The Role of the Dog
Report on the Petition of William Finnie, 10 April 1790
Report on the Petition of William Finnie Treasury-department. April 10th. 1790. [Communicated on April 12, 1790]1 [To the Speaker of the House of Representatives]
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There were dogs in the New World, long before the arrival of Europeans; archaeologists have found more than 100 dog skeletons where woodland Indians lived during the centuries before Jamestown's founding.
Bones from later periods provide evidence that there were plenty of dogs in eighteenth-century Williamsburg and its environs. The Virginia Gazette often carried advertisements for lost dogs. In 1751, for instance, Alexander Finnie, who ran the Raleigh Tavern, offered to pay "Half a Pistole" to anyone who returned his "spaniel BITCH, with white and brown spots."
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It was not so substantial a reward, however, as the $20 posted in 1777 for a pet Pomeranian called Spado. Spado's notice, inserted by Williamsburg's William Finnie, said the shaggy little black canine had been spotted in the possession of a man who called himself Joseph Block, but "belongs to our brave but unfortunate general LEE." The general in question may have been Charles Lee, a gentleman seldom seen without his dogs, who was captured by the British in 1776. Perhaps more typical is a 1752 advertisement for Ball, a reddish spaniel missed by owner James Spiers, who was willing to part with a dollar to get him back.
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