Over the years, postal service workers have seen some pretty odd things sent through the mail, ranging from live shrimp to a coffin. One such instance that stands out in the state of Idaho is a “package” sent in 1914 between two towns. May Pierstorff was five years old when her parents spent 50 cents to mail her to her grandparents in Lewiston, Idaho. She was just under 50 pounds, the postal service weight limit at the time. May sat in the mail train car with a clerk from the post office. In the early days of the postal service, “mailing” children was not unheard of, as some parents saw it as a convenient way to transport their children to family members.
Before May, there was a baby boy who was mailed just several weeks after parcel post began in the United States. The baby weighed just over ten pounds and was “mailed” from his parents in Glen Este, Ohio, to his grandparents in Batavia, Ohio. After the parents insured their son and paid 15 cents for the postage stamps, the mail carrier brought the baby to his grandparents. A similar occurrence happened less than a week later in Pennsylvania. A young girl was “mailed” from her parents in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, to relatives in Clay Hollow, for a total of 45 cents.
Once May Pierstorff’s story started spreading, the Postmaster General released a statement banning the mailing of human beings. There are several other stories throughout 1915 of children traveling through the mail system before mail carriers finally took note of the rules. The longest trip of a child through the mail system was made in 1915 by Edna Neff, who was six years old at the time. Her mother sent her off from her home in Pensacola, Florida, and she traveled by a railway mail train to her father in Christiansburg, Virginia. The trip cost just 15 cents. When three-year-old Maud Smith traveled through the postal service to her mother’s home in Jackson, Kentucky later that year, an investigation was launched, and the rules were more strictly reinforced.