Ypsilanti District Library Clerk Jerome Drummond takes us back again to Ypsilanti in its earliest years. Settlers traveling west had left their homes on the east coast behind but not their interest; how would information be gotten? The federal government considered it crucial to its plans of westward expansion that unity of the population be maintained by shared information; the tool for achieving this was the United States Post Office. If, however, information was to rise above the level of hearsay, letters alone would not be sufficient, so the government allowed special low postal rates for newspapers at the same moment that newspapers were undergoing a transformation that would bring their price down to the person on the street. We will examine some aspects of this institution and note the similarities and differences between our time and then through the careers of two Ypsilantians:  Charles Woodruff and Charles Pattison.