Messengers

Among the official duties of the Mayor of the Shire was the position of Postmaster, the controller of the Shire's Messenger Service. The Hobbits who worked within this service were known as the Messengers (or, unofficially, as 'postmen') and it was their role to carrying written messages from town to town within the Shire. Among the more educated Shire-hobbits, letter-writing was a popular activity, and so the Messengers who carried those letters formed a large and important service.

We have little direct information about how the Messengers and their Service worked, but we know that each town in the Shire had its own post-office that handled the messages from one place to another. Our main source for this comes from the account of Bilbo's famous Birthday Party: during the period leading up the Party, the post-offices of both Hobbiton and nearby Bywater were completely blocked, causing new voluntary Messengers to be recruited to help handle the unusual load.