The dog days of Jackson

At the Cape Girardeau County Archive Center, I have learned to listen when archives assistant Tiffany Fleming asks "What's that?"

The "that" in this case was a pile of books I had walked past hundreds of times and never thought twice about, small books without many distinguishing marks on the covers. One, long and skinny with a dark green marbled cover, turned out to be a receipt book for dog licenses issued in Jackson in the 1890s.

Jackson's population then was approximately 1,700 people, according to census data, compared with today's 15,000. I wasn't able to pin down a dog license law of the time, and there wasn't any context with the book, just dry facts: date issued, price, name of owner, name of dog, gender, description and city official issuing said license. Within the book were two date ranges: January 1896 and August 1899, so that might mean there were specific reasons why dogs were licensed at those times. Of the 89 entries (some repeats), only two were female dogs. Most of the entries listed a dog breed, and most were working dogs: St. Bernards, setters, pointers, shepherds, terriers. Maybe people were not required to license non-working dogs, or didn't bother. Hard to say.

Reviewing the dogs' names was the best part, though. Several were named with normal human names: Hector, Barney, Peter, Teddy, Warren. Teddy for Teddy Roosevelt? It's possible. Teddy was a black and yellow shepherd dog owned by J.W. Limbaugh, who practiced law with R.B. Oliver (whose wife, Marie Watkins Oliver, sewed Missouri's first state flag, and their early home is now the Oliver House Museum at 224 E. Adams in Jackson).

I digress.

Some dogs were also named more loftily. King, Duke, Jack were registered, as were Caesar and Nero.

Then there was Pasha, the black St. Bernard with white feet, owned by Joseph Koehler.

Rover, Spot and Fido also made an appearance.

William Paar's dog, Buster, was a white Spitz dog -- a German breed. Was he an immigrant who had brought his dog from the old country? Nothing from the immigration record in Cape Girardeau County backs that up, but people did not always go through naturalization in the county of residence, so again, it's possible.

I think my favorite of all of these, though, was Dock Goza's dark-brown rat terrier, named Joe Goza.

I wondered if this might be one of several similar books, but there's no way to know -- the Missouri Secretary of State's guidance on dog license records for municipalities is that they may be destroyed after 5 years, or kept indefinitely if the item is of historical significance.

Since the book originated with the City of Jackson government, I've offered it to them, as part of an ongoing process to rehome documents with the most appropriate facility. Records do not always land where they should, for various reasons. A priority at the Archive is to house documents properly for both preservation and access. That means records need to go where they belong, and our work helps that happen.