Letter Mailed In 1931 Turns Up At Post Office, Gets Delivered 83 Years Late

(TheeErin)

Like a message in a bottle, tossed up on the shore by the tide after sailing the oceans of time (It’s summer, it’s hot and water sounds awesome), sometimes misdirected mail shows up to remind us of the past. And when it takes 83 years to show up from wherever lost letters go, it’s bound to make for a good story.

The nine-page letter was sent from a 23-year-old school teacher to her mother in the summer of 1931, reports CentralMaine.com. It recently showed up in the morning mail bag of a letter carrier, who noticed that not only was there a $0.02 stamp on the letter to signal its age, the address no longer existed due to changes in how addresses are done now.

The postmaster was able to track down the niece/granddaughter of the letter writer and receiver and deliver the missive by hand. She says it’s funny that her aunt was writing to apologize for taking so long to get in touch. Both have since passed away.

“One of the best parts for me of what she wrote was that she apologized for not writing sooner, as she knew her mother had been anxiously waiting all week for a letter — which, as we know, was never received,” she said. “She said ‘I’m just getting around to write. I imagine you have been anxiously waiting for a letter all week. I have no excuses, but that I just didn’t get to it and there are lots of things to tell you, too.’”

No excuses for those 81 years, and so far, no explanation for how the letter seemed to appear out of nowhere. Officials think perhaps it got stuck in sorting equipment at some point and just escaped recently.

“As I was sorting I came across it — it appeared to be old, but it was in really good condition,” the worker says. She then put the letter on the desk of the postmaster so they could try to track down the surviving family members.

The woman and her family now hope someone will come forward to contact them with the story of the letter’s journey, if they had a hand in it.

“We’re hoping someone will see this and say ‘I found it’ because we’ll never know otherwise,” she said.

Letter finally makes it to Pittsfield, 83 years late [CentralMaine.com]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist