Late one Saturday night in September 1894, a shaggy little dog rode into Maysville, Kentucky, on the train from Cincinnati. He had no ticket, and he didn’t need one. His name was Owney, and he was the most famous dog in the United States mail.
“He didn’t have a ticket or a free pass, but that wasn’t necessary as ‘Owney’ is an honored guest in all railway mail coaches,” the Maysville Evening Bulletin reported on Monday, September 3. A railway mail coach was a train car where clerks sorted letters while the train rolled along. A mail clerk named M. H. Owen had kept an eye on Owney for the ride.
“‘Owney.’ The Noted Canine Traveler Pays a Visit to Maysville.” The Evening Bulletin, Maysville, Kentucky, September 3, 1894, page 3. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Click the clipping to read it full size.
A busy Sunday in Maysville
Owney spent Sunday as the whole town’s guest. He stayed at the post office, where he had plenty of visitors. When he went out for a walk with a man named Charley Davis, people stopped to stare. The Bulletin listed his day like a schedule for a visiting president. Owney “breakfasted with Charley Davis, dined with Albert Huff, had his photo taken by Brosee, was presented with a medal by Ballenger, the jeweler,” and then caught the train back to Cincinnati.
That wasn’t all. “The Maysville letter-carriers presented him with a gold medal yesterday,” the paper added. Letter carriers were the mailmen who walked the town’s streets. To them, Owney was one of their own.
How a lost dog found the mail
Owney hadn’t always been famous. The Bulletin told his story. About eight years before, on “one cold day in January,” a homeless dog wandered into the post office in Albany, New York. He felt warm air coming out of an open door, slipped in, and found “a snug, warm bed upon a large heap of mail sacks.”
A clerk spotted him and almost chased him out. Then he saw “a twinkle of the bright, shaggy eyes,” the paper said, and he “fed the dog from his lunch basket” instead. Soon a railway mail clerk took the dog along on a trip. After that, Owney never really stopped. Clerks handed him from train to train across the country, and they all watched out for him. The Bulletin called him “an overgrown, shaggy-looking terrier.”
A dog covered in medals
Everywhere Owney went, people fastened a tag or a medal to his collar. It got heavy. John Wanamaker, the Postmaster General, was the man in charge of the whole U.S. mail. He “had a harness made for Owney, so that he might carry his trophies about with greater ease.” A harness is a set of straps that goes around a dog’s chest and back.
Even the harness wasn’t enough. Owney had so many tags that “a box has been especially made for him to contain them all, and wherever he goes this box accompanies him.” He also carried a little money bag holding coins, a thimble, spoons and buttons.
Owney resting on a U.S. Mail sack, with his harness and a tag beside him. Illustration from a photograph, 1890s. Smithsonian Institution, no known copyright restrictions. Click the picture to see it full size.
Some of Owney’s tags
The Bulletin printed a long list of what Owney was wearing that weekend. Here are three of them, word for word:
- “Highest real postoffice on earth, Leadville, Colorado, August 18th, 1894.”
- “Kansas City dog tax, 1894, No. 2347.”
- “Tammany badge by people of Maysville, September 2nd, 1894.”
The first one came from a mining town high in the Rocky Mountains, just two weeks before. The second was a dog license from Kansas City, Missouri, so Owney was a properly licensed dog. The last one was brand new, a gift from Maysville itself.
A guest in every town
Maysville wasn’t the only town that treated Owney like a star. In February 1895 he stopped by the office of the San Antonio Daily Light in Texas. The paper joked that “no interview could be secured from him, as he could not talk,” but said the visit was fun “on both sides.”
That summer, in Tacoma, Washington, Owney trotted down to the dock where a big steamship bound for Asia was loading. “He so plainly expressed a desire to go aboard that it was determined to send him on a flying trip around the world,” the Roanoke Daily Times later reported. He sailed on August 19, 1895. In China he received a passport “bearing the royal crest and dragon.” By Christmas Eve he was back in New York, where his passports called him the “postoffice dog of the United States of America.”
Owney’s day, by the numbers
- 0 tickets needed to ride the train
- 1 gold medal from Maysville’s letter carriers
- 1 photo session with the town photographer
- 1 box just to carry his tags
Today Owney is at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C., with many of his tags. But for one Sunday in 1894, he belonged to Maysville. He ate breakfast with one friend and dinner with another, posed for his picture, collected new medals, and took the train back to Cincinnati, his collar jingling with a brand-new Maysville badge.
Sources
- The Evening Bulletin (Maysville, Kentucky): September 3, 1894, page 3 (“‘Owney.’ The Noted Canine Traveler Pays a Visit to Maysville”).
- San Antonio Daily Light (San Antonio, Texas): February 16, 1895, page 4 (“A Famous Dog”).
- The Roanoke Daily Times (Roanoke, Virginia): July 24, 1896, page 6 (“Owney, the Dog. He Has Traveled Almost Around the World”).
- The Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Montana): December 30, 1895, page 4 (Owney back in New York).
- All newspaper images: Library of Congress, Chronicling America. Published 1894 to 1896, public domain.
- Picture: “Illustration of Owney on Mail Sack,” 1890s, Smithsonian Institution (National Postal Museum), shared on Flickr Commons with no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.
- Cover: “Railway Post Office Mascot Owney and Mail Carrier,” 1890s, Smithsonian Institution (National Postal Museum), shared on Flickr Commons with no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons.
