The first post office in Cohoes was established on February 23, 1832 and was located in Postmaster Frederio Y. Waterman’s store near the junction of the Erie and Champlain Canals. It served about 150 residents. The following year, Hezekiah Howe was appointed Postmaster and he moved the post office to his new store on the canal bank near the Jute Mill. A Cohoes resident, Wright Mallery, who had a bakery in West Troy, carried the mail. Daily, he made his trips to the stores along the line of the canal bringing the Cohoes mail in his bread cart since there were usually no more than one or two letters to deliver.

Three more moves later, in 1861, the post office resided in Izrahiah W. Chesebro’s drug store. It was the practice at that time to appoint local businessmen as Postmaster and locate the post office at their places of business.

By 1894, city delivery extended to the rural sections and across the Mohawk River to most of the village of Waterford, locally referred to as Northside. Northside was transferred to the Waterford Post Office in 1957. To better serve the Van Schaick and Adam’s Island residents, US Postal Substation #1 was established in Kennedy’s Drugstore in 1914.

In 1922, the former mayor Dr. James E. McDonald Sr. became postmaster. During his tenure, the first federally owned building housing the Cohoes Post Office was erected in 1924 at the site it still occupies on the southeast corner of Ontario and Mohawk Streets. On file there are some of the different spellings used to designate the city. Among some of the more unique ones are:

* Coohoos

* Cookahoves

* Cowhewes

* Kachooze

* Kahahouse

* Kohos