National Postal Museum

Singing a Postal Song

By Nancy Pope, Historian and Curator

You might know the lyrics to “Please, Please Mr. Postman,” or “Return to Sender,” but how about “My Parcel Post Man” or “The Old Postmaster?” Folks have been writing songs about their mail, and what it brings (or doesn’t) for more than 100 years. Over the years the museum has compiled a listing of more than 300 mail-themed American songs. The earliest we found was “Mail Line Packet,” copyrighted in 1857 by P.P. Werlein & Company. Between then and now, hundreds of songwriters have weaved musical tales of love letters and sad letters, and a wide world of postal dramas.

Postal workers have inspired more than a few songs. A Boston, Massachusetts music teacher named John G. Murdock wrote “The Letter Carrier’s Grand March” in 1874. Letter carriers received another music tribute when a prolific musician and teacher, Harry J. Lincoln of Philadelphia, wrote “The Letter Carriers March and Two Step” in 1926. The museum has a copy of Lincoln’s sheet music for this piece in its collection.

The year 1881 must have been a hard one for older Americans. Two songs were published that year urging more letter writing. A.W. Filson’s “Write the Old Folks at Home” and the slightly more pleading “Write to the Sad Old Folks at Home” by Robert Hornung and Theodor Wolfram.

The Post Office Department’s brand new free rural delivery system inspired M.C. Bales to write the “Rural Mail Route Waltz” in 1902, the year that Rural Free Delivery became an official service. And a couple of decades after America’s flying mail service began Jimmy Mundy and Benny Goodman set America swinging to their “Air Mail Special”

But aside from a song here or there touting the postal system or its employees, the bulk of America’s postal songs have focused on what was most important to the people – the mail itself. Songs of gratitude for good news delivered by mail are side by side to ballads of despair for the letter that wasn’t written. Max Sturm’s mournful 1886 song “Letter That Never Came” expressed sorrow at not receiving a letter from a loved one. Sorrow that would find itself put into song again a half a century later in Frankie Brown’s “No Letter Today.”

From joy to sorrow, from wondering if a letter will ever come, or wondering what it will say when it gets there, musical mail songs have been created using a wide range of musical styles. From marches to ragtime, swing to pop, songwriters have used the innate drama of the pause before opening a letter, or the wait for the carrier’s footsteps outside the door to see if someone was thinking of you as the backdrop for stories of mail’s role in our lives.

“Good Mister Mailman” by Joseph E. Howard, 1898

 

“The Old Postmaster” by Joseph W. Stern, 1900

Very Special Deliveries

By Nancy Pope, Historian and Curator

On February 19, 1914, May Pierstorff, just short of her 6th birthday, was “mailed” from her parents’ home in Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents’ house about 73 miles away for just 53-cents worth of stamps. May’s parents were taking advantage of parcel post service, which began just the year before. In the early years of this service, customers and postal officials were still getting used to how the service could be used. But mailing children?

Young May Pierstorff, the most famous of the parcel post children packages.

Amazingly enough May wasn’t the only child entrusted to parcel post service. But before images of babies bouncing around in mailbags start appearing in your head, the children whose families entrusted them to the Post Office Department were “mailed” by traveling with trusted postal workers (in May’s case, a relative who worked on the Railway Mail trains).

The first child “mailed” in the U.S. was an unnamed boy in Batavia, Ohio in mid January 1913. The son of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge of Glen Este, Ohio was carried by Rural Free Delivery carrier Vernon Little to its grandmother, Mrs. Louis Beague about a mile away. The boy’s parents paid 15-cents for the stamps and even insured their son for $50.

On January 27 Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Savis of Pine Hollow, Pennsylvania entrusted their daughter to rural carrier James Byerly out of Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, who delivered her safely that afternoon to relatives in Clay Hollow. The daughter cost her parents 45-cents to send.

In spite of that busy start, the rest of the year passed without postal officials having to face other children traveling by mail. May’s travels in early 1914, along with an inquiry about mailing children that month inspired Postmaster General Burleson to issue directions to the nation’s postmasters that all human beings were barred from the mails.

Of course for some, laws are meant to be broken. And merely a month after the “no-humans” announcement, rural carrier B.H. Knepper in Maryland carried a 14-pound baby from its grandmother’s home in Clear Spring to the mother’s house in Indian Springs, twelve miles away. A local newspaper reported that the baby slept through the entire trip.

A year later, the longest trip by a child “mailed” through parcel post was made by six-year-old Edna Neff. She traveled from her mother’s home in Pensacola, Florida, to her father’s home in Christainburg, Virginia. There is little information on the specifics of Edna’s trip, which was made by railway mail train other than her weight, recorded as just under the 50-pound limit resulting in a trip cost 15 cents in parcel post stamps.

The year of 1915 was a banner year for mailing children. Unburdened by regulations now on the books against mailing children, two more trips were made after Edna’s that year. In March rural carrier Charles Hayes of Tarkin, Missouri carried Mr. and Mrs. Albert Combs’ daughter Helen by parcel post for 10-cents. Hayes delivered Helen to her grandmother, Mrs. C.H. Combs, whose home was also on his route. That September, three-year-old Maud Smith made her parcel post journey when she traveled from her grandparents’ home to her mother’s, Mrs. Celina Smith of Jackson, Kentucky. A local newspaper noted that this particular trip was being investigated by the postal officials. Superintendent John Clark of the Cincinnati division of the Railway Mail Service asked the Caney, Kentucky postmaster to explain who he allowed the child onto the train as parcel post in clear violation of postal rules. Perhaps it was the public notice of the investigation, but for whatever reason, it appears to have been the final case of “child mail.”
 

Carriers and photographs had fun with the idea of “mailing” babies. This image is not only a part of a collection of Smithsonian photographs on Flickr, but is the most popular photograph from the Institution in that collection.

 

This “baby in the mail” fun photograph takes the idea a step farther by having the baby be the letter carrier.

 

To Rotate or Not to Rotate?

By Rebecca Johnson, Preservation Technician and Offsite Coordinator

All paper fades over time. In the museum conservation world, we call it “burning”. While the term might sound overly dramatic, too much light on paper causes irreversible damage. In extreme cases, excessive burning can render documents illegible, thereby losing the historical significance. So when the Postal Museum installs an exhibit, our Preservation department carefully surveys, or reviews, every artifact to determine its fragility and sensitivity to light. Some objects are deemed too sensitive to remain exposed to light for the duration of the exhibit, so the curators select additional artifacts for “rotation”. After one artifact has been on display for its scheduled period, it is removed from the exhibit, returned to storage, and replaced by the next artifact in line.

It takes several staff members to complete the rotation.

    

Preservation staff preparing for rotation.

Removing object from exhibition.

    

Replacing display panels.

Rotating artifacts.

Several of the artifacts in our current exhibition Fire and Ice were determined by our preservation department to be fragile.  They were allowed an 11 month display period. So 11 months after the exhibit was first installed these sensitive artifacts were rotated out. The artifacts in this second rotation are not the same as those in the first rotation, so the museum needed to update the descriptions on the exhibit panels to match. This is no easy feat! It takes several people to make sure the right artifacts are removed from the exhibit and that the new artifacts and panels are properly installed in the correct places.

Carefully removing 3-D artifacts from panels.

    

Removing paper artifact for rotation.

Drilling holes in new panel for rotation.

As a final step, the preservation staff measures the light levels to make sure they are not over 4 to 5 foot candles (or 40-50 lux hours). This low lighting, as well as having the lights visitor activated, helps to extend the exhibition life of an artifact. Some areas of museums may seem too dark and it may take a while for your eyes to adjust, but this small difference helps the artifacts remain in good condition for future generations.

 

Checking light measurements.

    

Lining up artifacts on new panels.

Placing covers back on exhibit panels.

    

Taking light measurements.