100 years ago on this day, February 19, 1914, rather than purchasing a more costly train ticket, the parents of four-year-old May Pierstorff opt to send their daughter to visit her grandparents via the U.S. Postal Service. Little May wore fifty-three cents worth of U.S. postage stamps on her coat as she rode more than seventy miles in the train’s mail compartment from Grangeville to Lewiston, Idaho.
Here is a children’s book written about it!
http://www.amazon.com/Mailing-May-Michael-O-Tunnell/dp/0064437248