Kids Sent in the Mail

Crazy as it seems, did you know they used to actually send kids in the mail?

 

In 1914, six year old May Pierstorff was mailed about 73 miles from her parents' home in Idaho to her grandparents. It cost just 53 cents.

  

 

May Pierstorff  (photo credit to Smithsonian National Postal Museum blog)

 

Little May wasn't the only kid sent via US Parcel Post. The first child actually mailed was an unnamed boy in Batavia, Ohio sent in January of 1913. He was mailed to his grandparents for 15 cents postage and was insured for $50. There are records of other children being mailed also.   

 

No, parents didn't slap stamps on the kids foreheads and put them in a box. The children who were "mailed" were placed with trusted postal workers who traveled with them to their destinations. This new mail service was cheaper than sending a child by traditional travel means at the time. 

 

To stop the postal service from being taken advantage of, in 1914, Postmaster General Burleson issued directions to all the nation's postmasters that human beings were barred from the mail. But that didn't stop the practice completely; other children were mailed including a 14 pound baby, who a month after the directions, was carried 12 miles by a rural carrier in Maryland. A year later, the longest trip of a child was recorded. Six year old Edna Neff was mailed from her mother's home in Pensacola, Florida to her father's home in Christainburg, Virginia.