The Little Girl Who Was Mailed To Her Grandma For 53 Cents By Parcel Post
Her little story is so sweet it's featured at the Smithsonian and became an award winning children's book.
When the conductor first saw her, she was standing at the door of the train to get some fresh air because the twisty, winding mountain roads were making her tummy feel sick and her head a little dizzy.
It was a cold February morning and the little girl was bundled up in a thick wool coat and warm woolen stockings. She was clutching a tiny suitcase.
She showed the conductor the postage stamps on her suitcase and said she was going to visit her Grandma. By parcel post. After inspecting the stamps, the conductor had a good old chuckle and went back to work.
Knowing there was a little one on board, he peeked into the mail car a little later. She was quietly sitting on the mail bags, sucking on hard candy her mama had sent along for the ride, and clutching a big red apple in her little hand.
She was a blonde haired, blue-eyed little little sweetheart. Five, she said, holding up five tiny fingers. She would be six in a few months. Her name was Charlotte May Pierstorff, but everyone just calls her “May,” she said.
She wanted to see her grandmother, but they couldn’t afford a train ticket
It all started because Charlotte May wanted to visit her Grandmother. She really, really wanted to visit her beloved Grandma, but she lived 75 miles away.
Even worse, a train ticket cost a whole day’s pay. They couldn’t afford it, her daddy had said. But maybe next year there will be extra money for a ticket. The little girl was heartbroken. A whole year before she could see her grandma?
But then her Mama’s favorite cousin Leonard came to visit.
Leonard Mochel was not just her mama’s cousin, he was a postal carrier that rode the mail train. Up and down the mountain from the post office in Grangeville, Idaho to the post office in Lewiston, Idaho.
Their house was at the end of the line and sometimes mama’s cousin Leonard would spend the night at their house before he had to get back on the mail train in the morning.
It was one of those mornings when Charlotte May’s mama got a crazy idea.
Cousin Leonard was pulling on his coat to head back to the mail train on a cold winter morning when his cousin, Charlotte May’s mama, asked if he could take a parcel for her. It was February 19, 1914.
“Of course,” he told her. Of course I can take a parcel for you.
The United States Postal Service had just introduced their new parcel post service the year before. Before that, people could only sent letters and teeny packages up to 4 pounds. But in 1913, the USPS said people could mail any parcel up to 50 pounds.
That was the limit. 50 pounds.
So when cousin Leonard said he could take a parcel, Charlotte May’s mama ran into the next room and brought out the parcel. The parcel was Charlotte May, all bundled up in her winter coat and thick woolen stockings. She was holding a tiny suitcase packed for her visit to Grandma.
Cousin Leonard stood there with his mouth gaping like a fish.
So Charlotte May’s mama explained.
She’d checked all the regulations, she said.
Went down to the post office and read every word about the new parcel post system. There was nothing that said you could not send a child.
And she only weighs 47 pounds, she said. Under the 50 pound limit.
She even checked how much the postage would be to send a 47 pound parcel to Lewiston. 53 cents, that’s what the postmaster told her.
She handed cousin Leonard 53 cents.
He stood there, eyes wide, shaking his head.
“Please?” she said. Please?
Cousin Leonard didn’t like the idea. He didn’t like it one bit. He was afraid he would get in trouble, but true enough — the regulations didn’t prohibit sending children. So off they went to the mail train.
Seventy five miles later, imagine Grandma’s surprise and delight when the postman arrived at the door to deliver her “parcel.”
Cousin Leonard almost lost his job…
When the train pulled into Lewiston, Idaho, the conductor, Harry Morris, called the media. He thought the whole thing was hilarious and figured it would make a great human interest story. Make people chuckle. Everyone else thought so, too.
People enjoyed the story so much, it was printed in newspapers right across America from Seattle to New York.
Then the bad, scary letter that cousin Leonard was afraid of arrived.
Cousin Leonard Mochel received a letter from George H. Addleman, the chief clerk of the U.S. Post Office Department in Spokane, Washington. The letter threatened to give him 500 demerits for transporting a child and reminded him it only took 700 demerits to be permanently dismissed from his job.
Eventually, they came to an agreement. If Charlotte May’s family would pay half the price of a train ticket, Mochel would be spared the demerits.
They paid.
Her story is at the Smithsonian
At the Smithsonian, there’s a Museum of Postal History. It features the many children sent by US post. Charlotte May wasn’t the first or the last one!
The first child sent by parcel post was a 10 pound baby boy near Cincinnati, Ohio. In mid-January, 1913, right after parcel post was introduced, he was carried by postal carrier Vernon Little from his parents to his grandmother one mile away. The boy’s parents paid the 15 cent stamp, but were so worried they also paid $50 for postal insurance that promised to find any lost parcel.
One mile. They mailed him one mile because it was too cold to walk the mile.
The longest journey was six-year-old Edna Neff who travelled from Pensacola, Florida to Christiansburg, Virginia — a journey of 730 miles — by mail!
The little girl’s parents had split up and her mother had fallen on hard times. Tearfully, she brought her little girl to a probation officer and asked if she could get her to her father in Virginia.
The child care worker agreed and took temporary custody of the little girl, but didn’t have the budget for train fair. However — she did know someone who worked for the post office and off little Edna went on the mail train, riding on mail bags and handed off from person to person until she was delivered to her daddy’s door with postage stamps on the back of her coat.
Mailing children was prohibited because of the popularity of Charlotte May’s story…
Charlotte May wasn’t the first or last child to be sent by mail. She just became the most famous. Once her story swept newspapers across America, two things started happening.
First, postal workers started posing for photos with the children they were charged with delivering. And once everyone knew it was okay, there were more of them.
Some of those photos are on display at the Smithsonian Museum of postal history.
But secondly? The US Postal Service realized they had a few holes in their regulations. Their own regulations didn’t say you couldn’t mail children or pets. Big wheels move slowly, and it wasn’t until 1920 that the USPS finally published a country wide notification that children could no longer be shipped by mail.
86 years later, Charlotte May’s story won a children’s book award…
Michael O. Tunnell is a children’s literature professor at Brigham Young University. In 2000, he thought Charlotte May’s story was so sweet it should be remembered.
So he published a charming book called “Mailing May,” illustrated by Ted Rand.
Charlotte May had grown up, gotten married and had two children. When the book came out, her daughter was delighted.
The illustrations weren’t “quite right” she said. Her family were short blonde people, not dark-haired as shown in the book. But she was delighted to see the story in print. She remembers an article in Parade Magazine around 1978, but other than that, no one talked much about the story. Not even Charlotte May herself.
When the story came up among family “She would kind of laugh about the whole thing but she never really said too much about it,” her daughter said.
It’s a charming story with great illustrations…
Charlotte May Pierstorff lived to age of 78 and died in California thirteen years before the book came out. Her daughter is touched that her mother’s story is in print.
The book made the Young Reader Medal Masterlist, won the Colorado Children’s Book Award and got rave reviews…
“A heartwarming period piece based on a true incident, lovingly told, beautifully illustrated,” raved The New York Times Book Review [source]
References:
Smithsonian: A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail
Mailing Miss May; A little girl and a railroad became famous
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OMG, I'd be terrified to send my grandson by parcel post...but of course it's a different era. A lovely reminder of the good in people
Precious!