Eggs via the mail !

It would appear that the United States Postal Service system was quite efficient in 1913. Letters and packages were regularly sent back and forth between Elsie in rural Arizona and her family in California. Her letters home reveal some interesting insight into the U.S. postal system of nearly 100 years ago.  In 1913 the mail traveled the same route Elsie took to reach Cornville.  By rail from Southern California to Jerome, and then in canvas sacks by horseback or wagon to Cornville.

From Cornville Elsie wrote, “Mama I hate to ask for so many things, but feel as if we were out of the world here.”  She thanked her mother for mailing the pea soup!  This was home-made and in a mason jar.  Can you imagine today a jar of soup mailed from California to Arizona and arriving without incident? Rather amazing.

At Christmas Elsie thanked her family for mailing, fruitcake, cookies, candied cherries, raisins, dates and ginger. 

She mentions going to the Post office to receive violets her father had mailed for her birthday.  He also mailed her albacore tuna, probably smoked or home-canned.

Elsie raved about the sausage they had sent. They shared it with a teacher after he had ridden quite a few miles to visit and then stayed to supper and he commented that it was “…like finding a gold piece when you haven’t seen one in 15 years!”

She mentions being delighted with bread her family had mailed. They also regularly mailed her eggs!  It is hard to imagine the post office delivering eggs without breakage or spoiling.

During Elsie’s time living in Williams she enjoyed the lovely pine trees and she wrote of mailing sprays of pine boughs to several friends in California.

My hat is off to the postal system of 1913.