Sargentville to resist post office closure

SEDGWICK – The post office that has been in the village of Sargentville for more than a century might be closed by the U.S. Postal Service, but not without protest from some of its customers.

Without a post office in Sargentville, the nearest place to mail or pick up packages or to buy stamps would be the post office in Sedgwick village, which is 2.5 miles away.

Residents will have the chance to relay their concerns directly to U.S. Postal Service officials. There will be a meeting on the issue at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 11, at the Sargentville Chapel on Route 175.

Emily Webb, the postmaster in neighboring Brooksville, lives in the house that is attached to the Sargentville post office. She said Saturday she does not want the Sargentville facility closed, but would like it moved off her property.

“I’ll feel sad if it closes, but I don’t want it. I’m tired of it,” said Webb, sitting in the sun on her porch while looking at the view of Eggemoggin Reach. “Would you want to have a public place at your house?”

Webb said that besides the porch, she also shares her driveway with the postal facility.

Robert Sargent, who is a direct descendant of the family after whom the village is named, said Sunday that Sargentville has had a post office at one location or another since 1860. The sense of community in Sargentville would suffer were the facility to be closed, he said.

“It serves as a point of exchange for the community,” Sargent said. The chapel and the library in the village do not match the post office’s role as a daily gathering spot, he said.

“That would probably be lost,” Sargent added.

Village residents have offered to raise money for the construction of a new post office, according to Sargent. He said that postal officials have indicated that even without a new facility in Sargentville, local residents could keep using their existing addresses and zip code.

Sargent, who recalled there also was a general store, an ice cream parlor, and a canning factory in Sargentville when he was a boy, said that there has been moderate growth in the town of Sedgwick in recent years, but that the local population is still much lower than it used to be.

“We’re still climbing back to where we were in 1890,” he said.