Items21The creator’s order
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Nanny and NankoLincoln's goats are the rare wartime pets you can follow through the president's own words. In August 1863 he telegraphed Mary that poor "Nanny Goat" was lost, after she had last been seen chewing her cud in the middle of Tad's bed. In April 1864 he told her to tell Tad that "the goats and father…0 - 2
Siam (Hayes family cat)A diplomatic gift with whiskers. The American consul in Bangkok, David Sickels, arranged to ship a Siamese cat to Lucy Hayes in 1878, and when Siam arrived in 1879 she was reportedly the first Siamese cat in the United States. She became a pet of the Hayes daughter Fanny.
Her story belongs to the…0 - 3
Old Whiskers (Harrison family goat)The goat that turned a president into a sprinter. Old Whiskers pulled a cart for Benjamin Harrison's grandchildren, and one day, while Harrison waited at the North Portico for his carriage, the goat bolted through the White House gate with the children aboard. A newspaper reporter described the…0 - 4
Algonquin (Roosevelt family pony)The pony who rode the elevator. When Archie Roosevelt was stuck in bed with measles in 1903, his brothers Quentin and Kermit got his pony Algonquin into the White House elevator and up to the second floor of the residence to cheer him up. The White House Historical Association credits a footman,…0 - 5
Pauline WayneA working animal rather than a pet, and the better story for it. When the Tafts' first cow, Mooly Wooly, died, Wisconsin Senator Isaac Stephenson sent a prize Holstein from his farm, and Pauline Wayne kept the presidential household supplied with milk and butter.
She also traveled like a…0 - 6
Laddie BoyThe first presidential pet to become a full media celebrity. Harding gave reporters unusual access to his Airedale terrier, rarely went anywhere without him, and when the press lost interest he wrote letters to newspapers "from" the dog. Laddie Boy attended cabinet meetings and had his own chair,…0 - 7
Rebecca (raccoon)She arrived as Thanksgiving dinner and left as a celebrity. A supporter from Mississippi sent the Coolidges a raccoon in 1926 with the suggestion that she be served for the holiday meal. The family kept her instead, and that Christmas the president gave her an embroidered collar reading "White…0 - 8
Fala (dog)The most politically useful dog in American history. Born on April 7, 1940, the Scottish terrier first went by Big Boy before Roosevelt renamed him Murray the Outlaw of Falahill. In 1944, Republicans charged that Fala had been left behind in the Aleutian Islands and fetched at great cost, a story…0 - 9
Macaroni (Kennedy family pony)Camelot had a pony, and the public adored him. Caroline Kennedy's Macaroni was usually stabled in Virginia but often brought to the White House, where he roamed the grounds freely and, in snow, sometimes pulled a sleigh. He appeared with Caroline on the cover of Life and received thousands of fan…0 - 10
PushinkaA Cold War gift with a space-age pedigree. Pushinka, whose name means "fluffy" in Russian, was a puppy of Strelka, one of the Soviet dogs that orbited the Earth in 1960 and came home alive. Seated beside Nikita Khrushchev at a 1961 state dinner in Vienna, Jacqueline Kennedy asked about Strelka's…0