From badly needed toilet paper to much desired outdoor heaters, many households have been relying on a variety of services to deliver the items they need, or think they need, during this year of the pandemic. The services are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to overlook the fact that the U.S. Post Office Department only began providing nationwide parcel delivery service on January 1, 1913.

To prepare for the launch of that service, the Post Office Department began issuing a series of parcel post stamps, including today’s #stampoftheday, a 20-cent stamp issued on December 16, 1912. The stamp, which says was the world’s first stamp to picture an airplane says, “Aeroplane Carrying Mail,” an odd statement since the Post Office didn’t offer regular airmail service until 1918.

Oddly, the U.S. had been delivering parcels mailed from abroad since 1878, when the Congress of the Universal Postal Union established an international parcel post system. But for a variety of reasons, particularly opposition from private express companies and rural retail merchants, it did not extend that service to domestic parcels.

But things began to change with the introduction of Rural Free Delivery service in 1896. Before that time, many rural residents had to travel for days to retrieve their mail from distant post offices or pay private express companies for delivery. Finally, after extensive lobbying by groups representing rural residents (who at the time made up more than half the people in the country) as well as by merchants hoping to expand their markets (such as Montgomery Ward, the nation’s first mail-order house, which had started with a one-page catalog in 1872), Congress approved the establishment of rural free delivery.

The onset of this service quickly increased the demand for delivery of packages containing such items as foodstuffs, dry goods, drugs, tobacco and other commodities. Groups representing farmers as well as businesses seeking to benefit from this growing market lobbied for the change. Private express companies and rural retailers again fought them. Their efforts apparently were undermined when in the midst of Congressional debates, one of the major express companies declared a dividend for its stockholders, a public relations mistake that may have helped turn the tide in favor of parcel post service.

Whatever the reason, Congress approved the new service in August 1912. Parcel post service began on January 1, 1913 and was an instant success in both urban and rural areas. An Arizona resident, for example, wrote: “I am more than ever proud of being an American citizen….I live three and a half miles from the Tempe post-office, and have been sick for a week past, yet my mail is brought to my door every morning, except Sunday….It looks as if “Uncle Sam” has at last turned his eye in our direction.”

During the first five days of service, for example, the 1,650 post offices providing city delivery service reported handling more than four million Parcel Post packages. And during the first six months of operation, urban and rural post offices handled approximately 300 million parcels.

The parcel post service spurred the growth of major mail-order businesses. Illustratively, the year Parcel Post began, Sears, Roebuck and Co. handled five times as many orders as it did the year before. Five years later, it had doubled its revenues. The introduction of Parcel Post also created an immediate demand for special packaging suitable for mailing a wide array of objects and commodities. Box manufacturers responded by producing a wide array of boxes capable of shipping a wide variety of commodities.

A staggering variety of goods was mailed by parcel post through the years. Farmers relied on parcel post to ship eggs and dairy products. Small live animals, like chickens, were regularly shipped. Until the 1960s, many college students and others used parcel post to mail home dirty laundry because doing so was less expensive than washing the clothes themselves.

In 1913 by W. H. Coltharp, who was in charge of building the Bank of Vernal, Utah, mailed the bricks needed for that project, which were produced by a company located 127 miles from Vernal. Coltharp figured out that mailing them by parcel post (ton-by-ton in multiple 50-pound packages) would cost one-quarter of what he would have paid to send them by private freight wagons. The local postmasters were not happy and brought their complaints to the postmaster general. But it was too late. So 40 tons of bricks were delivered and used to build the bank building, which still exists and is still being used as a bank. However, to prevent future incidents, the postmaster general got Congress to put a 200-pound limit on the total weight of parcel post that one person could send to another on a single day.

But the oddest parcel post packages ever sent was 6-year old May Pierstorff, who was “mailed” from Grangeville to Lewiston, Idaho on February 19, 1914. Apparently May’s parents had not only figured out that it was cheaper to send her by parcel post than to buy her a ticket but also noticed that there was no regulation banning the practice, so long as the person being mailed didn’t exceed the 50-pound weight limit on any parcel post shipment. So they put 53-cents in postage on her coat and sent her on the 73-mile trip, which she made in the train’s mail compartment. When she arrived in Lewiston, the mail clerk on duty “delivered” her to her grandmother’s home. (Don’t get any ideas. The practice has long since been banned.)

In the past several decades parcel post has been challenged on a variety of fronts. The rise of automobiles meant that people didn’t depend on it as much as they had. Changing regulations finally allowed private firms to compete. UPS began offering nationwide service in the 1970s and FedEx – an idea developed for a business school class that was panned by the professor who gave it a low, but passing grade—began operating in the 1980s.

Nevertheless, as the last nine months have highlighted, parcel post, in all its iterations continues to play an important role in the lives of many Americans.

Be well, stay safe, get your holiday packages out with plenty of time to spare, fight for justice and work for peace.