Patti Lyle Collins

Last updated
Patti Lyle Collins
Born
Martha Louisa Lyles [1]
NationalityAmerican

Patti Lyle Collins was a writer and an American civil servant who worked in the Dead Letter Office of the Post Office Department. Nicknamed the "Blind Reader", Collins was known for her ability to determine the destination of letters with hard to read or incomplete addresses. [2]

Collins was born in Alabama to William Durham and Mary (née Bibb) Lyles. [3] The only child of a wealthy family, her early interest in languages were supported through education and travel. [2] She married N. D. Collins, a lawyer from Memphis, Tennessee in 1866. [1] Following the death of her husband and father, Collins was left to support three children and her mother. [2] Before landing a job at the Post Office Department she taught and published writing. [2]

As an employee of the Post Office Department she was promoted several times, first to assistant translator and, later, to a position as head of the Dead Letter Office. [2] Her ability to read multiple languages informed an extensive knowledge of historical and geographical references, which she used to help direct letters with incomplete, illegible or illogical addresses. [4] Over time, Collins developed an in-depth knowledge of streets in cities and towns throughout the country. [5] It allowed her to correctly direct a letter with "Island" as the address to Wheeling, West Virginia that locals called "The Island". [5] In another instance, she knew that a letter with "Giuvani Cirelili, Presidente Sterite, Catimoa" on the envelope was intended for to Baltimore, Maryland, which was the only American city at the time to have a President Street. [5] [6]

Collins died in Washington, D.C. on December 23, 1913. [7] She was buried at the Rock Creek Cemetery. [8]

Publications

Related Research Articles

Letter of credence Letter granting (diplomatic) accreditation

A letter of credence is a formal diplomatic letter that designates a diplomat as ambassador to another sovereign state. Commonly known as diplomatic credentials, the letter is addressed from one head of state to another, asking them to give credence to the ambassador's claim of speaking for their country. The letter is presented personally by the ambassador-designate to the receiving head of state in a formal ceremony, marking the beginning of the ambassadorship.

Lynda Barry American cartoonist, author, and teacher

Lynda Barry is an American cartoonist, author, and teacher.

Susan Collins American politician (born 1952)

Susan Margaret Collins is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Maine. A member of the Republican Party, she has held her seat since 1997 and is Maine's longest-serving member of Congress.

Dead letter mail

Dead letter mail or undeliverable mail is mail that cannot be delivered to the addressee or returned to the sender. This is usually due to lack of compliance with postal regulations, an incomplete address and return address, or the inability to forward the mail when both correspondents move before the letter can be delivered. Largely based on the British model that emerged in the late eighteenth century, many countries developed similar systems for processing undeliverable mail.

Patricia Hill Collins African-American scholar

Patricia Hill Collins is an American academic specializing in race, class, and gender. She is a Distinguished University Professor of Sociology Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the former head of the Department of African-American Studies at the University of Cincinnati, and a past President of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Collins was the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman to hold this position.

Margaret Culkin Banning American novelist

Margaret Frances Culkin Banning was a best-selling American author of thirty-six novels and an early advocate of women's rights.

Richard Cutts American politician

Richard Cutts was an American merchant and politician. A Democratic-Republican, he was most notable for his service as Second Comptroller of the United States Treasury from 1817 to 1829 and a United States Representative from Massachusetts from 1801 to 1813.

Matthew Lyle Spencer was an American minister, writer and professor. He was the president of the University of Washington and later served as the Dean of the School of Journalism at Syracuse University.

Nell Brinkley American illustrator and comic artist

Nell Brinkley was an American illustrator and comic artist who was sometimes referred to as the "Queen of Comics" during her nearly four-decade career working with New York newspapers and magazines. She was the creator of the Brinkley Girl, a stylish character who appeared in her comics and became a popular symbol in songs, films and theater.

The 2001 anthrax attacks, also known as Amerithrax, occurred in the United States over the course of several weeks beginning on September 18, 2001, one week after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and to Democratic Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became "one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement".

A "Dear Colleague" letter is an official correspondence which is sent by a Member, committee, or officer of the United States House of Representatives or United States Senate and which is distributed in bulk to other congressional offices. A "Dear Colleague" letter may be circulated in paper form through internal mail, distributed on a chamber floor, or sent electronically.

Mail pouch Lockable bag for transporting mail

A mail pouch or mailpouch is a container for mail, designed to transport first-class, registered mail, domestic mail and military mail. It usually has a drawstring, and is made of a stronger material than mail sacks and is designed to lock at the top with a mechanism system consisting of special closely spaced eyelets and a strong strap to secure the top where access into the bag is closed off and locked, where a mail sack does not have these features.

Mail bag

A mail bag or mailbag is a generic term for a type of bag used for collecting, carrying, categorizing, and classifying different types of postal material, depending on its priority, destination, and method of transport. It is oftentimes used by a post office system in transporting these different grades of mail. The mailbag is carried by some means of transporting like a mail carrier, animal, or a mobile post office. Letters and printed material delivered by mail in the seventeen-hundreds were carried by horse in a saddle bag. There are several different types of mailbags for different purposes. These different styles of mailbags depend on its size and purpose. It can range from "a large bag used for transporting mail on a truck, plane, etc." to a simple "postbag" used by a mail carrier to deliver mail.

Nina E. Allender American cartoonist

Nina Evans Allender was an American artist, cartoonist, and women's rights activist. She studied art in the United States and Europe with William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Allender worked as an organizer, speaker, and campaigner for women's suffrage and was the "official cartoonist" for the National Woman's Party's publications, creating what became known as the "Allender Girl."

Rana Ayyub Indian journalist and writer

Rana Ayyub is an Indian journalist and opinion columnist with The Washington Post. She is author of the investigative book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up.

Mary Collins (1895–1989) was an expert in colour vision, and psychology lecturer at Edinburgh University.

Fori Nehru Hungarian-born Indian social worker

Shobha Nehru, commonly known as Fori Nehru and Auntie Fori was a Hungarian-born Indian social worker and the wife of the Indian civil servant Braj Kumar Nehru of the Nehru family.

Marian Sutton Marshall English Typist and trade unionist

Marian Sutton Marshall was an English typist and trade unionist.

Una Nixson Hopkins American art director

Una Nixson Hopkins was an American writer and designer, and an art director who worked in silent films.

Sarah Lowe Twiggs

Sarah Lowe Twiggs was an American poet. She was also employed by the Department of the Interior and the Treasury Department.

References

  1. 1 2 Lewis, W. M. Terrell (1893). Genealogy of the Lewis Family in America: From the Middle of the Seventeenth Century Down to the Present Time. The Courier-Journal Job Printing Co. pp. 66–67. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 McCollin, Alice Graham (September 1893). "The "Blind Reader" at Washington". The Ladies' Home Journal: 9.
  3. Lineage Book. Washington, D.C.: Daughters of the American Revolution. 1896. p. 26. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  4. Lovejoy, Bess (25 August 2015). "Patti Lyle Collins, Super-Sleuth of the Dead Letter Office". Mental Floss. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 Bache, René (1 August 1908). "Puzzles of the Mail: The Woman Who Knows the Minds of Other People". The Saturday Evening Post. Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society. 181 (5). Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  6. Burns, James H. (July–September 1992). "Remembering the Dead". postalmuseum.si.edu. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  7. "COLLINS". Evening Star. Washington, D.C. 25 December 1913. p. 7.
  8. "Pattie L Collins (unknown–1913)". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 10 March 2022.