Moving the Mail : Mail by Rail : Owney Owney, Mascot of the Railway Mail Service Video: The Story of Owney Owney, posed here with a letter carrier, was a stray mutt who wandered into the Albany, New York, post office in 1888. The clerks let him stay, and he fell asleep on some mailbags. Owney was attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and followed them when they were placed on a Railway Mail Service train. Owney began to ride with the bags on trains across the state—and then the country. 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. Image (at left): Owney and an unidentified Albany, New York, letter carrier 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. Image (at left): Owney poses in a mail train with his mail clerk friends. Some of Owney's tags 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 jacket on which to display the "trophies." 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." In June, 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, Owney died in Toledo of a bullet wound on June 11, 1897. Mail clerks raised funds to have Owney preserved, and he was given to the Post Office Department's headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1911, the department transferred Owney to the Smithsonian Institution, where he has remained ever since. Owney can be seen on display in the National Postal Museum's atrium, wearing his jacket and surrounded by several of his tags. Image (at left): Owney on display with his jacket and tags

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