Between 1888 and 1897, Owney, the renowned United States Railway Mail Service unofficial but beloved mascot dog, traveled by mail car around the United States and Canada, then by steamer to other countries including Japan, China, Singapore and elsewhere.
Owney was apparently attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and when his master moved away from Albany, New York’s post office, Owney remained behind with his new mail clerk friends. A decidedly scruffy little Irish-Scottish Terrier mongrel mutt, Owney became a regular fixture at the Albany, New York post office in 1888. His owner was likely a postal clerk who let the dog walk him to work, figures the United States National Postal Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
At first, he followed them onto mail wagons and then onto mail trains. And then Owney began to ride with the bags on Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars across New York state, and then the rest of the contiguous 48 states. Owney usually slept on the mail bags.
In 1895 Owney made an around-the-world trip, traveling with mailbags on trains and steamships to Asia and across Europe, before returning to Albany on Dec. 23, 1895, after his world tour. He traveled over 140,000 miles in his lifetime. One of his stops was right here in Manitoba in Winnipeg on June 27, 1895. We even gave him the gold dog tag to prove he visited us. And because his mail clerk friends back home collected them for him. Even United States Postmaster General John Wanamaker was one of Owney’s fans. When he learned that the dog’s collar was weighed down by an ever-growing number of tags, he gave Owney a harness on which to display his travel badges of honor.
“Railway mail clerks considered the dog a good luck charm. At a time when train wrecks were all too common, no train Owney rode was ever in a wreck. The Railway mail clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags on his collar. Each time Owney returned home to Albany, the clerks there saved the tags, says the United States National Postal Museum, located in the historic City Post Office Building, which was constructed in 1914 and served as the Washington, D.C., post office from 1914 through 1986.
Owney was a faithful guardian of railway mail and the bags it was carried in, and would not allow anyone other than mail clerks to touch the bags.
On April 9, 1894, a writer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “Nearly every place he stopped Owney received an additional tag, until now he wears a big bunch. When he jogs along, they jingle like the bells on a junk wagon.” The National Postal Museum opened on July 30, 1993. It was created on November 6, 1990 in a joint agreement between the Smithsonian Institution and the United States Postal Service. The United States National Philatelic Collection, however, dates back to 1886 – just before the dawn of the Owney-era dog decade appropriately enough – and was established at the Smithsonian in 1886 with the donation of a sheet of 10-cent Confederate postage stamps. From 1908 until 1963, the National Philatelic Collection was housed in the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building on the National Mall. And then in 1964, the collection was moved to what is now known as the National Museum of American History, before moving to its current home almost 23 years ago.
Now sadly (citing my wanting to let Budderball be cut loose for disobedience during a spacewalk in the 2009 Disney movie Space Buddies, Jeanette says you can’t do this in a dog story without leaving kids in tears, but it has to be done in this case, I’m afraid) in June 1897, Owney boarded a mail train for Toledo, Ohio. While he was there, he was shown to a newspaper reporter by a postal clerk. Owney became ill tempered and “although the exact circumstances were not satisfactorily reported,” the United States National Postal Museum says in its account, “Owney died in Toledo of a bullet wound on June 11, 1897.”
Of course the dog became ill-tempered being shown to a newspaper reporter? Wouldn’t you be?
Well, actually, in the confusion it seems Owney may have bitten a mail clerk, not the reporter! And it appears it was Toledo Postmaster Rudolph Brand who called for a policeman to come to the scene and that an officer named Fred Free (you can’t make this stuff up), shot and killed Owney while he was chained to a post (the dog, not Free).
The Chicago Tribune called it an “execution.”
Other newspapers spun the story many different ways. One account says that Owney detested being tied up or restrained and started protesting loudly and when the clerk tried to get him to quiet down, Owney bit him on the hand. Other stories said Owney had been running loose at the time.
One suspects, however, Owney’s place in history may rank higher than the newspaper reporter or the police officer, whatever happened in Toledo in 1897. Owney’s life and travels have inspired several children’s books. Elementary schools across the United States continue to use the story of Owney as a way to connect their students with those in other states by sending stuffed toy dogs from school to school through the mail accompanied by messages from students to one another. Owney was featured on his own postage stamp by the U.S. Postal Service in 2011.
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