The Postie Stone: a memorial to two dedicated postal workers who lost their lives…delivering mail.

The roadside memorial know as Mail Coach Monument, or Postie Stone, 9 kilometers North to Moffat, Scotland, commemorated the lives of two Dumfriesshire men, John Goodfellow, the coach driver, and James McGeorge, the coach guard of a mail coach.
It was February 1, 1831 when the two were on a mail coach traveling from Dumfries to Edinburgh.
However, they became caught in a fierce blizzard which forced them to abandon the coach and set off on foot through the snow to try and deliver the mail and make it to safety.
Thus they took the mailbags and horses but eventually, they were overcome by the elements and died near the head of Cross Burn.
The horses continued on, reaching a nearby farm which raised the alarm.
An account states that the following morning a man named Marchbank set out from Moffat to discover the state of the road and coach.
After struggling through the snow towards Tweedshaws, he was to find the mailbags hung on a post by the road, adorned with bloody marks from frostbitten fingers.
It seems that a search party failed to find them and their bodies were only discovered four days later.

The men were laid to rest in the churchyard in nearby Moffat, and the stone was erected in their memory in 1931, a century after their death.