Photograph of Owney the dog
Object Details
- Description
- Owney was a stray dog who wandered into the Albany, New York, post office in 1888. The clerks let him stay the night, and he fell asleep on a pile of empty mailbags. Owney was attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and began to follow them, first onto mail wagons and then onto mail trains. Owney began to ride with the bags on Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars across the state, and then the country. The RPO clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags from his stops on his collar.
- Photographer: Unknown
- Credit line
- National Postal Museum, Curatorial Photographic Collection Photographer: Unknown
- c. 1895
- Object number
- A.2008-39
- Type
- Photographs
- Medium
- paper; photo-emulsion
- Place
- United States of America
- See more items in
- National Postal Museum Collection
- National Postal Museum
- Record ID
- npm_A.2008-39
- Metadata Usage (text)
- Not determined
- GUID (Link to Original Record)
- http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/hm81625a006-4fec-4926-9111-2201cd6b0cd9
Related Content
There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page .
International media Interoperability Framework
IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more.