He Saw It All: Meet Jack, the Well-Traveled Railroad Dog
January 17, 2025
Grover Cleveland delivering his second inaugural address. Wikipedia.
By Maury Thompson
On Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be the second U.S. President inaugurated to a second, non-consecutive term. The first was Grover Cleveland, in 1893.
Cleveland’s inauguration, held at that time on March 4, is notable for many reasons, but one stands out: It was the last long-distance trip for Railroad Jack, a Zelig-like celebrity terrier from Albany, N.Y., who somehow managed to show up at important public events from coast to coast and, in doing so, excelled at getting coverage in dozens of newspapers big and small.
Newspaper reporters in the 1880s and early 1890s consistently followed his travels.
“Among the notable visitors to Lake George recently was Railroad Jack,” the Lake George Mirror reported on July 18, 1891. “Jack is growing old, decrepit, and yet he sticks to the railways. He arrived in the baggage car on the afternoon boat train.”
Jack most often traveled on the Hudson Valley and Adirondack Delaware and Hudson line between New York City and Montreal.
“The D & H canine in Albany, commonly known as Railroad Jack, was in town Tuesday, calling on the railroad boys,” The Enterprise of Altamont reported on on Aug. 2, 1890.
“Railroad Jack paid the agent a visit on Wednesday. He is looking well and seemed to enjoy the country air,” the Altamont newspaper reported on Aug. 24.
“Railroad Jack arrived in this city on Friday,” The Columbia Republican of Hudson reported on Nov. 10, 1892. “He took a ride over the Electric Railway and attracted much attention.”
Railroad Jack had either a yellow, red or silver color to his fur, depending on which reporter was telling the story.
He was a stray dog that showed up at Union Depot in Albany in the 1880s and stuck around when rail yard workers fed him.
In one version of the story, reported by The New York Times, a poor family on Canal Street seeking homes for a litter of puppies brought one of the dogs to Michael Caroll, an express wagon driver, and Caroll took the pup to the Albany rail station.
One day, Jack spontaneously hopped on a train for Troy, and that whet his appetite for wanderlust.
“Railroad Jack … spent Sunday with conductor Gillespie,” The Enterprise of Altamont reported on Sept. 8, 1888. “He boarded Mr. Gillespie’s train Saturday night and refused to be ejected, having evidently determined to spend the Sabbath in the country.”
In another version of his story, a railroad engineer who lived on West Shore Road in Albany owned Jack and used to take him along on trains.
“When he was a pup, his master used to take him on trips in the cab of his engine,” The Daily Press of Portland, Maine, reported on June 17, 1893. “The dog learned to love the rapid life on the road.”
When the engineer could no longer take Jack on trips, as the story goes, the dog ran away to live at the Albany station and travel at will on his own initiative.
Jack’s hometown newspaper maintained that the dog had no origin story.
“No one knows where the dog came from, but all the employees have kindly fed the animal, giving it the best of care,” The Argus of Albany reported on Dec. 7, 1888.
In the first couple of years of his travels, Jack wore a collar with a note instructing that he be returned to Union Depot in Albany.
According to one news report, the collar was a gift from reporters at The Illustrated Buffalo Express.
Before long, Jack was so well known that identification was no longer necessary.
According to another news report, the Albany Kennel Club purchased the collar when the club displayed Jack at a dog show at Binghamton and the collar was stolen by a souvenir hunter.
It is possible that both reports are correct.
“Jack has had many collars presented to him as marks of respect from friends who admire his many excellent qualities,” The Argus reported on Oct. 18, 1891.
There is ample evidence that Jack was an actual dog who traveled the rails.
For one thing, The New York Times published an obituary of Railroad Jack, an honor afforded only the most prominent of society.
“Railroad Jack, one of Albany’s two noted railroad dogs, is dead. After thirteen years of active life, in which he earned a humble reputation in all parts of the United States, he died suddenly,” read the obituary. “Jack was a wire-haired terrier of humble birth.”
To call Railroad Jack a tramp or a hobo might be considered a misnomer.
“’Railroad Jack,’ as he was early named by the railroad men, is known as a dog tramp, and yet he sustains a dignity that would not permit him to take passage in a caboose,” The Evening Tribune of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, reported on July 11, 1889.
Yet, at times, he traveled farther afield.
The medium-sized Scotch terrier had made two trips to San Francisco and traveled south to New Orleans when he arrived in Cohoes at 7:28 a.m. on July 10, 1890.
“He is entirely at home on a railroad train and keeps pretty much on the go all the time, returning to Albany, his headquarters, every few days,” the Cohoes Dispatch reported, in an article reprinted July 10, 1890 in The Lansingburgh Courrier.
Railroad Jack also made a cross-country tour in 1892.
“Railroad Jack, the great dog traveler, arrived at Jacksonville Tuesday night at 8:30 from New Orleans. He has traveled by railroad more miles than any other of the canine family ever did or perhaps ever will,” the Jacksonville Times of Florida reported in an article republished in The New York Times on Aug. 18, 1892.
Jack had left Albany on July 5.
“Already he has been as far north as Canada, as far west as the Pacific Ocean, as far south as Ciudad, Mexico, and is now sniffing the salt air of the Atlantic.”
At Los Angeles it was said he possessed “the savoir faire of a thoroughbred Scottish terrier,” and was treated as a dignitary.
“The celebrated ‘Railroad Jack,’ known in all the principal cities of the union, called at the Herald office last evening to present his respects. ‘Railroad Jack’ is a fat, dignified red canine that weighs 53 pounds, but his avoirdupois did in no way interfere with the wagging of his tail, which he dutifully shook at each new introduction members of the staff,“ The Los Angeles Herald reported on July 25, 1892. “Today he leaves on the New Orleans express for for the bayous of Louisianna and the savory creole messes of the French Market. May his shadow never grow less.”
Kind railroad workers looked out for Jack during his travels.
“Jack received a cut from some unknown source about two weeks ago, but it was tenderly seen to by trainmen, and the wound is healing nicely, although the bandages on the same have not yet been removed,” the Cohoes Dispatch reported.
It would not be long before Jack was back on the rails.
“Railroad Jack, the well-known dog traveler, has recovered from his recent injury, and Friday came up to North Creek, where he dined at the American House, returning to his Albany headquarters in the afternoon,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls, N.Y. reported on July 14, 1890.
At an overnight stop at Middletown, in Orange County, conductor George Geer took Jack to a clam bake, The Port Jervis Union reported on Aug. 21, 1891.
Railroad workers at Dover, N.J. took up a collection to free Jack when he was mistakenly impounded, The Port Jervis Union reported on Sept. 26, 1892.
Railroad Jack died at Albany in June 1893 at age 13, the equivalent of 74 in human years.
“Of late he has been unable to get off-and-on the cars, owing to his infirmities, and contented himself with watching the trains pull out of the depot from the door of the baggage room,” The Catskill Recorder reported on June 16, 1893.
“’Railroad Jack,’ the dog who had engaged many a long dead-head journey over different lines of railroad, died in Albany Thursday morning,” The Elizabethtown Post reported on June 15, 1893.
“’Railroad Jack’s last public appearance was in the Columbian celebration in this city (in 1892), when, in the night parade, he had a special float all to himself,” read an Albany news dispatch republished in newspapers in Texas, Tennessee, Wyoming, Indiana and Washington state. “Jack attended the inauguration of President Cleveland in March, and many of his friends think that the strain was too much for his system, already weakened by age.”
New York Central Railroad employees sponsored the float which Jack rode on in the Columbus Day celebration the previous October.
“The float of the Central’s men was ornamented with colored railroad lanterns and ‘Railroad Jack’ was perched on a pedestal in the glare of two locomotive headlights. Above him was suspended the oldest railroad bell on the Central,” The Argus recalled on Oct. 8, 1916.
After his death, a taxidermist stuffed Jack’s carcass for display at the Union Depot in Albany.
It is not known what became of the trophy.
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