As I am now home from all of our traveling and find myself finally ready to put up some kind of Mailbox incase my PO BOX can nor be used for delivery items. Plus it is encouraged for emergency identification purposes.
I was looking up mailbox images to get some unique ideas when I came across an interesting story. Please don't mind me if I get "carried" away with these photos of what mail-carrying looked like a century ago.
If you think postal delivery people riding around on scooters is a new thing, I will enlighten you: mailmen have been delivering mail via scooter for more than a century.
Did you know that women have been working as mail carriers since the turn of the 20th century? Women were initially employed only to service rural routes. However, by 1917, female mail carriers had begun taking city routes. That was the year this photo—of a female postal worker delivering mail to a young girl—was taken. Today, more than one-third of all letter carriers are women.
The first official airmail was delivered on May 15, 1918. The man in this photo, Lieutenant James Clark Edgerton, was the youngest of the six pilots who flew the mail that day. He got the job because of nepotism, ( I had a few friends that got their spouses & friends employed too) according to the Smithsonian Postal Museum—his dad worked for the U.S. Post Office Department, which was a predecessor of the U.S. Postal Service. He’s pictured with his younger sister, Elizabeth, following his arrival in Washington, D.C.
Now I've heard it all!
The practice of using the mail to deliver humans from one place to another had actually begun in 1913, coinciding with the advent of the U.S. Postal Service’s Parcel Post service. Immediately after Parcel Post went into effect, an Ohio couple used the service to mail their infant son from their house to his grandmother’s house a mile down the road. The practice was banned in 1920. I would guess that would be a good idea... LOL!
I hope you find this as interesting as I did...
Nana
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