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.

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