Existing comment:
"Owney acknowledges no master save about 100,000 United States postal clerks throughout the length and breadth of this land."
-- Washington Post, December 27, 1895
As a pup, Owney followed his owner to work at the post office in Albany, New York. When his master left that job, Owney stayed behind, following mailbags onto train cars. Soon he had thousands of friends among America's Railway Mail Service clerks. So many people added tags to Owney's collar that Postmaster General John Wanamaker had a harness made to help him carry the weight. After Owney died in 1897, his mail clerk friends raised money to preserve their mascot.
From http://arago.si.edu/flash/?s1=2|mode=1|tid=2051961
Mail clerks raised money for preserving their mascot and he was taken to the Post Office Department's headquarters in Washington, DC, where he was on placed on display for the public. In 1904 the Department added Owney to their display at the St. Louis, Missouri, World's Fair. In 1911, the department transferred Owney to the Smithsonian Institution. In 1926, the Institution allowed Owney to travel to the Post Office Department's exhibit at the Sesquicentennial exhibit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From 1964-1992, he was displayed at the Smithsonian museum now known as the National Museum of American History and in 1993 he moved to the new National Postal Museum, where he remains on display next to a fabricated Railway Post Office train car. |