Or we will make the following improvements: To convey two daily mails from Philadelphia to Pittsburg: First mail to leave Philadelphia at two o’clock A. M. and arrive at Pittsburg in two days and five hours, so as to arrive in Pittsburg at seven o’clock A. M., and extend the route to Wheeling so as to arrive, including route 1,170, at Wheeling the third day by nine o’clock P. M., from the first of April to first of December, and, from first of December to first of April, to Pittsburg in three and Wheeling in four days; and return from Wheeling by Washington, Pittsburg, and Chambersburg, to Philadelphia within the same time; changing the mail as follows: at Lancaster, Harrisburg, Chambersburg, Bedford, Somerset, Mount Pleasant, and at any other office that is or may be established on the route. The second mail to leave Philadelphia at seven A. M., or immediately after the arrival of the New York mail, and reach Pittsburg in three days and five hours, so as to arrive in Pittsburg by noon, changing the mail at all way offices.
We will agree to carry the mail on route No. 1,198, from Bedford to Washington, Pa., via White House, Somerset, Donegal, Mount Pleasant, McKean’s, Old Stand, Robbstown, Gambles, and Parkinson’s Ferry, to Washington, Pa., as advertised, for the yearly compensation of twenty-nine hundred dollars.
We do agree to carry the mail on route No. 1,230, from Bedford, Pa., to Cumberland, Md., three times a week in coaches, from the first of April to the first of October, and once a week on horseback from the first of October to the first of April, so as to connect with the Winchester mail at Cumberland, and the Great Eastern and Western mail at Bedford, which is much wanted during the summer season, for the yearly compensation of thirteen hundred dollars.
JAMES REESIDE,
SAMUEL R. SLAYMAKER,
J. TOMLINSON.
To the Hon. Wm. T. Barry,
Postmaster General.
CONTRACT.
This contract, made the fifteenth day of October, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-one, between James Reeside, of Philadelphia, Samuel R. Slaymaker, of Lancaster, and Jesse Tomlinson, of Philadelphia, contractors for carrying the mail of the United States, of one part, and the Postmaster General of the United States of the other part, witnesseth, that said parties have mutually covenanted as follows, viz.: The said contractors covenant with the Postmaster General:
To carry the mails from Pittsburg to Harriottsville, Cannonsburg, Washington, Claysville, West Alexander, and Triadelphia, Va., to Wheeling and back, daily, in four-horse post coaches, the first mail to be changed at each county town through which it passes; the second mail at every office on the route; and to furnish armed guards for the whole, when required by the department, at the rate of six thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars for every quarter of a year, during the continuance of this contract; to be paid in drafts on postmasters on the route above mentioned, or in money, at the option of the Postmaster General, in the months of May, August, November, and February.
That the mails shall be duly delivered at, and taken from each postoffice now established, or that may be established on any post route embraced in this contract, under a penalty of ten dollars for each offence; and a like penalty shall be incurred for each ten minutes’ delay in the delivery of the mail after the time fixed for its delivery at any postoffice specified in the schedule hereto annexed; and it is also agreed that the Postmaster General may alter the times of arrival and departure fixed by said schedule, and alter the route (he making an adequate compensation for any extra expense which may be occasioned thereby); and the Postmaster General reserves the right of annulling this contract, in case the contractors do not promptly adopt the alteration required.