Owney the Postal Dog, 1897

In his day, Owney (c.1887-97) was the most famous dog in America. Owney loved the smell of mailbags and followed wherever they went. Most of America’s mail was sorted on trains, and Owney followed them on board. Clerks working on Railway Mail Service train cars adopted him as their mascot and began a tradition of marking his travels by adding tags to his collar. After Owney’s death in 1897, his mail clerk friends raised money to preserve him and he was taken to the Post Office Department in Washington, D.C. In 1911 the Department gave Owney to the Smithsonian.