In 1914, John and Sarah Pierstorff didn’t want to pay for a pricy train ticket to send their daughter across Idaho. Instead they affixed 53 cents in stamps to her winter coat. Charlotte May Pierstorff, who was five years old, rode in the train’s mail compartment, and was handed off to her grandmother by a postal clerk.

Americans had just embraced the latest innovation from what was then called The United States Post Office Department: for the first time, letter carriers were carrying packages too. Several families apparently decided this was a good way to transport children. The Postmaster General received a letter in 1913 inquiring about the appropriate way to wrap a