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In the 19th and 20th centuries, mail was the main means of communication and the Post Office was one of the largest employers in the UK and, until 1920, Ireland<\/a>. There is therefore a good chance that someone in your family tree can be found in the Post Office records.<\/p>\n Read the full version of this article and much more expert family history advice in\u00a0Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine\u00a0<\/em>May 2022<\/a>, on sale now<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Your first step in tracing them is to search the \u2018UK, Postal Service Appointment Books, 1737\u20131969\u2019 collection on Ancestry<\/a>. These Post Office records will tell you the date your ancestor was appointed, which job they were appointed to, and where they worked at the time of the appointment.<\/p>\n Once you have the appointment information, you can move on to the pension and gratuity records.<\/p>\n The Post Office was a government department until 1969 and its staff were civil servants. This meant that staff had to retire at the age of 60, although there are exceptions to this with people retiring early, often due to ill health, or working beyond the usual retirement age. Being a civil servant also meant, until 1946, that women were forced to leave the service when they got married, although again you can find exceptions.<\/p>\n If a staff member died while working for the Post Office, a so-called \u2018death gratuity\u2019 was paid to their dependents. These are also recorded in the pension and gratuity records.<\/p>\n The Post Office pension records are currently only available on microfilm or as the original documents in The Royal Mail Archive at the Postal Museum<\/a>. However, the new \u2018Addressing Health Data Mapper\u2019 website gives access to some details for the late 19th to early 20th centuries. The site is free to use and you can search a map of the UK and Ireland for Post Office pensioners<\/a>. The website is part of the \u2018Addressing Health\u2019 project looking at the health of past postal workers, which was one of Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine<\/em>\u2019s four Transcription Tuesday<\/a> projects in February 2021.<\/p>\n If you have managed to find a pension record for your ancestor then it will generally tell you when your forebear retired, what their final salary was, how much their pension was, and how many days\u2019 sick leave they had taken in the years leading up to their retirement.<\/p>\n Sometimes there are additional comments. These will provide an insight into the person\u2019s life such as if they were reprimanded for fighting in the sorting office, or were known to drink heavily and that it did not, or did, affect their work. If a staff member had received a serious reprimand then it might affect the level of pension they received. However, the most typical comment is a commendation for good service in the Post Office: \u201c[John Smith] has discharged his duties with diligence and fidelity to the satisfaction of his superior officers. He is recommended for the award of the Imperial Service Medal.\u201d<\/p>\nPost Office records: Pension and gratuity records<\/h2>\n