1893 McLoughlin Brothers Board Game 'Uncle Sam's Mail'

This is an 1893 McLoughlin Brothers game titled 'Uncle Sam's Mail' in which the board is a map of the United States crisscrossed by rail lines. It was produced as the contours of the lower 48 states were being finalized, a prime opportunity for teaching children about the new national geography. The game includes original tokens, cards, dice, board, and box.

A Closer Look

This game was meant to celebrate the U.S. mail network while also teaching children about transportation (railroads) and geography. Players roll dice to move along the rail lines in a race to deliver mail in six different sections of the country, corresponding to the piles of cards (mail) from prominent political figures (governors, senators, and President Grover Cleveland). Individual rail networks (Union Pacific, Rio Grande, etc.) are named and color-coded to help distinguish them. Yellowstone National Park is marked out prominently in Wyoming, while the future state of Oklahoma is divided here into the Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory, as determined in the Oklahoma Organic Act of 1890.

Publication History and Census

'Uncle Sam's Mail' was produced by McLoughlin Brothers in 1893. It was revived in 1920 after the company was purchased by Milton Bradley (OCLC 847945322). We note three examples of the 1893 edition of the game cataloged in OCLC which are part of the collections at Princeton University, the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine, and the University of Miami.