Written by Lynn Marie Allen, Executive Director/Curator
Off on my usual journies exploring all things history and here is a bit of history that might surprise you. It is 1913, and a young couple in Ohio decides to take advantage of the many benefits of the postal service. Pinning the stamp to the shirt of their infant son, they hand off their baby to the postal service worker to deliver the infant to his grandmother, who lived about a mile away. The parents paid .15 cents in postage and fifty dollars to insure the infant. Now this was not unheard of. Once the postal service began accepting packages, people tested the limits in every way possible, from eggs, bricks, snakes, and other postal oddities.
The tradition of mailing your child by railway mail was far cheaper than a passenger ticket, so it became normal. That is until the postmaster general stopped the child postal services. I have spoken about May, the six-year-old child sent by rail to her grandparents, who were over 73 miles away. The other pieces I gathered were that the postal worker was somehow a relative. They paid the .53 cents in postage, pinning it to her coat, and May was off on her journey. The experience marks in history when Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson heard about this incident and declared, “You may no longer mail your children!” He officially “banned” mailing your children. People, however, were quick to test the limits continued, and a year later, a woman in Florida shipped her daughter to Virginia to see her father. The journey was 720 miles and cost .15 cents in postage! The last known child sent by post was in 1915; three-year-old Maud Smith was mailed the forty miles to Kentucky to visit her ailing mother. It is unclear if there were repercussions for the postal worker who accepted the child. There was an investigation and, at the very least, inquiries about why the child was allowed to travel by post! I want to say this was the last time in history that a child was mailed by post, however in 1920, two more child applications for postal mail were rejected as the postmaster determined they could not be classified as “harmless live animals” As always, history can illuminate the stories! There is so much more to every incredible story! Find it! Be sure to stop by and share what you learn! #HistoryMysteries
Pictured Hiawatha Mail Carriers 1907 which is part of the Brown County Historical Society Collection. Pictured Clint Meyers, Joe Seburn, William Wyer (Weier), Charles Carter, Frank Douthart, Luke Hall.
“History Mysteries” and “Chasing My Sparkle” are the intellectual property and creative inspiration of Lynn Marie Allen
Forest of Words 