Aug8

neither rain, nor sleet, nor children….

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ask anyone in my family

 they’ll tell you

i’m a huge fan of going to the post office

i love mailing hand-written letters

buying cool stamps

 sending packages to my special people

filled with things i just  know they’d love

even though they don’t know it yet.

all this being said

the post office does have

its own huge set of negatives and challenges

as i’ve written about a number of times

and even a bit of a dark past from the early days.

People Used to Mail Their Children Via the Postal Service

(can’t say if i may have wondered if this was an option

during those sleep-deprived times with 3 small children, back in the day,

just kidding for my now-grown and non-mailed children

who i love dearly and are likely to read this.)

When the United States Postal Service launched their parcel service in 1913, Americans immediately began testing its boundaries. People started mailing coffins, eggs, and even dogs, and a few decided to mail the ultimate precious cargo: human children.

The first known case of baby-shipping happened that same year, when an Ohio couple mailed their 10-pound infant to his grandmother a mile away, which cost them about 15 cents. Some kids traveled farther, like 6-year-old Edna Neff, who was mailed 720 miles from Pensacola, Florida, to her father’s home in Christiansburg, Virginia.

There was only a brief window for mailing kids, though; the postmaster general instituted a strict no-humans rule in 1914. At least two more children managed to slip through: Charlotte May Pierstorff was mailed via rail to her grandparents’ house with the appropriate postage stuck to her coat in 1914, but a postal worker relative escorted her (her story was later turned into a children’s book called ‘Mailing May’). The last recorded case was in 1915, when 3-year-old Maud Smith’s grandparents mailed her 40 miles across Kentucky to visit her sick mother. In 1920, the Postal Service declined two applications to mail children who had been listed as “harmless live animals,” a classification for creatures that don’t require food or water on their journey.

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Many of us have heard the postal carriers’ motto in one form or another. “Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep the postmen from their appointed rounds.”

The original saying was spoken about 2500 years ago by the Greek historian, Herodotus. He actually said “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” This was said during the war between the Greeks and Persians about 500 B.C. in reference to the Persian mounted postal couriers whom he observed and held in high esteem.

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According to the U.S.P.S. they have no slogan at all. The reason it has become identified with the U.S.P.S. is because, back in 1896-97, when the NYC General Post Office was being designed, architect, Mitchell Kendal, came up with the idea of engraving Herodotus’ saying all around the outside of the building.

From that time on the saying has been associated with U.S. postal carriers.

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source credit: interesting facts

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82 responses »

  1. We’ve come a long way, Babe. Wow. Mailing children. Oh good gracious! Makes sense but doesn’t make sense …
    I love the post office too. I love sending letters —that said, I haven’t done much of that this year: there has been one things after another stopping me this year. I feel so bad. I’ll redeem myself next year.
    Thanks for the longish post. Very informative. 💕

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    • yes, not a good idea for any reason, and it sounds like it was kind of ‘the Wild West’ at the beginning, with few rules . this was a long one for me, you’re right, but I thought it was worth sharing as it was such and interesting history.

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  5. Being a genuine Retired Guy now, Beth, I don’t have to begrudge time spent in the post office line waiting to sent this or that this way or this other way. I value the service every day when I gather the contents from my mailbox, and thanks to your post today (hey, I really like that we call our daily offerings on WP posts!) I can whisper belated thanks to the workers who got those mailed children safely to the addresses pinned to their clothing.

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    • yes, I’m a fan, even with all of it’s issues. it always amazes me that for things even get from one place to the other. (mostly). yes, thankfully some of workers during that era understood the safely issue and stepped in.

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  8. I am also intrigued by stamps. I had a nice collection I started as a lad. Several years ago, I gave it to a friend of mine in Canada. Since then, at least once a year I send her an envelope of stamps I have collected since the last mailing! Great post! Mailing children, was new to me! Amazing.

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  10. Great post. I had heard of mailing children, but I had no idea it really happened! Yikes.

    Love the postal service. Collected stamps as a kiddo, but now I buy the forever stamps and tell myself I am going to write letters and mail them, but I don’t write as much as I should. I do write thank you notes to my kiddos for their Christmas and end of year gifts. I find him stamps to affix to the notes… occasionally I’ll get a thank you from a kid.

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  11. Just recently a friend who lives in my state but about 200 miles away sent me a small pkg of usb-sticks with content. Priority mail etc etc. I watched the tracking #. Everything seemed to be fine until the track showed the pkg had left the state. PANIC! I inquired at my PO and learned this happens sometimes. It arrived about a week late but no damage done except to my fragile heart. lol

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  16. I suppose you could make the argument that mailing falls under sort of the same concept as flying unaccompanied minors across the country? We have just improved the concept with better technology than they used to have in 1913…at least I hope that’s the case. What a bargain .15 would be today :)

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  18. I’d heard about this…but I love all the detail and background you shared. It made be LOL here at my desk: …”the postmaster general instituted a strict no-humans rule in 1914″. Thank goodness. 😜

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  21. Interesting info. I have been trying to decide how to mail an old family heirloom–a copy of a 1956 “Progressive Farmer” to my cousin in Mississippi. There are photos of his extended family on the cover and a story inside. Interesting ads and spin. I don’t want the magazine to get damaged, since it is so old and fragile. I need to visit the PO for recommendations, and to check my PO box, now that storm Betty has moved out to the Atlantic Ocean.

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  22. Mailing kids!? I’d never heard of that.
    I’ve always loved the Post Office (collected stamps as a kid). But these days, not so much. Here we have community mail boxes, banks of locked boxes up the hill a block away. More secure, obviously. But I do well to get up there a couple of times a month. Not good with time-sensitive stuff (although they do email notifications of what’s coming, most of the time). And particularly frustrating when I know the carrier drives right past my house to get up there.

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  23. I’ve joked many times with my daughter that she needs to put a stamp on those grandkids of mine and mail them to me! I didn’t know that was actually ever a thing. I have to say, though, I would not trust the post office to deliver such precious cargo. Lately, even my envelopes are hit or miss. Just last month a letter I sent to my son went missing. And last year, when my son sent wedding invitations out, about 10% never arrived to their destinations! I’m glad the slogan never really was about the post office, because, at least this day and age, it wouldn’t be very descriptive of reality.

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  27. Well now… I’m thinking I might have considered this option, had I known it existed. I could have replaced by “Now I know why some species eat their young!” To something like “How about I ship you off to (insert destination here)”!

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  29. Since you know this postal story, you’ve likely seen the photo of the child in the mail bag. My letter carrier daughter is arriving in about a half hour from Madison, WI. I’ll have to ask her about her mail deliveries. Amazon seems to dictate what happens in the postal service these days. Aside from that, I will be so happy to see my girl for the first time since Christmas. Family reunion this weekend on the Helbling side.

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  31. That was great. I wish I could mail myself to Paris, after the Olympics, of course…”adult harmless animal.” Unfortunately, they wold probably have to feed me and give me something to drink. What would we do without the post office. I do love to pick out my favorite stamps.

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  32. I’ve never understood the criticism of the postal system. The fact that we can send a letter across country for less than a dollar is a bargain. Sure, email, texts, and FaceTime are more immediate, but letters are highly underrated.

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  33. I’m a bit appalled with the idea of mailing children! Holy %^&*(!
    I guess it happened ‘back in the olden days.’ But I’m grateful that option was nixed. I also love mailing hand-written letters and cards and gifts. Thanks for sharing this history. Wow! 🥰

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  34. I love my post office. It’s like a small community, and I always bump into people I know. I’m there at least twice a week. Mailing packages is always fun, and you know I’m a huge fan of handwritten letters. When I mail the giant thank you letters that children have decorated, the postal clerks always get to hear the story.

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