More than 200 years ago, the mail in Wareham was distributed at the local tavern. While some information in town is still delivered that way, the town's post office in has come a long way in that time.

The story of the 75-year-old post office on Main Street and the centuries' old history of the postal service in Wareham was detailed Monday night by Wareham Postmaster Linda Nix. Her presentation was part of a program hosted by the Wareham Historical Society at the Old Methodist Meeting House at 495 Main St.

A Wareham native, Nix has 31 years of experience in the U.S. Postal Service. She started out as a letter carrier in Plymouth in the 80s, worked her way up to postmaster at Sagamore Beach in 1998 and since 2009 has been the postmaster at the Wareham Post Office.

"It was my ambition to be back in my hometown," said Nix, who lives in Onset.

Nix said that the first postmaster in Wareham was Benjamin Fearing, who was appointed to that position on Sept. 11, 1800. She said at the time the mail for the town came to the Fearing Tavern.

In 1935, Wareham Postmaster Blanche Robinson petitioned the federal government to build a post office in Wareham. While the postmaster general replied that there were no funds, Robinson was persistent enough that her successor, James Marvelle, was able to get the post office built, which went up at its current location in 1940.

Nix brought many old postal scales, combination lock mail boxes, emergency lights and time clocks that she found deep inside the post office on Main Street. She also brought along an old leather mail bag that is twice the size, and likely twice the weight, of the bag mail carriers have been using for decades.

Attendees were also treated to a brief presentation by Diane Bryant of Boston, who spent summers growing up with her family in Wareham. She said her great-grandfather John Huxtable was a postmaster in Wareham in the early 20th century and had an old postage scale that was patented by Benjamin Churchill, a previous Wareham postmaster in 1865. Bryant donated the scale to the Wareham Historical Society.

"It's a good thing for this to come home to Wareham," she said.