You used to be able to send children through U.S. mail.
You can send a lot of things in the mail, but you can’t send a person — at least not anymore. There was nothing preventing people from mailing their own children in the early days of the U.S. Postal Service’s parcel post service, and at least seven families took advantage of it. That includes the Beagues, an Ohio couple who in 1913 paid 15 cents in postage to mail their newborn son to his grandmother’s house a mile down the road. Beyond the novelty of it — when the parcel post service began on January 1, 1913, some were eager to see which packages they could get away with sending — it was a surprisingly practical way of getting one’s kiddo from point A to point B.
To start with, many people in rural areas knew their postal carriers fairly well, which meant the children were simply walked or carried on often-short trips. In other instances, children traveled on trains as Railway Mail, but with stamps instead of (usually more expensive) train tickets. The longest known trip of a child through the mail occurred in 1915, when a six-year-old was sent 720 miles from Florida to Virginia — a lengthy trip that cost just 15 cents. Fortunately, there are no reports of children being injured by being sent through the mail. (Pictures of children in literal mailbags were staged.) The practice ended, as so many do, when certain higher-ups became aware of the loophole and decided to close it, also around 1915.
First opened more than three centuries ago, the Sanquhar Post Office is the oldest working post office in the world. It’s been serving the people of Sanquhar, Scotland, since 1712 — just five years after Scotland and England unified. It remains popular among tourists, who enjoy having their letters marked with a “World’s Oldest Post Office” stamp. The future of the site is in doubt, however, as the current owners are looking to retire, and a new owner had yet to be found at the time of writing. The Sanquhar post office predates the entire United States Postal Service by 63 years; the USPS was established by the Second Continental Congress on July 26, 1775.
