessa office's history covers that whole turbulent period, from territorial expansion through war and into Reconstruction.
People & events
The Odessa post office opened on September 8, 1855. Its first postmaster was Benjamin B. Haney, remembered as the first white settler in Wise County. Being both the first settler and the man who handled everyone's mail gave him a central place in the young community's life.
Martha E. Marshall was appointed postmaster in December 1856. A woman holding a federal postmaster appointment in the 1850s is worth noticing. It wasn't unheard of, but it was far from common, and it says something about how frontier communities relied on whoever could do the job. Nathan Huff took over in March 1860 and kept the post through the war years until the office was discontinued in December 1866.
The mail came by stagecoach. Contractors David C. Haynes and William Quagle made a weekly run from Birdville, about 25 miles southeast, rolling into Odessa at noon every Saturday. The coach rested for two hours at George Wilmouth's inn, a small window when news, letters and conversation went back and forth, and then made the long trip back, reaching Birdville around eight that evening. The name didn't last. When another Odessa was founded in Ector County, far to the west, this area's later post office opened under the name Newark in 1893.
Its place in the American story
Before railroads and telegraph lines reached the frontier, the postal service was one of the strongest threads holding the United States together. Each small office, each weekly stage and each contractor carrying mail sacks across open country helped spread the nation westward. Odessa's post office was one small link in that growing network.
The office's timeline also follows the nation's political upheaval. It opened under the federal government in the 1850s, continued through years when Texas had left the Union, and closed in the unsettled period after the war. In that sense a tiny rural post office recorded the fracturing and slow reconstruction of the country.
The duplicated name shows another side of postal history. As towns multiplied across the West, the Post Office Department had to avoid confusing names within a single state, and many communities were renamed or had to pick new names. That is how Wise County's Odessa ended up as Newark.
If you visit
Stand at the site and imagine a Saturday noon in the late 1850s: dust on the road from the southeast, the rattle of an approaching stagecoach, and neighbors gathering to see what the week had brought. For a remote frontier community, mail day was one of the high points of the week.
The drive itself is part of the story. The old stage route ran between here and Birdville, now absorbed into the Fort Worth area, and today you can cover that distance easily in an afternoon. The coach took most of a day for the round trip, even with a two-hour rest at the inn.
Newark and the surrounding Wise County countryside make for a pleasant, low-key detour from the Dallas–Fort Worth area. Combine this stop with other markers in the county to build a picture of how North Texas grew from scattered homesteads into the communities you see today.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Benjamin B. Haney
- · Martha E. Marshall
- · Nathan Huff
Themes & tags
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