Images courtesy of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum
Provincetown’s History Told Through Artifacts
by Steve Desroches
The taxidermy remains of a terrier mix just might be both the oddest and most beloved artifact in the Smithsonian Institution’s vast collection. The pooch preserved for posterity’s sake is Owney, a little dog who accomplished big things. Born in Albany, New York, circa 1887, Owney belonged to a clerk at the city’s post office. He loved to sleep on the giant sacks of mail and became a guard dog barking at anyone who came near other than the postal employees he knew. He also liked to ride the rails and became a beloved pet of postal workers from Boston to as far west as Chicago as everyone in between took care of Owney.
As this vagabond dog traveled, his owners back in New York made a tag for him that read “Owney, Post Office, Albany, New York.” And no matter where Owney traveled on the Railway Mail Service, folks made sure he was fed, bathed, and found his way home. Postal workers started a tradition of attaching their own tags to Owney so when he got back to Albany the clerks there knew where he had been. Tales of Owney began to appear in newspapers all over the country and soon he was a national celebrity, so much so he was chosen as a mascot for the United States Postal Service, which at that point in time was nationalizing what had been a series of regional delivery systems. Through Owney, the USPS educated the public about the new services, with the dog traveling to all the 48 states and territories at the time.
The United States was also trying to organize countries around the world to join the Universal Postal Union so nations could cooperate on a set of rules for global mail delivery. And so Owney hit the road again, this time for an around-the-world trip. Over four months he traveled around Canada, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and across Europe before returing home to the U.S. He was an international superstar. Everyone loved Owney. And everywhere he went people began to put their own commemorative tags on his collar, until it grew too heavy and a special jacket was made. All in all, Owney received 1,017, according to the Smithsonian, of which 372 survived and are in the collection at the National Postal Museum in Washington, DC, including this one from a visit to Provincetown where someone gave the celebrity canine this brass room key tag from room 26 at the Gifford House to commemorate his trip to the Outer Cape.
For nine years between 1888 and 1897 Owney traveled more than 143,000 miles. But Owney’s traveling days came to an end as he aged and became strangely aggressive. He would be put down on June 11, 1897. His death made news worldwide. Postal Workers across the nation sent in donations to send Owney to the taxidermy and sent him to the USPS headquarters. He was on display at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and come 1911 he was sent to join the Smithsonian’s collection. And in 2011 Owney received his own postage stamp to honor his life.
