In 1914, a nearly six-year-old Idaho girl named May Pierstorff traveled about 73 miles from Grangeville to Lewiston to visit her grandparents. The story is remembered because 53 cents in parcel-post stamps were attached to her coat.
That fact is strange enough. It does not mean the Post Office Department had a normal service for shipping children, or that May was put in a sack with the letters. The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum describes the early episodes as children traveling with trusted postal workers while a brand-new parcel-post system was still being tested at its edges. Postal officials ultimately made their position plain: children were not mail.
A new service, a very bad loophole
Parcel Post began on January 1, 1913. It mattered especially to rural Americans, who could suddenly send and receive larger packages at standardized rates instead of relying entirely on private express companies. The service was immediately popular; the National Postal Museum says nearly 300 million parcels moved in its first six months.
New services invite imaginative customers. In January 1913, Jesse and Mathilda Beagle of Ohio sent their infant son James to his grandmother a few miles away with rural carrier Vernon Lytle. The child was just under the then-current 11-pound limit, was insured for $50, and traveled in the carrier’s wagon. That makes the episode a revealing snapshot of an unfamiliar system, not an example to imitate.
As the Postal Museum’s historian explains, several later cases involved children traveling beside people the families knew in the postal system. Accounts are unusually specific because newspapers liked the novelty. They are not evidence that the postal service routinely treated children as packages.
May Pierstorff’s famous trip
May’s case became the best-known one. The Postal Museum dates it to February 19, 1914, and records her destination as her grandparents’ home in Lewiston. In one museum account, May traveled with a relative who worked on Railway Mail trains; another exhibition notes that a mail clerk delivered her at the far end. The shared point is the important one: she traveled with adults, not as freight.
The stamps on her sleeve have made the story durable. They turned a family journey into a perfect newspaper oddity: an ordinary trip given a postage receipt. But the postal rules did not create a hidden passenger class. A 1914 Postal Museum timeline records Postmaster General Albert Burleson’s response after the stories appeared: babies were not among items permitted in the mail.
Why the legend needs a little care
“Children in the mail” is a memorable shorthand, but it can hide the human part of the history. These were families making questionable use of a new service, and workers who took responsibility for a child on a particular route. The U.S. Postal Service historian says the trips were against postal regulations; the Museum’s record of the cases also shows why officials moved to shut down the practice.
The story is still delightfully weird, just more precise when told straight. Parcel Post changed rural life by moving eggs, tools, food, catalog goods and thousands of other things. For a brief period, a few families tried to stretch its promise too far. The postal service’s answer was uncomplicated: a child was a traveler, not a parcel.
Fact check
- Documented: Parcel Post began in 1913, and the National Postal Museum documents several cases in which children traveled with postal employees.
- Documented: May Pierstorff traveled from Grangeville to Lewiston in 1914 with postage attached to her clothing.
- Important context: These episodes were not a standard passenger service. Postal historians describe them as contrary to postal rules, and officials clarified that children could not be sent through the mail.
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