Have you ever wondered if you could mail yourself
across the country? How many stamps do you think you would need? How much might it cost?
For James Beagle, an eight-month-old from Ohio, it cost 15 cents in postage for his parents to send him to his grandma’s house a few miles away; for Charlotte May Pierstorff, a five-year-old from Idaho, 53 cents to ship her to her grandmother 73 miles away. And Edna Neff, a six-year-old, was conveyed 720 miles, from Pensacola, Florida, to Christiansburg, Virginia, for mere pennies.
As hard as it is to believe, for a handful of years in the early 20th century, you could mail a child through the United States Post Office. It was 1913, and the Post Office had just introduced the parcel post service. Before then, for the Post Office to deliver your package, it had to be four pounds or
less. With the new parcel
post, you could send a package that weighed up to 20 pounds, even 50 pounds, if you were not sending it too far.
That gave some resourceful, penny-pinching families an idea. Why send their child to a relative by train, buying an expensive ticket for him or her, when they could post them in the mail for under a dollar and have the postal carrier deliver the child door to door?
So, parents handed off their children to their postal carrier, and away the children went! It does showcase how trusted and beloved the postal carriers were. Most of the children sent lived in rural areas. In many cases, the postal carrier would be the only person outside their family they would see regularly. They were dependable servants, guardians. And so, in some ways, it made sense to send a child in their charge.
It did make the postal service a bit uncomfortable, though. These new packages certainly weren't expected! The postmaster general finally decreed that children could not be sent through the mail. By 1920, the practice had all but ceased.
So, don’t go putting stamps on your forehead and wait out by your mailbox to be gathered up and taken to Hawaii or Paris via your postal worker. They will more than likely say “Hello" and ask why you are all covered in stamps. You can now tell them this fascinating story!