Did People Use Postal Service To ‘Mail’ Kids Earlier - Who Was The First?

In the early days of the U.S. Postal Service’s parcel service, there were hardly any clear mailing restrictions. This led to some rather peculiar practices, like mailing your own children through post! The practice, shocking as it may seem today, became possible due to a new service launched in 1913 that permitted parcels over four pounds to be mailed. This allowed imaginative citizens to explore the boundaries of what could be shipped, leading to stories of eggs, live animals, and, on rare occasions, children travelling through the postal system.

The First Mailed Baby: A Journey Across Town

On January 1, 1913, the U.S. Postal Service introduced a parcel post service, enabling Americans to mail packages that exceeded four pounds. This policy change prompted citizens to experiment with mailing a variety of unusual ‘items’. In January 1913, Jesse and Mathilda Beague from Glen Este, Ohio, became the first to mail their child through this new service. They paid 15 cents in postage and added $50 in insurance to cover their infant son, who was delivered safely by the local mailman to his grandmother’s house just a mile away.

Nancy Pope, a historian from the National Postal Museum, notes that the mailing of children was not a common occurrence, but it certainly attracted attention. “The first few years of parcel post service—it was a bit of a mess,” Pope tells History. “Different towns allowed different things, depending on how their postmaster interpreted the regulations.”

Without explicit restrictions on sending human beings, families in rural areas considered using the postal system to transport their children. Transporting children by mail was surprisingly economical compared to passenger train tickets, especially for longer distances. For instance, families might have spent a few cents on postage to send a child through Railway Mail, saving a significant amount in travel costs.

During these early days, rural communities often had close relationships with their local mail carriers, making the idea of entrusting their children to them more acceptable. Families generally did not place their children in the mail in the literal sense. Rather, children were either carried or walked along postal routes by the mail carriers, who saw them as companions rather than packages. However, the postal system’s limitations became more evident as some parents extended their children’s journeys over greater distances.

Stranger Stories: The Mailed Children of the Early 20th Century

Between 1913 and 1915, at least seven documented cases involved families sending their children through the mail. One of the most well-known instances occurred in February 1914, when five-year-old May Pierstorff was sent via Railway Mail in Idaho. Her parents paid 53 cents to mail her 73 miles to her grandparents, they even placed stamps directly on her coat. The postman accompanying her was a relative, making her journey somewhat familiar despite the unconventional mode of travel. May’s story later inspired the children’s book, Mailing May.

However, the continued trend of mailing children alarmed Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, who soon enacted a policy banning postal workers from accepting humans as mail. Despite this restriction, families continued to attempt similar endeavours, with the most extended postal journey occurring in 1915 when six-year-old Edna Neff travelled from Florida to Virginia—a distance of 720 miles. The mailing cost was an astonishingly low 15 cents.

A Firm & Final Ban on Mailing Humans

As this gained more and more attention, postal authorities grew stricter about human mailing. In 1915, a child named Maud Smith was sent by her grandparents to her ailing mother, covering a 40-mile journey across Kentucky. When Maud’s story reached the press, Superintendent John Clark of the Cincinnati Railway Mail Service division launched an investigation, reprimanding the postmaster in Caney, Kentucky, for allowing a child on the mail train in defiance of postal regulations. Pope remarks, “I don’t know if he lost his job, but he sure had some explaining to do.”

Although Maud’s journey appears to be the last known instance of a child being successfully mailed, attempts continued sporadically into the 1920s. In 1920, First Assistant Postmaster General John C. Koons rejected two applications to mail children, humorously explaining that they did not qualify as “harmless live animals.”

Over the years, stricter regulations were enforced to ensure public safety and uphold service integrity, with rules forbidding the mailing of people firmly in place by 1914.

A Modern Parallel?

The legacy of mailing children may seem absurd by today’s standards, yet in some ways, it foreshadowed modern practices, such as sending unaccompanied minors on flights. Today, airlines provide special services to ensure children’s safety while travelling alone, similar in intent—if not in method—to the early postal service’s efforts to aid families in transporting young travellers.

The mailing of children remains an interesting piece of American history. As Pope reflects on the odd chapter of mailed children, she remarks, “We would sure love to have that coat” of young May Pierstorff—as a relic of a postal era.