Chapter XIV
THE AMERICAN PACER AND HIS RELATIONS TO THE AMERICAN TROTTER.
Regulations against stallions at large—American pacers taken to the West Indies—Narragansett pacers; many foolish and groundless theories about their origin—Dr. McSparran on the speed of the pacer—Mr. Updike’s testimony—Mr. Hazard and Mr. Enoch Lewis—Exchanging meetings with Virginia—Watson’s Annals—Matlack and Acrelius—Rip Van Dam’s horse—Cooper’s evidence—Cause of disappearance—Banished to the frontier—First intimation that the pace and the trot were essentially one gait—How it was received—Analysis of the two gaits—Pelham, Highland Maid, Jay-Eye-See, Blue Bull—The pacer forces himself into publicity—Higher rate of speed—Pacing races very early—Quietly and easily developed—Comes to his speed quickly—His present eminence not permanent—The gamblers carried him there—Will he return to his former obscurity?
In the several chapters devoted to “Colonial Horse History” will be found all the leading facts that I have been able to glean from the early sources of information. With the exceptions of the horses brought from Utrecht in Holland to New Amsterdam (New York), two shiploads that sailed out of the Zuider Zee and landed at Salem, Massachusetts, and those brought from Sweden by the colonists that settled on the Delaware, all the early importations came from England. As much the larger number of those from England and Sweden were pacers, the breeds and habits of action were soon mixed up, as those who had no pacers wanted pacers for the saddle, and those who wanted more size, regardless of the gait, were always ready to supply their want by an exchange of their saddle horses for more size. The Dutch horses were certainly something over fourteen hands and the English and Swedish horses were perhaps nearer thirteen than fourteen hands. The colonists from the first, and from one end of the land to the other, seem to have appreciated the importance of increasing the size and strength of their horse stock, and this was very hard to do under the conditions then prevailing of allowing their horses to roam at large. Hence, stringent regulations were adopted in all the colonies against permitting immature entire colts and stallions under size to wander where they pleased. It is doubtful whether these regulations were any more effective than those of Henry VIII., for while there was some increase, it was hardly perceptible until after the close of the colonial days. The real increase did not commence till the farmers had provided themselves with facilities for keeping their breeding stock at home.
It is very evident from the statistics of size and gait, as given in the chapters referred to above, that our forefathers wisely selected the most compact, strong and hardy animals they could find in England as the type best adapted to fight their way against the hardships of a life in the wilderness of the new world. There have been some attempts, wholly fanciful and baseless, to trace importations from other countries, outside of those mentioned above, but all such attempts have proven wholly imaginary and worse than futile. In less than twenty years after the New England colonies received their first supply they commenced shipping horses by the cargo to Barbadoes and other West India Islands. This trade was cultivated, extended to all the islands, and continued during the remainder of the seventeenth and practically the whole of the eighteenth century. The pacers of the American colonies were exceedingly popular and sought after by the Spanish as well as the Dutch and English islands. Indeed, the planters of Cuba alone carried away at high prices nearly all the pacers that New England could produce. They knew nothing about pacers for the saddle until they had tried them and then they would have nothing else. These continuous raids of the Spaniards of the West Indies upon the pacers of New England, and Rhode Island especially, has been assigned, by the local historians of that State as one of the principal causes of the decadence and practically final disappearance of the Narragansett pacer from the seat of his triumphs and his fame. It is just to remark here, in passing, that if there had been pacers among the horses of Spain, the Spanish dependencies would have secured their supplies from the mother country and not have come to Rhode Island and paid fabulous prices for them.
As all the pacing traditions of this country to-day point to the horses of Narragansett Bay as the source from which our modern pacers have derived their speed, we must give some attention to the various theories that have been advanced as to the origin of the Narragansett horse. In time past, and extending back to a period “whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” the horse world has been cursed with a class of men who have always been ready to invent and put in circulation the most marvelous and incredible stories about the origin of every remarkable horse that has appeared. Some of these wiseacres have maintained that the original Narragansett pacer was caught wild in the woods by the first settlers on Narragansett Bay, while others (and this seems to be of Canadian origin) have insisted that when being brought to this country a storm struck the ship and the horse was thrown overboard, and after nine days he was found off the coast of Newfoundland quietly eating rushes on a sand bar, where he was rescued and brought into Narragansett Bay. This story of the marine horse probably had its origin in the experiences of Rip Van Dam, which will be narrated further on. Another representation, coming this time from a very reputable source, has been made as to the origin of the Narragansett horse, and as many, no doubt, have accepted it as true, I must give it such consideration as its prominence demands. Mr. I. T. Hazard, a representative of the very old and prominent Hazard family of Rhode Island, in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Updike, makes the following statement:
“My grandfather, Governor Robinson, introduced the famous saddle horse, the Narragansett pacer, known in the last century over all the civilized parts of North America and the West Indies, from whence they have lately been introduced into England, as a ladies’ saddle horse, under the name of the Spanish Jennet. Governor Robinson imported the original from Andalusia, in Spain, and the raising of them for the West India market was one of the objects of the early planters of this country. My grandfather, Robert Hazard, raised about a hundred of them annually, and often loaded two vessels a year with them, and other products of his farm, which sailed direct from the South Ferry to the West Indies, where they were in great demand.”
This theory of the origin of the Narragansett came down to Mr. Hazard as a tradition, no doubt, but like a thousand other traditions it has nothing to sustain it. Opposed to it there are two clearly ascertained facts, either one of which is wholly fatal to it. In the first place, there were no pacers in Andalusia or any other part of Spain, and in the second place, these horses, according to official data, were the leading item of export from Rhode Island in 1680, and Governor Robinson was not born till about 1693. As impossibilities admit of no argument, I will not add another word to this “Andalusian” origin tradition, except to say that a hundred years later, when the pacing dam of Sherman Morgan was taken from Cranston, Rhode Island, up into Vermont, she was called a “Spanish mare,” because Mr. Hazard had said the original Narragansett had come from Spain. The story of the descendants of the Narragansetts having been carried from the West Indies to England, and there introduced under the name of the Spanish Jennet as a lady’s saddle horse, is wholly imaginative. The Spanish Jennet, whatever its gait may have been, was well known in England many years before the first horse was brought to any of the American colonies. (See extracts from Blundeville and Markham in Chapter XII.)
After several years of fruitless search for some trace of the early importations of horses into the colony of Rhode Island, I have reached the conclusion that probably no such importations were ever made. The colony of Massachusetts Bay commenced importing horses and other live stock from England in 1629, and continued to do so for several years and until they were fully supplied, as stated above. In 1640 a shipload of horses were exported to the Barbadoes, and it was about this time that Rhode Island began to assume an organized existence. Her people were largely made up of refugees from the religious intolerance of the other New England colonies, and they brought their families and effects, including their horses, with them. The blood of the Narragansett pacer, therefore, was not different from the blood of the pacers of the other colonies, but the development of his speed by the establishment of a pacing course and the offering of valuable prizes, naturally brought the best and the fastest horses to this colony and from the best and fastest they built up a breed that became famous throughout all the inhabited portions of the Western Hemisphere. The race track, with the valuable prizes it offered and the emulation it aroused, was what did it. As the question of origin is thus settled in accordance with what is known of history and the natural order of things, and as the Narragansett is the great tribe representing the lateral action then and since, we must consider such details of history as have come down to us.
The Rev. James McSparran, D.D., was sent out by the London Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to take charge of an Episcopal church that had been planted some years before in Rhode Island. He arrived in 1721, and lived till 1759. He was an Irishman, and appears to have been somewhat haughty and irascible in his temperament and was disposed to find fault with the climate, the currency, the people, and pretty much everything he came in contact with. He was a man of observation, and during the thirty-eight years he spent in ministering to the spiritual wants of his flock, he was not unmindful of what was passing around him, and made many notes and reflections on the various phases of life as they presented themselves to his mind, and especially on the products and industries of the colony. These notes and observations he wrote out, and they were published in Dublin in 1753, under the title of “America Dissected.”
His writings do not discover that he was a man of very ardent piety, but he was honored as a good man while he lived, and was buried under the altar he had served so long. His duties sometimes called him away into Virginia, and, in speaking of the great distance of one parish from another, he uses the following language:
“To remedy this (the distance), as the whole province, between the mountains, two hundred miles up, and the sea, is all a champaign, and without stones, they have plenty of a small sort of horses, the best in the world, like the little Scotch Galloways; and ’tis no extraordinary journey to ride from sixty to seventy miles or more in a day. I have often, but upon larger pacing horses, rode fifty, nay, sixty miles a day, even here in New England, where the roads are rough, stony and uneven.”
The reverend gentleman seems to assume that his readers knew the Scotch Galloways were pacers, and with this explanation his observations are very plain. He makes no distinction between the Virginia horse and his congener of Rhode Island except that of size, in which the latter had the advantage. In speaking of the products of Rhode Island he says:
“The produce of this colony is principally butter and cheese, fat cattle, wool, and fine horses, which are exported to all parts of English America. They are remarkable for fleetness and swift pacing; and I have seen some of them pace a mile in a little more than two minutes, and a good deal less than three.”
When I first read this sentence in the reverend doctor’s book I confess I was not prepared to accept it in any other light than that of a wild enthusiast, who knew but little of the force of the language he used. To talk about horses pacing, a hundred and fifty years ago, in a little more than two minutes and a good deal less than three, appeared to be simply monstrous. The language evidently means, according to all fair rules of construction, that the mile was performed nearer two minutes than three, or in other words, considerably below two minutes and thirty seconds. I doubt not my readers will hesitate, and perhaps refuse, to accept such a performance, just as I did myself till I had carefully weighed not only the character of the author of the statement, but the circumstances that seemed to support it. If the learned divine had known no more of the world and its ways than many of his profession, I would have concluded he was not a competent judge of speed; but he was a man of affairs, and knew perfectly well just what he was saying. The question naturally arises here as to what opportunities or facilities the doctor had for timing those pacers of a hundred and fifty years ago. In a note appended to the above extract by Mr. Updike, the editor of the work, I find the following:
“The breed of horses called Narragansett pacers, once so celebrated for fleetness, endurance and speed, has become extinct. These horses were highly valued for the saddle, and transported the rider with great pleasantness and sureness of foot. The pure bloods could not trot at all. Formerly they had pace-races. Little Neck Beach, in South Kingston, of one mile in length, was the race course. A silver tankard was the prize, and high bets were otherwise made on speed. Some of these prize tankards were remaining a few years ago. Traditions respecting the swiftness of these horses are almost incredible.”
The facts stated by Mr. Updike in this note are corroborated from other sources, and may be accepted as true. These were the opportunities and facilities the doctor had for holding his watch, and nobody will doubt they were sufficient to enable him to be a competent witness. In connection with this subject, and as another footnote, Mr. Updike introduces a letter from Mr. I. T. Hazard, which brings out another very curious fact in the history of the pacer. The Hazard family was very eminent in Rhode Island, and many of its members have occupied positions of high honor and responsibility for several generations. The date of the letter is not given, and we may infer it may have been written fifty years ago, or perhaps more. Mr. Hazard says:
“Within ten years one of my aged neighbors, Enoch Lewis, since deceased, informed me he had been to Virginia as one of the riding boys, to return a similar visit of the Virginians in that section, in a contest on the turf; and that such visits were common with the racing sportsmen of Narragansett and Virginia, when he was a boy. Like the old English country gentlemen, from whom they were descended, they were a horse-racing, fox-hunting, feasting generation.”
This paragraph from Mr. Hazard’s pen has been the subject of very deliberate consideration. The first promptings of my judgment were to doubt and reject it, especially on account of the absence of date to the letter, and of the remote period in which Mr. Enoch Lewis must have visited Virginia. Another question, as to why we have not this information from any other source except Mr. Hazard, presented itself with no inconsiderable force. After viewing the matter in all its bearings I am forced to concede that it is likely to be true. These visits must have taken place before the Revolution, and from the construction we are able to place upon the dates, this was not impossible. It is a fact that I do not hesitate to announce that before the Revolution racing in all its forms was more universally indulged in as an amusement than it ever has been since. This was before the days of newspapers, and all we can possibly know of the sporting events of that period we must gather up from the detached fragments that have come down to us by tradition. There was a strong bond of sympathy and friendship between the followers of Dr. McSparran in Rhode Island, surrounded as they were by Puritans, and their co-religionists in Virginia. They were accustomed to maritime life, and had abundance of vessels fitted up for the shipment of horses and other live stock to foreign ports. To take a number of their fastest pacers on board one of their sloops and sail for Virginia would not have been considered much of an adventure. These visits were not only occasions of pleasure and festivity, with the incidental profits of winning purses and bets, but they were a most successful means of advertising the Narragansett pacer; and through these means alone the market was opened, as Dr. McSparran expresses it, in all parts of British America. When we consider the widespread fame of these Rhode Island horses, and that there were no other means by which they could have achieved it, except by their actual performances, we are forced to the conclusion that they were carried long distances, and in many directions, for purely sporting purposes. That these visits would result in the transfer of a good number of the best and fastest horses from Narragansett to Virginia would be a natural sequence, and thus, in after years, we might look for a strong infusion of Narragansett blood in the Virginian pacing-horse.
It appears to be a law of our civilization that each generation produces somebody who, out of pure love for the curious and forgotten, devotes the best years of his life to hunting up old things that have well-nigh slipped away from the memory of man. In this class Mr. John F. Watson stands conspicuous in what he has done for Philadelphia and New York. In 1830 he published a work entitled “Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania,” in two volumes, and among all the antiquated manners and habits that he again brings to our knowledge, he has something to say about the horse of an early day:
“The late very aged T. Matlack, Esq., was passionately fond of races in his youth. He told me of his remembrances about Race Street. In his early days the woods were in commons, having several straggling forest trees still remaining there, and the circular course ranging through those trees. He said all genteel horses were pacers. A trotting-horse was deemed a base breed. These Race Street races were mostly pace-races. His father and others kept pacing stallions for propagating the breed.”
Mr. Watson further remarks, on the same subject: “Thomas Bradford, Esq., in telling me of the recollections of the races, says he was told that the earliest races were scrub and pace-races on the ground now used as Race Street.”
The Rev. Israel Acrelius, for many years pastor of the Swedish church of Philadelphia, wrote a book early in the last century, under the title, “History of New Sweden,” which has been translated into English. In describing the country and people, in their habits and amusements, he thus speaks of the horse:
“The horses are real ponies, and are seldom found over thirteen hands high. He who has a good riding horse never employs him for draught, which is also the less necessary, as journeys, for the most part, are made on horseback. It must be the result of this, more than to any particular breed in the horses, that the country excels in fast horses, so that horse races are often made for very high stakes.”
It will be noted that Mr. Acrelius does not say that these races were pacing-races; but when his remark is taken in connection with what Mr. Matlack said about the pacers, and when it is considered that he is speaking of the speed of the saddle horses as such, we can easily understand his true meaning. In our turf history I supposed I was getting well back when I reached the great race between Galloway’s Selim and Old England, in 1767, but here we find that race was comparatively modern, and that the pacers antedated the gallopers by many, many years.
In 1832 Mr. Watson did the same service for New York that he had done for Philadelphia, and published his “Annals of New York,” in which we find the piece of horse history embodied in the extract printed on pages 126 and 127, to which the reader will please turn.
It is hardly possible to be mistaken in assuming that Rip Van Dam’s letter was written to some person in Philadelphia, and that Mr. Watson saw it there. I would give a great deal for the sight of it; and if it has been preserved in any of the public libraries of that city, either in type or in manuscript form, I have good hopes of yet inspecting it. In one point of view, it is of exceeding value, and that is its date. It is fully established by this letter that, as early as 1711, the Narragansetts were not only established as a breed or family, but that their fame was already widespread. This, of necessity, carries us back into the latter part of the seventeenth century, when their exceptional characteristics were first developed, or began to manifest themselves. In reaching that period we are so near the first importations of horses to the colonies that it is no violence to either history or good sense to conclude that the original Narragansett was one among the very earliest importations. This plays havoc with some Rhode Island traditions, as will be seen below; but with 1711 fixed as a point when the breed was famous, traditions must stand aside.
While on this matter of dates, it may not be unprofitable to compare the advent of the Narragansett with the well-known epochs in horse history. Every schoolboy knows that the Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian, say twenty years after, were the great founders of the English race horse. The Narragansetts had reached the very highest pinnacle of fame before the Darley Arabian was foaled. Darley Arabian reached England about the same year that Rip Van Dam’s Narragansett jumped over the side of the sloop and swam ashore, and this was eighty years before there was an attempt at publishing an English stud book. When Janus and Othello, and Traveller, and Fearnaught, the great founders of the American race horse, first reached Virginia, they found the Narragansett pacer had been there more than a generation before. On the point of antiquity, therefore, the Narragansett is older than what we designate as the thoroughbred race horse, and if he has a lineal descendant living to-day the pacer has a longer line of speed inheritance, at his gait, than the galloper.
The only attempt at a description of this breed that I have met with is that given by Cooper, the novelist, in a footnote to “The Last of the Mohicans.” This note may be accepted as history, so far as it goes, and pretends to be history; but I am not prepared to admit that all the breed were sorrels. This color, no doubt, prevailed in those specimens that Mr. Cooper had seen or heard of, but I think all colors prevailed, as in other breeds. He says:
“In the State of Rhode Island there is a bay called Narragansett, so named for a strong tribe of Indians that formerly dwelt on its banks. Accident, or one of those unaccountable freaks which nature sometimes plays in the animal world, gave rise to a breed of horses which were once well known in America by the name of Narragansetts. They were small, commonly of the color called sorrel in America, and distinguished by their habit of pacing. Horses of this race were, and still are, in much request as saddle-horses, on account of their hardiness, and the ease of their movements. As they were also sure of foot, the Narragansetts were much sought for by females who were obliged to travel over the roots and holes in the new countries.”
Without having a minute description of so much as a single individual of the race, I can only infer, from general descriptions, as to what their family peculiarities of form and shape may have been. It is fully established that they were very compact and hardy horses, and that they were not large; perhaps averaging about fourteen and a quarter hands in height. I have met with no intimation that they were stylish or handsome, and we think it is safe to conclude that they were plain in their form, and low in their carriage. From my conceptions of the horse I think one of the better-shaped Canadian pacers, of fifteen hands or thereabouts, might be accepted as a fair representative of the Narragansett of a hundred and fifty years ago. He was fleet, hardy, docile, and sure-footed, but not beautiful, and it is reasonable to suppose that the lack of style and beauty was one of the leading causes of his becoming extinct in the land of his nativity.
In considering the causes which resulted in what we may call the dispersal of the Narragansett pacers, and their extinction in the seat of their early fame, we must be governed by what is reasonable and philosophical in the industrial interests of the people, rather than look for some great overwhelming disaster, like an earthquake, that ingulfed them in a night. In speaking of this dispersal, and the causes which led to it, Mr. Hazard says:
“One of the causes of the loss of that famous breed here was the great demand for them in Cuba, when that island began to cultivate sugar extensively. The planters became suddenly rich, and wanted the pacing-horse for themselves and their wives and daughters to ride, faster than we could supply them, and sent an agent to this country to purchase them on such terms as he could, but to purchase them at all events. I have heard my father say he knew the agent very well, and he made his home at the Rowland Brown House, at Tower Hill, where he commenced purchasing and shipping until all the good ones were sent off. He never let a good one escape him. This, and the fact that they were not so well adapted to draught as other horses, was the cause of their being neglected, and I believe the breed is now extinct in this section. My father described the motion of this horse as differing from others in that his backbone moved through the air in a straight line, without inclining the rider from side to side, as the common racker or pacer of the present day. Hence it was very easy; and being of great power of endurance, they would perform a journey of a hundred miles in a day, without injury to themselves or rider.”
We can understand very well how an enormous and unexpected demand from Cuba without restriction as to price, should reduce the numbers of the breed very materially. But it is a poor compliment to the intelligence and thrift of the good people of Narragansett to say that, because there was a lively demand, they killed the goose that laid the golden egg every day. It is a slander upon that Yankee smartness which is proverbial to conclude that they deprived themselves of the means of supplying a market that was making them all rich. We must, therefore, look for other causes that were more potent in producing, so marked a result.
After more than a hundred years of faithful service, of great popularity, and of profitable returns to their breeders, the little Narragansetts began to disappear, just as their ancestors had disappeared a century earlier. Rhode Island was no longer a frontier settlement, but had grown into a rich and prosperous State. Mere bridle paths through the woods had developed into broad, smooth highways, and wheeled vehicles had taken the place of the saddle. Under these changed conditions, the little pacer was no longer desirable or even tolerable as a harness horse, and he was supplanted by a larger and more stylish type of horse, better suited to the particular kind of work required of him. This was simply the “survival of the fittest,” considering the nature of the services required of the animal. The average height of the Narragansett was not over fourteen hands and one inch. His neck was not long, even for his size; he dropped rapidly on the croup, and his carriage was low, with nothing of elegance or style in his appearance. His mane and tail were heavy, his hind legs were crooked, his limbs and feet were of the very best, but aside from his great speed and the smoothness of his movements under the saddle, there was nothing very desirable or attractive about him. In a contest with a type of the harness horse, at least one hand higher, of high carriage and elegant appearance, there could only be one result, and that soon decided.
As in England, so in this country, the blood of the running horse soon worked the extermination of the pacer; not because it was stronger in reproducing itself, perhaps, but because it had the skill and fancy of the breeder enlisted in selecting and mating so as to make the expunging process complete. Only a few years ago a pacing horse could hardly be found in any of the older settled portions of the country, especially where running blood had become fashionable. He was literally banished to the frontiers of Canada, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and especially in the latter two States, where his blood is still appreciated and preserved for the luxurious saddle gaits which it alone transmits. In many individual cases he has shown wonderful power in meeting and overcoming antagonistic elements, but with the tide of running blood all against him, it was only a question of time as to how soon he would be totally submerged.
It is only a quarter of a century ago that the first volume of “Wallace’s American Trotting Register” was published, and then began the great task of bringing order out of chaos. In a historical introduction to that work, I inserted the following:
“So many pacing horses have got fast trotters, so many pacing mares have produced fast trotters, and so many pacers have themselves become fast trotters, and little or nothing known of their breeding, that I confess to a degree of embarrassment, from which no philosophy relieves me. If the facts were limited to a few individual cases we could ignore the phenomena altogether, but, while they are by no means universal, they are too common and apparent to be thus easily disposed of. I am not aware that any writer has ever brought this question to the attention of the public; much less, attempted its discussion and explanation. Indeed, it is possible that the observations of others may not sustain me in the prominence given these phenomena, but all will concede there are some cases coming under this head that are unexplained, and perhaps unexplainable. It is probable trotters from this pacing origin, and that appear to trot, only because their progenitors paced, will not prove reliable producers of trotters. Such an animal being in a great degree phenomenal, should not be too highly prized in the stud, till he has proved himself a trotting sire as well as a trotter.”
This very comprehensive little paragraph, put modestly and tentatively rather than positively, contained a germ of thought that is to-day exerting a very wide influence. So far as my knowledge goes, this was the first time in which the public attention had ever been called to the intimate relations between speed at the pace and speed at the trot. Some laughed at it as not practical, others sneered at it as a theoretical abstraction, a few gave it some thought, while the writers who never think left it severely alone. It required the cumulative experiences of nearly ten years before horsemen generally began to think about it, and then ten more before the germ had matured itself in the minds of all intelligent men who were able to divest themselves of their earlier prejudices. The great primary truth now stands out in high relief that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait, that lies midway between the walk and the gallop. At last the truth, dimly foreshadowed in the paragraph above, is received and accepted, in some form or other, almost if not quite universally. This fact and its acceptance are now shown in all the recorded experiences of racing, and especially in the origin and habits of action of many of the heads of trotting and pacing families, to which the reader is referred.
At the beginning of Chapter XIII. I have labored to make plain the proposition that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the same gait. This is evident from the fact that this gait, in one form or the other, is the intermediate link between the walk and the gallop, and this is true among nearly all quadrupeds. I have also there shown, and I think beyond cavil, that the mechanism of the pace and the trot is the same, and especially in the fact that in both forms two legs are used as one leg. That is, if the two legs on the same side move together, we call it the pace, and if the diagonal legs move together we call it the trot. The rhythm is the same and the sound is the same, and by the ear no man can tell whether the movement is at the lateral or diagonal motion. In all the varieties of steps that a horse may be taught, and in all the methods of progression that he may naturally adopt, there is no step or movement in which he uses two legs as one except in the pace or the trot. From the place, therefore, which these two forms of the gait hold, indifferently, in animal movement, between the walk and the gallop; from the unity of action and result in the use of the same mechanism, and from the wide disparity between the mechanism of this gait and that of all other gaits in the action of the horse, we must conclude that the pace and the trot are one and the same gait.
Another evidence of the unity of the two forms of the trot is to be found in the great numbers of pacers that have been changed over to trotters and the astonishing readiness with which they took to the new form of action. To go back no further than the records sustain us, we find that the converted pacer Pelham was the first horse that ever trotted in 2:28. This was in 1849, and four years later the converted pacer Highland Maid trotted in 2:27. Twenty years later, Occident, another, trotted in 2:16¾. These were champions of their day, and when we come a little nearer we find that Maud S. was a pacer and Sunol was a pacer, although neither of them ever paced in public, and the fact that they ever paced at all was held as a kind of “home secret.” Since the days of Pelham, literally thousands of horses have been changed from pacers to trotters, and some hundreds have been changed from trotters to pacers successfully. Then there are quite a number, like Jay-Eye-See, 2:10 trotting and 2:06¼ pacing, that have made fast records at both gaits.
At one time the pacing horse Blue Bull stood at the head of all sires of trotters in this country, and it is not known or believed that he possessed a single drop of trotting blood. He was a very fast pacer and could do nothing else, and a large percentage of the mares bred to him were pacers, and practically all the others had more or less pacing blood, but his great roll of trotters in the 2:30 list was the wonder of all horsemen of that period. Certainly the average of the elements in his inheritance would place him very low in theory, but in practice he struck back to some ancestor that was strongly prepotent. The trouble in his case is practically the same as in all other pacing stallions—the inheritance traces back to a period more remote than any of the fast trotting stallions, but at intervals it has been neglected and not developed until it has become weak and uncertain from lack of use. The same may be said of the Copperbottoms, Corbeaus, Flaxtails, Hiatogas, Davy Crockets, Pilots, Rainbows, Redbucks, St. Clairs, Tippoos, and Tom Hals, as well as other heads of minor families that will be considered in their proper places.
The changes that have been wrought in the status of the pacer have been truly wonderful. Instead of being hidden away as an outcast and a disgrace to the family, condemned to a life of inferiority and drudgery, he has been brought out and exhibited to the public as a son and heir and the equal of the best. In looking back over the trotting records of twenty years ago, any one will be surprised to observe that at all the leading meetings of the whole country there were no pacing contests. Occasionally at the minor and local meetings of the middle Western States, a pacing contest would be given for a small purse, in which local and obscure horses only would be engaged. Very naturally the owners of pacing horses protested against this practical exclusion of their favorites from the trotting meetings, and employed all their energies in begging for admission. When they began to be really clamorous the managers of trotting tracks argued that there could be no profit to them in opening pacing contests, for nobody cared about seeing a pacing match, that the entries would not fill, and especially that there would be no betting, that, consequently, the pool-sellers would have nothing to divide with the management. As the receipts for pool-selling and all other gambling privileges were making the track managers rich, they were very slow about admitting an untried element that might diminish their profits. But gradually and patiently the pacers worked their way into the exclusive circle, and when they appeared everybody, especially in the Eastern States, was surprised to see what excellent horses they were and the terrific speed they showed. Instead of the typical pacer, as formed in the popular mind, with the low head, bull neck, low croup, hairy legs, exuberant mane and tail, and generally “Canuck” all over, that would stop at the end of the first half-mile, here was an array of horses that in make-up and gameness would average just as well as the same number of trotters. This was a revelation to great multitudes of people, and from that time forward the pacer had a fair show, on his merits. For hundreds of years the pacer, with very few exceptions, has been able to show a little higher rate of speed than the trotter. When Flora Temple smashed all records in 1859 by trotting in 2:19¾, Pocahontas had drawn a wagon, five years earlier, in 2:17½; and when Maud S. trotted in 1885 in 2:08¾, this beat all laterals as well as diagonals, except Johnson, who the year before had paced in 2:06¼. In 1894 Alix trotted a mile in 2:03¾, which stands the best at this writing, but the same year Robert J. paced in 2:01½, and John R. Gentry in 2:00½ in 1896.
It is not my purpose here to undertake to discuss the reasons for the almost continuous supremacy of the pacer over the trotter, for there is no data from which I might frame a conclusion that would really “hold water.” At best, therefore, I can only suggest two or three thoughts. Speed at the pace is older, and has been longer in the process of development, than speed at the trot. In 1747 pacing races had then been fashionable in Maryland, and had been carried on in that colony time out of mind, but we have no trace of trotting races. One year later (1748) “running, pacing and trotting” races had become so numerous and so common in the colony of New Jersey that they were declared a nuisance and suppressed by the legislative authority. My impression from the language of the act is that it was aimed chiefly at the running and the pacing races, and that the trotters were not very numerous. It seems to be a reasonable conclusion that this racing mania in New Jersey took its rise about 1665, when Governor Nicolls established the Newmarket race course on Long Island, and if so, it had been growing in strength for over eighty years, and if we add the time from then till now we find that the speed of the pacer has been going on almost continuously for over two hundred years in our own country. There is another fact entering into the rural life of colonial times that must not be left out of consideration. The pacer was the universal saddle horse, and the trotter never was tolerated for that service. Every farmer’s son had his saddle horse, and when two of them met what so natural and common as to determine then and there which was the faster, if a little stretch of road offered? In these neighborhood rivalries, if not in actual racing, the instinct of speed at the pace was kept alive and developed, from generation to generation. If I am right in this little study of colonial life, we can understand that the inheritance of speed at the pace has come down to our own time through a great many generations of pacers, and hence the pace is the faster gait. There is one fact in our own experience that seems to sustain this with great force, and that is the small amount of “pounding” that the pacer requires in order to reach the full development of his powers. There is no need of driving a pacer to death in order to teach him how to pace, for he already knows how to pace, and all that is needed in the way of training is to get him into high condition. It may be possible that the lateral action is faster than the diagonal because it is less complicated, but I can see no anatomical reason for this, as the two legs in both gaits act as one leg. The only difference I can see in practice is that the trotter has more up-and-down motion than the pacer; that is, he bounds in every revolution, describing a series of depressed curves with his back as he moves, while the pacer rises less from the ground with his hind feet and seems to glide instead of bound; in other words, there is less action thrown away by the pacer than the trotter, and this may arise from the more complex action in the diagonal than in the lateral motion.
The pacer has reached a higher acclivity than the trotter, but he is not so well assured in his footing. His present popularity and his upward flight are phenomenal, but the causes that have sent him there are abnormal and not lasting. In his best individualities he is simply a gambling machine when in the hands of unscrupulous men, to be manipulated in whatever direction he will make the most money. Racing, at whatever gait, is not necessarily demoralizing nor disreputable, but when it falls into the control of the “professionals” it becomes both. So long as it remains under the control of the breeders it is not only honorable and legitimate for them to develop and race their stock, but it is a necessary adjunct to their business, for they must thus bring their products before the public, if they expect to make their business pay. Breeders should not own race tracks, or if they do, they should have no part nor lot in the percentage uniformly paid for the gambling privilege.
The history of racing in this country teaches over and over again that whenever the breeding and racing interest falls into the control of gamblers, down goes the whole interest and honest men suffer with the rogues. The grasping track managers are to-day complaining loudly that they cannot afford to give trotting meetings unless they are allowed to bring in the pool-sellers and make them divide the “swag” with the track. Every attempt by legislatures to make gambling on races a felony outside the race track and a virtue inside is a most arrant humbug and most destructive in its results. It makes the race track a cesspool of every vice, and a stench in the nostrils of every honest man and decent woman. The moral sense of the people all over this country is being aroused, and if public gambling cannot be suppressed on horse races, then history will repeat itself and horse racing will be wiped out. The gamblers and their friends will sneer at this as “puritanism,” but no difference about the name—it will come.
But, destructive and ruinous as gambling on races may be to the life and moral character of young men, as well as to the material interests of honest and reputable breeders, it hardly comes within my province to discuss it further in this place, and therefore I will return to the consideration of the pacer. As the historical periodicity is now looming in sight when the moral sense of the people will command the suppression of racing of every kind, the question becomes exceedingly pertinent as to what is to become of the pacer? He will no longer be of any value as a gambling machine, the days of the saddle horse are past as a means of travel, except by a few about the parks of the cities, and however uppish and handsome he may be, he is not and never will be a desirable driving horse in harness. We have already used sufficient of his blood to create the American Saddle Horse, and if the saddle horse shall produce “after his kind” we need no more infusions from the pure pacer. In the trotter his blood has leavened everything, and in some lines more than we desire or need. He has been a great source of trotting speed, and if, as I am inclined to believe, Messenger’s power to transmit trotting speed came from the old English pacer, then the pacer is the only source of that speed. Under the condition of things as here foreshadowed he will probably sink back into the obscurity from which he emerged twenty years ago.
XV. THE AMERICAN SADDLE HORSE
The saddle gaits come only from the pacer—Saddle gaits cultivated three hundred years ago—Markham on the saddle gaits—The military seat the best—The unity of the pace and trot—Gaits analyzed—Saddle Horse Register—Saddle horse progenitors—Denmark not a thoroughbred horse.
In the preceding chapters the pacer has been considered from the standpoint of his antiquity, history, speed at the pace, and his contributions to speed at the trot. We now come to consider him as the founder of the best and most delightful type of saddle horses in the world. This estimate of his quality and value had a solid foundation in the judgment and habits of our ancestors at an early period in our history. When our patriotic forbears entered upon the struggle for independence, they were fully alive to the necessity of foreign sympathy and aid. For this purpose agents were sent abroad to enlist the good feelings and, if possible, secure co-operation of foreign governments, especially that of France. Mr. Silas Dean was sent to Paris, and in a communication to the secret committee of Congress, under date of November 28, 1776, he writes: “I wish I had here one of your best saddle horses, of the American or Rhode Island breed—a present of that kind would be money well laid out with a certain personage.” This was probably intended as a present to Marie Antoinette, or some other person having great influence at court. It further indicates that “the American or Rhode Island Saddle Horse” was at that period, in Mr. Dean’s opinion at least, the best in the world. (See Dean Papers, New York Historical Society, Vol. I., p. 377.)
To the man of average intelligence and candor on horse subjects it certainly is not necessary to enter upon an elaborate discussion to show that the saddle gaits come from the pacer, but a certain class of writers, who neither declare nor attempt to prove their position, constantly imply that the saddle gaits came from the “thoroughbred.” As it is better, therefore, to make everything plain as we go along, I will very briefly consider this point. Twelve years ago, through Wallace’s Monthly, I presented the following questions to all gentlemen interested in saddle-horse affairs and acquainted with saddle-horse history: “Are all the tribes and families noted for their saddle qualities descended in whole or in part from pacing ancestry?” In order to cover the whole question, no difference from what standpoint it might be considered, I added the following: “Has any family or subfamily of saddle horses come from pure running ancestry and without any admixture of pacing blood?” To these questions Major Hord, then editor of the Spirit of the Farm, at Nashville, Tennessee, a gentleman of very wide and accurate knowledge on this subject, but strongly in favor of running blood, made the following response through his paper:
“We can only draw conclusions from established facts in reference to these questions, for we do not think they can be answered otherwise, as the original ancestry of our best saddle families is more or less clouded in obscurity. It is an established fact, demonstrated by experience, that in order to get a saddle horse, the quickest and most successful way is to get in the pacing blood; it matters not how good or bad the other blood may be, a strong dash of pacing blood will almost invariably improve the animal for saddle purposes, and never, under any circumstances, does a pacing cross detract from an animal’s qualities for the saddle. Judging from these facts, we conclude that all our saddle families are descended, at least in part, from pacing ancestry. On the other hand, all our best saddle families have a strong infusion of thoroughbred running blood. This blood, however, is valuable only for the courage, bone, and finish it gives the animal, for it imparts none of the saddle gaits; and while we have secured the best results in breeding the saddle horse by mixing the running and pacing blood, we have observed that too much running blood in the stallion detracts from his success as a sire of saddle stock. As a rule, no trainer’s skill can make a good saddle horse out of a thoroughbred runner, whereas if you mix two or more strong pacing crosses on top of the running blood, a child can gait the produce to the saddle. We have sometimes seen good saddle horses that were thoroughbreds, but have never seen a perfect one. Our observation and experience lead us to the conclusion that the natural saddle gaits come from the pacers, but to the runner we are indebted for the size, style, bone and finish of our saddle stock.”
In this reply, when the author says “all of our saddle families are descended, at least in part, from pacing ancestry,” and when he adds to this that “running blood imparts none of the saddle gaits,” he has answered both questions very fully and very satisfactorily. The argument that running blood gives bone and finish, and all that, is very well as a theory of breeding, but it has nothing to do with the questions propounded. As all families of saddle horses have pacing blood, and as there is no family without it, it may be taken as settled that the saddle gaits come from the pacer.
I notice that at least one of the present saddle gaits was cultivated more than three hundred years ago. Mr. Gervaise Markham, a writer of the sixteenth century, and probably the second English author on the horse, says: “If you buy a horse for pleasure the amble is the best, in which you observe that he moves both his legs on one side together, neat with complete deliberation, for if he treads too short he is apt to stumble, if too large to cut and if shuffling or rowling he does it slovenly and besides rids no ground. If your horse be designed for hunting, a racking pace is most expedient, which little differs from the amble, only is more active and nimble, whereby the horse observes due motion, but you must not force him too eagerly, lest being in confusion he lose all knowledge of what you design him to, and so handle his legs carelessly.” The orthography of the work “rack” as used by Markham is “wrack,” and this is the only place I have met with it in any of the old authors. Webster defines the word “rack” as “a fast amble,” but Markham uses it in contradistinction from the amble. It is worthy of note here that the word “rack” is older than the word “pace,” in its use as designating the particular gait of the horse, and through all the centuries it has been retained. Of all the gaits that are subsidiary to the pace and derived from that gait, the rack is probably the most common, and in many sections of the country the pacer is called a racker. Racking is often designated as “single-footing,” and in this gait as well as in the running walk and fox trot, there are four distinct impacts in the revolution. It follows, then, that they are not susceptible of a very high rate of speed.
In all the services which the horse renders and in all the relations which he bears to his master, there is no relation in which they can be made to appear to such great mutual advantage as when the one animal is carrying the other on his back. There is no occasion on which a beautiful horse looks so well as when gracefully mounted and skillfully handled by a lady or gentleman. And, I will add, there is no occasion when a lady or gentleman, who is at home in the saddle, looks so well as when mounted on a beautiful and well-trained American horse. England has no saddle horses, and never can have any till she secures American blood and adopts American methods. The shortening of the stirrups and the swinging up and down like a tilt-hammer is not, with our English friends, a matter of choice, but a necessity to avoid being jolted to death. Their very silly imitators, on this side, think they can’t afford to be out of the fashion, because “it’s English, you know.” For safety, true gentility, and comfort the military seat is the only seat, and if you have a horse upon which you can’t keep that seat without punishment, he is no saddle horse. If your doctor tells you that your liver needs shaking up, mount an English trotting horse, but if you ride for pleasure and fresh air, get a horse that is bred and trained to the saddle gaits. There is just as much difference between the two horses as the difference between a springless wagon on a cobble-stone pavement and a richly upholstered coach on the asphalt.
The American Saddle Horse has an origin as well as a history. His origin dates back thousands of years, and his history has been preserved in art and in letters since the beginning of the Christian era. For centuries he was the fashionable horse in England, and the only horse ridden by the nobility and gentry. Away back in the reign of Elizabeth it was not an uncommon thing to use hopples to teach and compel trotters to pace, just as in our day hopples are often used to teach and compel pacers to trot. In the early settlement of the American colonies pacers were far more numerous than trotters, and this continued to be the case till after the War of the Revolution. The great influx of running blood after that period practically banished the pacer to the western frontiers, where a remnant has been preserved for the uses of the saddle; and on account of his great speed and gameness he has again returned to popular favor in our own day.
The walk and the canter, or short gallop, are gaits that are common to all breeds and varieties of horses, but what are known as “the saddle gaits” are derived wholly from the pace and are therefore considered modifications or variations of the pace. In regions of country where the saddle horse is bred and developed these gaits are well known among horsemen and riders as the rack (single-footing), the running-walk, and the fox-trot. These gaits are not easily described so as to be understood without an example before the eye. The rack is the most easily explained so as to be comprehended, and it is sometimes called the slow pace. In this movement the hind foot strikes the ground an instant before the fore foot on the same side, then the other two feet are moved and strike in the same way; thus there are four strokes in the revolution, in pairs. As each foot has its own stroke we see the appositeness of the phrase “single-footing.” The four strokes are in pairs, as one, two—three, four, and in many cases as the speed of the horse increases the interval between the strokes is lost and the horse is at a clean rapid pace. As a matter of course none of these gaits in which the horse makes four strokes instead of two in the revolution can be speedy. They are not developed nor cultivated for speed alone, but for the comfort and ease of the rider and the change from one to another for the rest and ease of the horse.
These “saddle gaits” are always derivatives from the pace, and I never have seen one that did not possess more or less pacing blood. A careful examination of the first and second volumes of “The National Saddle Horse Register” establishes this fact beyond all possible contradiction. This work is a very valuable contribution to the horse history of the country, but it is a misfortune that more care has not been taken in the exclusion of fictitious crosses in a great multitude of pedigrees. This trouble is specially apparent among the supposed breeding of many of the old stallions that are inserted as “Foundation Stock.” The tendency throughout seems to be to cover up and hide away the very blood to which we are indebted for the saddle horse, and to get in all the blood possible that is in direct antagonism to the foundation of the saddle gaits. It can be accepted as a fundamental truth in horse lore, that from the day the first English race horse was imported into this country to the present day, which covers a period of about one hundred and fifty years, nobody has ever seen, either in England or in this country, a thoroughbred horse that was a pacer. When the old race horse Denmark covered the pacing daughter of the pacer Cockspur, the pacing blood of the dam controlled the action and instincts of the colt, and in that colt we have the greatest of saddle-horse sires, known as Gaines’ Denmark.
As this horse Denmark was by far the greatest of all saddle-horse progenitors, and as his superiority has been widely attributed to his “thoroughbred” sire Denmark, the son of imported Hedgford, I have taken some pains to examine his pedigree. His sire was thoroughbred, his dam and grandam were mongrels, and the remoter crosses were impossible fictions. The fact that he ran four miles cuts no figure as evidence of purity of blood, for horses were running four miles in this country before the first “thoroughbred” was born. Of the fourteen stallions that are inserted as “Foundation Stock,” it is unfortunate that the choice seems to be practically restricted to the State of Kentucky, while the States of Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee, to say nothing of Illinois, Missouri, etc., have produced numbers of families and tribes that are much more prominent and valuable from the true saddle-horse standpoint than some that appear in the select list of fourteen. It is doubtless true, however, that more attention has been paid to symmetry and style, and to the correct development and culture of the true saddle gaits, in Kentucky than in any of the other States. With such horses as Gaines’ Denmark, John Dillard, Tom Hal, Brinker’s Drennon, Texas, Peters’ Halcorn, and Copperbottom the list is all right, but the other half-dozen are mostly young and have hardly been heard of outside of their own immediate neighborhoods. It is a notable fact that old Pacing Pilot does not appear as the progenitor of a saddle family.
In considering the comparative merits of the leading foundation stallions we find that Denmark was not a success in any direction except as the sire of handsome and stylish saddle horses. John Dillard may not have been the equal of Denmark, in the elegance of his progeny, but he far surpassed him in his valuable relations to the trotter. His daughters became quite famous as the producers of trotters of a high order, and they have over twenty in the 2:30 list. The Tom Hals have developed phenomenal speed at the pace, and a great deal of it, interspersed with but few trotters.
Of late years many owners of the very best material for saddle stock have given their whole attention to the development of speed, either at the lateral or diagonal motion, because it has been deemed more profitable. In thus selecting, breeding and developing for extreme speed, the adaptation to saddle purposes has been lost or bred out. While it is true that some colts come into the world endowed with all the saddle gaits, it is also true that skill and patience are requisite in teaching the saddle horse good manners. There is no imaginable use to which the horse can be put where he will show his beautiful form and thorough education to so great advantage as under the saddle.
XVI. THE WILD HORSES OF AMERICA
The romances of fifty years ago—Was the horse indigenous to this country?—The theories of the paleontologists not satisfactory—Pedigrees of over two millions of years too long—Outlines of horses on prehistoric ruins evidently modern—The linguistic test among the oldest tribes of Indians fails to discover any word for “Horse”—The horses abandoned west of the Mississippi by the followers of De Soto about 1541 were the progenitors of the wild horses of the plains.
Fifty years ago there was much that was romantic and mysterious in our conceptions of the real character and origin of the vast herds of wild horses that abounded on our Western plains, and the same remark applies to their congeners on the pampas of South America. The wild horse and the Indian opened up a most inviting field for the writers of romance, and current literature was flooded with “Wild Western” stories, with the horse and the Indian as the leading characters. We are now one generation, at least, this side of the time when stories of this kind are either sought or read, but we are not past the period when the origin or introduction of the horse on this continent may be considered with interest and profit. Before touching upon the wild horse, as known in our early history, however, it may be well to consider, briefly, the question as to whether he may not have been indigenous to this continent.
In our generation the spade has become a wonderful developer of the truths of ancient history. The buried and forgotten cities of the old world are being unearthed in Europe, Asia and Africa, and thousands of works of art and learning that had vanished from the face of the earth are again restored to the knowledge of the human race. In a kindred branch of investigation the geologists and paleontologists have been delving into the bowels of the earth—not to find what previous generations of men had left behind them, but to find what life was myriads of ages before man was placed on the earth. Out of the rocks they have, literally, quarried many strange examples of animal life that lave been buried millions of years, and hundreds of feet below the present surface. Among these strange petrefactions that were thus buried when the earth was young, there is one that has been widely exploited as the “Primal Horse,” that is, the animal from which our present horse was finally evolved. There are three or four specimens of this petrefaction now on exhibition in this country, the first having been discovered by Professor Marsh, of Yale College, and now in the museum of that institution. Nearly twenty years ago Professor Huxley, the great English naturalist, delivered a lecture in this city on the Marsh petrefaction as his text, in which he told us that the “Primal Horse” had, originally, five toes on each foot, that after an indeterminate geological period he lost the two outside toes on the hind feet, and after another million years, more or less, he lost the outside toes of the fore feet, thus leaving him ready to go on developing the middle toe into the foot and hoof of the horse while the outside toes disappeared. In proof of this he offered the fact that horses of this day have splint bones on each side of the leg, under the knee, and these bones are the remnants of the outside toes. This was the explanation which the learned professor gave in disposing of the outside toes when there were but three toes on each foot, but he failed to explain what had become of the outside toes when there were five on each foot, and there his whole explanation toppled to the ground.
In the American Museum of Natural History, in this city, there is a very fine representative of this particular type of petrefactions. It is about fifteen inches high, with a head that is disproportionately large, and a tail that is long and slender, suggesting that of a leopard. On each fore foot this animal has four toes, or claws, as we might call them, and on each hind foot three claws. With these claws this little animal might dig in the ground, or he might climb a tree when necessary for either safety or food. Each one of these toes has its own distinct column of joints and bone extending to the knee, and there is no material difference in the size and strength of these different columns. Now, with three toes and three columns only, we can accept or reject, as we please, Professor Huxley’s method of getting the two superfluous ones out of sight by pointing to the splint bones on the leg of a modern horse and saying these are the remnants of the outside toes. But, in the meantime, neither Mr. Huxley nor anybody else has told us what became of the outside toes and their columns in cases where there were five toes. It will not do to chuck these out of sight and say nothing about them; they must be accounted for or the theory fails. In the specimen now under examination the fore feet are each supplied with four toes, and each toe is supported by its own distinct column of bone. Here we meet with the same difficulty as in the case of five toes, for we have more material than the Huxley theory is able to provide for. This theory has been generally accepted among specialists, in this line of investigation, and they all point to the splint bones, as already stated, as the remnants of the two toes, adhering to the main column. This leaves the one superfluous toe wholly unprovided for, and thus the theory discredits itself and leaves the question in a shape that is entirely unsatisfactory and unacceptable to the understanding.
The teeth of this specimen, in their shape and arrangement, very strongly resemble the teeth of the horse. Upon this one fact is placed the chief reliance to sustain the claim that this was the “Primal Horse,” but this fact, when taken without the support of other facts, simply proves that the animal was herbivorous, subsisting on the same kind of food as the horse, but it does not prove that he was a horse. The teeth are an excellent starting point, and we admit their arrangement and resemblance to the teeth of the horse, but the rules of comparative anatomy, as well as common sense, require that at some other point or points there should be at least a suggestion of resemblance. In this case there is absolutely no resemblance, but a very marked and unmistakable divergence. The foot of this little animal, fifteen inches high, bears no more resemblance to the foot of the horse than the foot of the dog bears to the foot of the horse. Indeed, the foot of the specimen before us, whether provided with three, four or five claws, very strikingly resembles the foot of the dog. The arrangement of the different specimens of the feet, commencing with the smallest with four toes and ending with the perfect and full-grown foot of the horse as we know him, intended to illustrate the process of evolution, is a very interesting study, but when you have done with the last foot with claws and reach forward for the first foot with a hoof, you find there is an impassable gulf between them, over which the theory of Evolution has not been able to construct a bridge. But there is another consideration that is final and that cannot be overcome by any theory whatever. According to the chronology widely accepted among geologists, this little animal was buried in the sand more than two millions of years ago, and in a grave more than a hundred feet below the general surface of the country in which he was found. In some great upheaval or cataclysm of the earth’s surface, this little animal, with all his contemporaries, perished, and there perished with him all possibility of propagating his race. It is only a waste of time, therefore, to speculate upon what a certain race of animals might have produced in our day, when they were all cut off two millions of years ago. With this disposition of the little animal with the variety of toes, quarried from the rocks and by courtesy here called the “Primal Horse,” we reach another prehistoric epoch in our inquiry, but much less remote than the one just considered.
From the incredible numbers of wild horses on our Western plains and on the pampas of South America, at a very early period in history, it became a question of some interest with many thinking men as to whether the horse was not indigenous on this continent. It is within the knowledge of everybody that this continent was inhabited by a mysterious and unknown race of people long before it was visited by Europeans. These mysterious people seem to have been driven out by the fierce and warlike savages who occupied the country at the time of its discovery, and even they knew nothing about the people who had preceded them. In very many localities the vanished people left behind them marks, numerous and unmistakable, that they had made considerable progress in the arts of civilized life. Writers have generally designated them as “the Mound Builders,” because they heaped great tumuli of earth over the graves of their distinguished dead, but the real “Mound Builders” did far more than this, for with immense labor they built great, strong defenses for their protection against their enemies. When we go further West and South, into the fertile valleys among the mountains, we find still later traces of these unknown people in the ruins of buildings and dwellings erected, with infinite labor, traces of irrigating canals, etc., but we still fail to come up with them, or any trace of their history. In that region ruins of this type are designated as “Aztec Ruins,” but this title puts us no further on the way of who the builders were. In 1877 a correspondent of a Colorado newspaper, who seemed to write intelligently and candidly, described some of those ruins which he found in the valley of the Las Animas, in Southwestern Colorado. He speaks of a valley fifteen miles long and seven miles wide, on the Animas River, and says this valley was covered with dwellings built of stone, but he gives particular attention to a row of buildings built of sandstone laid in adobe mud. These buildings are about three hundred feet long and three hundred feet apart, as I understand the writer, and extend a distance of six thousand feet. The outside walls are four feet thick and the inside ones from one and a half to three feet thick; there are rooms still left and walls remaining that indicate a building four stories high. In some of the rooms there are writings that never have been deciphered, and in one of them there are drawings of tarantulas, centipedes, horses and men. The word “horses” riveted my attention, and connected with it there were several things to be considered. First, were the drawings really intended to represent horses? Second, if so might they not have been placed there long after the builders had disappeared and in recent years? Third, if placed there by the builders, what was their date, and were they before or after the introduction of the horse into Mexico by the Spaniards? The possibility of ever obtaining any satisfactory information about these drawings and their date seemed very remote, but after watching and waiting for about eighteen years, I have recently received two letters that settle the whole matter so far as these particular ruins are concerned.
Mr. Charles McLoyd, a very intelligent gentleman of Durango, Colorado, who has made a special study of the Cliff Dwellers and kindred subjects, in that part of the world, writing under date of January 10, 1895, says:
“I am unable to inform you in regard to the pictures on those particular ruins, but can say that in no other locality have I found pictures of horses or anything to indicate that these prehistoric races had any knowledge of the animal. If such pictures existed we would be unable to determine anything definite from them; or in other words, it would not show that the horse was on this continent before the Spaniards brought him, but rather that the people who constructed the buildings lived here after the Spaniards came. I have often seen pictures of horses on the walls of cañons, but there is no question but they were the work of the present Indians. We often find associated with them pictures of railroad trains, etc., that indicate that some of them are of very recent date. To sum the matter up, would say that, so far, there is no evidence that these races had any knowledge of the horse, or had ever seen the Spaniards.”
Mr. John A. Koontz, of Aztec, New Mexico, writes under date of January 24, 1895. He knows all about the ruins in question, for he owns the land on which they are situated, and puts the whole matter very clearly, as follows:
“I know nothing of the drawings of horses and other animals on the walls of the ‘Aztec Ruins’ here that Mr. Wallace speaks of. I think the drawings were all in the imagination of the correspondent to whom Mr. Wallace refers. I have been familiar with the ruins for fourteen years and this is the first time I have ever heard of any drawings of horses on any of the walls. There are drawings on some rocks some miles from the ruins, but from their nature I have considered them the work of the modern Indians. These ruins were visited by a party of archeologists two years ago, who spent several weeks here, and made a survey, with maps and general drawings of the same. They decided that the main building had, originally, over seven hundred rooms.”
These letters are conclusive, so far as the region of the Las Animas is concerned, and with that region knocked out there is not enough left to justify further search for evidence that the prehistoric races had any knowledge of the horse. Nothing remained then but the linguistic test, and in 1885 I had such an opportunity for applying this test as may never occur again. This test formulated itself in my mind, in this shape: “Did any of the nations or tribes of the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent have a word in their language indicating a horse?” When in California I applied to Mr. Bancroft, the compiler and publisher of the great documentary history of the Pacific coast, who then had a large corps of skilled translators at work on his famous compilation, and submitted my question. He introduced me to his principal linguist, who knew not only Spanish, English and other modern languages, but also the language of the Indians of the coast, the mountains and the plains, of the period covered by the question. The question did not seem to be new to him, and he answered with the candor and conscientiousness of a man who knew what he was saying, that there was no word in any of the Indian tongues, ancient or modern, that represented the horse. This settled the question of the supposed prehistoric character and rank of the horse, and we are thus driven to accept the infinitesimally small number left behind by Cortez, Nunez and De Soto as the seed from which sprang the countless thousands of wild horses that for generations roamed the Western plains.
The story of the Conquest of Mexico is full of blood and cruelty, but as we have nothing to do with any part of the story except so much of it as relates to the introduction of the horse to the continent of North America, it will require but small space to tell it. Cortez sailed from Cuba for Yucatan, February, 1519, with an army of six hundred and sixty-three men, two hundred Indians and sixteen horses. This wholly inadequate supply of cavalry was the weak place in his venture, but the horses could not be had in Cuba, without paying an incredible price. Those he was able to secure cost from four to five hundred pesos de oro each. The peso was the Spanish dollar. The expedition was nominally fitted out for Yucatan, but its real aim was the heart of Mexico. In his first fight with the Indians near the coast, men mounted on horses were feared by the natives as monstrous apparitions. This overwhelming fear of the horse may seem to some of my readers as overdone by the historian, but it seems to have been the common experience of all the different nations and tribes of Indians wherever the horse made his first appearance in battle. In the first battle two of the horses were killed, and in the second another was killed, and all that remained were more or less severely wounded. Cortez was afterward joined by Alvarado, at Vera Cruz, with twenty horses and one hundred and fifty men. In making his official reports directly to the home government in Spain instead of the governor of Cuba, Cortez gave mortal offense to that dignitary, and he sent out an armada under Narvaez to supersede Cortez and return him in chains to Cuba. This armada consisted of eighteen vessels, carrying nine hundred men, eighty of whom were cavalry. After some diplomacy, Cortez, feeling that with his little handful of men he was wholly unable to meet Narvaez, he did all he could to avoid a conflict. Each party knew the exact strength of the other, and as Narvaez began to threaten, Cortez determined to fight for his rights and his liberty. He then had but five men mounted, but he took advantage of the carelessness of his adversary, made a night attack in the midst of a tempest, and captured Narvaez and his whole army. The private soldiers of that day, like their commanders, had no idea or principle to fight for except for plunder, and they were always ready to attach themselves to the most successful robber. Cortez was their ideal leader, and at once he had a new army of devoted followers. He then had eighty-five mounted men, and he felt strong enough to hold and rule the great country he had conquered. Mexico was conquered in 1521, and the news of the vast amount of treasure captured brought a great crowd of emigrants from Spain and from all her dominions. The Spaniards, like other nations of Southern Europe, kept their horses entire and whenever representatives of both sexes strayed away, reproduction would follow. As the country became more tranquil, and as the tide of European settlers kept pouring in, we can easily understand how the little bands of estrays should grow into larger bands and soon become as wild as though they had never seen a human being except to flee from him.
The explorer De Soto sailed for Florida in 1539, in search of gold. He had in his command five hundred and thirteen men, exclusive of sailors, and two hundred and thirty-seven horses, besides some for the purpose of bearing burdens, the number not given. In all his weary journey of three years he found the Indians active, hostile, and courageous fighters. In one of his first battles he lost twelve horses, and had seventy wounded. He pursued many phantoms in search of gold, in different directions, but his general course was westward and northwestward. He was the first European to discover the Mississippi River, not far from the mouth of the Arkansas, and there he was buried in the middle of the river, to prevent the Indians from discovering he was dead and from desecrating his remains. His followers then determined to push on westward to Mexico, and reached as far as the borders of Texas, probably, when they became discouraged with the magnitude of the difficulties that surrounded them, and determined to return and seek an outlet from the wilderness by water. On this last journey, west of the Mississippi, they suffered their greatest loss of horses. They had not been shod for more than a year, and a great many were lame and unable to travel. When the Spaniards had completed their boats and were ready to leave the scenes of their sufferings and disasters, they turned loose upon the bank of the river their four or five remaining horses, which manifested great excitement, running up and down the bank neighing for their masters, as they sailed away. This alarmed the Indians and they ran into the water for safety.
The Indians were afraid of the horses and the horses were afraid of the Indians. It seems to be a fact, observed in all the early intercourse of the Spaniards with the Indians, that universally they had a kind of superstitious awe of the horse as a superior being, and it is probably due to this awe that the Indians did not utterly destroy every horse that fell out of the ranks or that escaped in the wilderness. As I understand the history of this terrible exploration, when the Spaniards crossed the Mississippi they had two hundred and fifty men and one hundred and fifty horses, and when they came back and were ready to sail they had but four or five horses left. It is fair, therefore, to conclude that the greater portion of these hundred and fifty head was scattered in the wilderness as they went out and as they returned. This provides a sufficient breeding basis for the countless multitudes of descendants, and places that nucleus in the right region to nourish them in a feral state.
While this exploration of De Soto seems to furnish a breeding basis of sufficient breadth to account for all the wild horses that have appeared on this continent, there is another consideration that we must not overlook, and that is the inborn tendency of the domestic horse to become wild when in wild associations. By turning to the chapter on the colony of Virginia you will see that there were many wild horses there at the beginning of the last century. On the frontiers, near the habitat of wild horses, they became a great nuisance to the settlers in “coaxing” away their domestic horses and making them as wild as the wildest. These accretions to their strength from the domestic horse have been going on for generations, and thus the wild horse became conglomerate in the elements of his blood, with the Spanish traits still predominant. Fifty or a hundred years ago the pens of many writers were employed in idealizing “The Wild Horse of the Desert.” He was made the leading figure in many a romance, and the hero of many a triumph. Tom Thumb, the great trotter that was taken to England, astonished all the world with his speed and his endurance, and, following the fashion of the day, he was represented to have been caught wild on the Western plains. For many years the wild horse was the “fad” of American writers, just as the Arabian was of English writers, and the writers on one side were just about as far from intelligence and truth as those on the other. When, forty years ago, great droves of the half-breeds, Mustangs, were brought from the plains to the border prairie States, seeking a market, the scales began to drop from the eyes of the worshipers of the wild horse. They were homely little brutes, and they were as tough as whit-leather. But the countless multitudes that roamed at will over their grazing grounds, making the earth tremble when they moved, have dwindled down to a few insignificant bands, and the whole glamour around the wild horse of the desert has vanished.
XVII. MESSENGER AND HIS ANCESTORS
Messenger the greatest of all trotting progenitors—Record of pedigrees in English Stud Book—Pedigrees made from unreliable sources—Messenger’s right male line examined—Flying Guilders’ “mile in a minute”—Blaze short of being thoroughbred—Sampson, a good race horse—His size; short in his breeding—Engineer short also—Mambrino was a race horse with at least two pacing crosses: distinguished only as a progenitor of coach horses and fast trotters—Messenger’s dam cannot be traced nor identified— Among all the horses claiming to be thoroughbred he is the only one that founded a family of trotters—This fact conceded by eminent writers in attempting to find others.
Having completed a brief historical sketch of horse history from the beginning, and many events connected therewith, we are now ready to consider the American Trotting Horse, as the culmination of what has been written. Thus far we have met with much pretentious nonsense, claiming to be history and written by men who never gave the subject the study of an honest hour. The horse is honest enough, but the rule seems to be almost universal that whenever men commence to write about him they are guided by their imagination and not by the facts. As to what we are to meet in the coming chapters, I can only say that, unfortunately, “the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” The instinct to misrepresent has been transmitted, and I cannot promise that we will find any great moral improvement among the horsemen of our own country and generation.
For more than three-quarters of a century, and indeed from the first trotting experiences of this country that have been preserved, it has been the unanimous judgment of all who have given any thought or attention to the subject that the imported English horse, Messenger, was the great central source of trotting speed. As the years have rolled by this opinion has increased in strength until it has become an intelligent and demonstrated belief. When, forty years ago, a horse was found able to trot a mile in two minutes and thirty seconds, the speed was deemed wholly phenomenal, but that speed has been increased, second by second, until we are now on the very brink of two minutes. In this process every second and fraction of a second that has been cut off has been so much additional proof of the universal belief that Messenger was the chief progenitor of the American trotter. He is not the only source of trotting speed, but he is the chief source. Whence he derived this distinctive power to transmit trotting speed will be made more clear as we proceed. His blood left no deep nor lasting impress upon the running horses of the country, and it is seldom we meet with any trace of it in the running horse of to-day, but it is prominent and conspicuous at the winning post of every trotting track on this continent. This will be made apparent when we come to consider the details and the merits of the mighty tribes and families that have descended from him.
Several years ago I promised to write a volume on “Messenger and his Descendants,” and I have often been reminded of that unfulfilled promise, which I will here try to redeem. When that promise was made I had written many things about Messenger, but since then I have secured very many valuable facts that, I think, will far more than compensate for the delay. There is still much that is unknown and much that is only partially known of the origin and history of Messenger and his ancestors, and in considering the questions that will arise as the discussion progresses, I will not submit to a slavish acceptance of whatever has come down in the shape of stallion advertisements, or as unsupported traditions, and then recorded as facts by people who knew nothing about them, and made no effort to know. I shall look for the facts that are known to be facts, or such evidence as is reasonable and commends itself to an unbiased judgment, and then reach such conclusions as right reason shall dictate. The pedigree of Messenger, or rather the pedigree of Messenger’s reputed grandam, appears in the English Stud Book in the editions of 1803 and 1827, in the following form:
REGULUS MARE (Sister to Figurante). Her dam by Starling, out of Snap’s dam. 1769, b. f. by Herod (dam of Alert). } 1770, bl. c. Hyacinth, by Turf. } Mr. Vernon. 1771, bl. c. Leviathan (aft. Mungo), by Marske. Lord Abingdon. 1773, — f. by Turf. } 1774, — f. by Ditto (dam of Messenger). } 1777, bl. f. by Dux. } Lord Grosvenor. 1780, b. f. by Justice (dam of Equity). } 1782, b. c. Vulcan, by Justice. Mr. Panton. 1783, b. c. Savage, by Sweetbriar. } 1784, b. f. Ariel, by Highflyer (dam of Mr. } Mr. Bullock. Hamilton’s Swindler, by Bagot). }
This is all we have of the pedigree of Messenger as recorded in the English Stud Book, and this record, on its face, has a very suspicious appearance. Messenger had run some races at Newmarket and a place must be provided for him in the Stud Book. He always ran as a son of Mambrino, and there is no doubt this is correct, as it so appeared in the Racing Calendar, long before the days of the Stud Book. But nobody, either then or later, seemed to know anything about his dam. Toward the close of this chapter I will give an exhaustive review of the many troubles in which these two fillies by Turf seem to be involved.
Messenger was by Mambrino, he by Engineer, he by Sampson, he by Blaze, he by Flying Childers, and he by the Darley Arabian. We give the right male line here for the reason that there can be no doubt as to the accuracy of this line, for it has been preserved in contemporaneous racing records. The trouble, where any trouble exists, is all with the dams of these horses which at best are only matters of the most uncertain tradition. A writer in the Edinburgh Review for July, 1864, covers the whole ground when he says: “The early pedigrees (in the Stud Book) are but little to be relied upon, as they seem for the most part to have been taken from traditional accounts in the stable, from descriptions at the back of old pictures, and from advertisements, none of which had to pass muster at the Herald’s College.” This is in full accordance with our American experiences and it is entirely safe to say that the great body of our old American pedigrees, especially in their remote extensions, are more or less fictitious. The industry of producing great pedigrees out of little or nothing has long been pursued on both sides of the water, and it would be very difficult to determine which side had the better of it.
Before attempting to analyze the pedigree of Messenger, or rather that of his dam, with which the chief difficulty lies, we will go back to the head of the male line and consider each successive generation. The Darley Arabian, one of the most distinguished of all the founders of the English thoroughbred horse, was brought from Aleppo, about the year 1710. He did not cover many mares except those of his owner in Yorkshire, but he was very successful. Childers, commonly called Flying Childers, was foaled 1715. He was got by the Darley Arabian out of Betty Leeds, a distinguished lightweight runner, by Careless. Childers was the most distinguished race horse of his day, and the fabulous story of his having run a mile in a minute was circulated, believed and written about for generations. He ran a trial against Almanzor and Brown Betty over the round course at Newmarket (three miles, six furlongs and ninety-three yards) in six minutes and forty seconds, “and it was thought,” says the old record, “that he moved eighty-two feet and a half in a second of time, which is nearly at the rate of one mile in a minute.” This was the basis of the legend “A Mile in a Minute,” and it has lived till our own day, just as many a traditional pedigree has lived. If we accept the time as given by the old chroniclers, of which we have very grave doubts, Childers ran at the rate of one minute and forty-five seconds to the mile, and he covered a distance of fifty feet and about two inches to the second of time. The pedigree of Childers on the maternal side is one of the oldest in the Stud Book, and we are not aware that any charges have ever been made against its substantial authenticity.
BLAZE, the son of Childers, was foaled 1733, and was out of a mare known as “The Confederate Filly,” by Grey Grantham; her dam was by the Duke of Rutland’s Black Barb, and her grandam was a mare of unknown breeding, called “Bright’s Roan.” Here the maternal line runs into the woods, but this is not the only defect in the pedigree, for the dam of Grey Grantham was also unknown. In order to give a clear idea of just how Blaze was bred, taking the Stud Book for our authority, we will here tabulate the pedigree for a few crosses.
{ Darley Arabian { Childers { { Careless. { { Betty Leeds { Sister to Leeds. Blaze { (1733). { { Browlow Turk. { { Grey Grantham { Blood unknown. { Confederate Filly { { Daughter of { Black Barb. { Brights Roan, unknown.
Certainly this horse cannot be ranked as thoroughbred under any rule, English or American, that has ever been formulated. Only three generations away we find two animals of hopelessly unknown breeding. Mr. Henry F. Euren, compiler of the English Hackney Stud Book, has given Blaze a new place in horse genealogy, and this new place affects the American trotter, remotely, outside of the line through Messenger. Mr. Lawrence, the best English authority on horse matters in the latter part of the last and the beginning of the present century, had maintained, confessedly on tradition only, that Old Shales, the great fountain head of the English trotters of a hundred years ago, was a son of Blank, by Godolphin Arabian. On this point Mr. Euren has got farther back and found earlier evidence in printed form that Blaze and not Blank was the sire of Old Shales. We combated this claim for a time, but in the introduction to his Stud Book he has made out a very good case, and we have hardly a doubt but that he is correct. In speaking of the breeding of Shales, and of his dam being a “strong common-bred mare,” he says: “It is of interest to examine the pedigree of the sire (Blaze) to determine whether yet stronger racing or pacing elements existed on that side.” After giving a tabulation of the pedigree he continues: “There would thus appear to have been a large proportion of English (native) blood in the dam of Blaze, though no one can say what was its character—whether running, trotting, or ambling.” In referring to the fact that Bellfounder was a descendant of Old Shales, the son of Blaze, Mr. Euren makes this practical application of the incident:
“The fact that in the seventh generation from Blaze, on each side, the reunion of the blood in Rysdyk’s Hambletonian, the sire of so many fast American trotting horses, should have proved to be of the most impressive character, would appear to warrant the conclusion that there was a strong latent trotting tendency in the near ancestors, on one, if not on both, sides of Blaze.”
These two points from a very high English authority—that Blaze was not thoroughbred and that he was the sire of Shales, a great trotting progenitor, must have due weight in reaching sound conclusions.
SAMPSON, the son of Blaze, was foaled 1745, and he has occupied a very prominent and at the same time unique place in running-horse history. He was not only a great race horse, at heavy weights, but he was considered phenomenal in his size and strength, and in his lack of the appearance of a race horse. Some of his measurements have come down to us, and as they are reliable data as to what was considered a remarkably large and strong race horse a hundred and forty years ago, we will reproduce them here in order that the curious may compare them with the average race horse of this generation:
Height on the withers, 15 hands 2 inches; dimensions of fore leg from the hair of the hoof to middle of fetlock joint, 4 inches; from fetlock joint to bend of the knee, 11 inches; from bend of knee to elbow, 19 inches; round fore leg below knee, narrowest part, 8½ inches; round hind leg, narrowest part, 9 inches.
These measurements may not seem to merit any particular attention at this day, but a hundred and fifty years ago they were considered phenomenal in the race horse. But we are not left to the dry details of a certain number of inches and fractions of an inch upon which to base a just conception of the strength and substance of this horse. A number of historians have told us of the merriment among the grooms and jockeys when Sampson made his first appearance on the turf. The question was, “Has Mr. Robinson brought a coach horse here to run for the plate?” The laugh was on the other side at Malton that day, however, when the “coach horse,” carrying one hundred and forty pounds, won the plate in three heats. The distance was three miles, and Sampson was then five years old. At long distances and at high weights Sampson was a first-class race horse for his day. But, notwithstanding all this, we are told that his blood never became fashionable, for there was a widespread conviction that he was not running-bred on the side of his dam. The historians tell us that he transmitted his own coarseness and lack of the true running type in a marked degree, which was very evident in his grandson, Mambrino.
His pedigree has been questioned from the day of his first appearance to the present time, and we have made a very careful study of all the facts at our command. In the first edition of his Stud Book (1803) Mr. Weatherby gives his dam as by Hip; g. d. by Spark, son of Honeycomb Punch; g. g. d. by Snake and out of Lord D’Arcy’s Queen. This has not been materially changed in any of the subsequent editions, and we think it may be taken for granted that the horse was advertised under this pedigree. Mr. Weatherby commenced work on pedigrees in 1791, and avowedly accepted the best information he could get with regard to old pedigrees, regardless of the source. We are not aware that he ever investigated anything outside of his office work, or if he did he never gave the public the benefit of the details of his investigations. John Lawrence commenced work on horse history long before Mr. Weatherby commenced as a compiler of pedigrees, and he was altogether the ablest writer of his day, or perhaps we might add, of any other day. He was a clear and independent thinker and a vigorous writer. In his “History of the Horse in all His Varieties and Uses,” on page 281, he thus discusses the question of Sampson’s pedigree:
“Nobody yet ever did, or ever could assert positively that Jigg was not thoroughbred, but the case is very different with respect to Sampson; since nobody in the sporting world, either of past or present days, ever supposed him so. Nor was the said world at all surprised at Robinson’s people furnishing their stallion with a good and true pedigree, a thing so much to their advantage. Having seen a number of Sampson’s immediate get, those in the Lord Marquis of Rockingham’s stud and others, and all of them, Bay Malton perhaps less than any other, in their heads, size and form, having the appearance of being a degree or two deficient in racing blood, I was convinced that the then universal opinion on that point was well grounded. I was (in 1778) an enthusiast, collecting materials for a book on the horse. It happened that I wanted a trusty and steady man for a particular service, and opportunely for the matter now under discussion, a Yorkshire man about threescore years of age was recommended to me, who had recently been employed in certain stables. I soon found that his early life had been spent in the running stables of the North, and that he had known Sampson, whence he was always afterward named by us ‘Old Sampson.’ He was very intelligent on the subject of racing stock and his report was as follows. He took the mare to Blaze, for the cover which produced Sampson, helped to bit and break the colt, rode him in exercise and afterward took him to Malton for his first start, where, before the race, he was ridiculed for bringing a great coach horse to contend against racers. On the sale of Sampson this man left the service of James Preston, Esq., and went with the colt into that of Mr. Robinson. His account of Sampson’s dam was that she appeared about three parts bred, a hunting figure and by report a daughter of Hip, which, however, could not be authenticated; and the fact was then notorious and not disputed in the Yorkshire stables.... Mr. Tattersall lately stowed me a portrait of Sampson in his flesh, in which this defect of blood appears far more obvious than in one which I had of him galloping.”
Again, in his great quarto work, issued 1809, Mr. Lawrence reiterates his belief that Sampson was not thoroughbred. He says:
“I am by no means disposed to retract my opinion concerning Robinson’s Sampson. Not only did the account of the groom appear to me to be entitled to credit, but the internal evidence of the horse’s having had in him a cross of common blood is sufficiently strong by the appearance both of the horse himself and of his stock; an idea in which every sportsman, I believe, who remembers Engineer, Mambrino and others will agree with me.”
Here then, we have the answer to the whole inquiry reduced to its simplest form. The groom who coupled the mare with Blaze from which came Sampson says the mare was called a Hip mare, but that her pedigree was really unknown. For the intelligence and honesty of this groom Mr. Lawrence does not hesitate to vouch, and he adds the common belief of all the Yorkshire sportsmen of that day, who knew the mare, that she was of unknown breeding. This evidence is further supplemented by the family characteristics of the stock descended from Sampson, to say nothing of the great lack of “blood” in the appearance of Sampson himself. As against this we have the dry, unsupported assertion of Mr. Weatherby, forty years after the event, and probably copied from an advertisement of the horse. In view of all this we must tabulate the pedigree of Sampson as follows:
{ Childers { Darley Arabian. { { Betty Leeds. { Blaze { Sampson { { Confederate Filly { Grey Grantham. (1745). { { D. of Black Barb. { Called a Hip Mare { (Unknown).
ENGINEER, son of Sampson, was a brown horse, foaled 1755, and was out of Miner’s dam, by Young Greyhound; grandam by Curwen’s Bay Barb, and the next dam unknown. This is all the pedigree that has ever been even claimed for this horse, and it falls far short of the rank of thoroughbred. That the eye may take it all in at a glance we will here put it into tabular form. There is a discrepancy of one year between Weatherby and Pick in the age of the horse, and we find Pick is right in giving his date as 1755.
{ Blaze { Childers. { Sampson { { Confederate Filly. Engineer { { Unknown. (1755). { { Miner’s dam { Young Greyhound { Greyhound. { { Pet mare. { { D. of Bay Barb { Unknown.
Notwithstanding the absence of Eastern blood, Engineer was a race horse of above average ability, although not so good as another son of Sampson called Bay Malton. A few of his sons aside from Mambrino ran respectably, and his daughters were, at one time, highly prized as brood mares.
MAMBRINO, the son of Engineer, was a great strong-boned grey horse, bred by John Atkinson near Leeds in Yorkshire, and was foaled 1768. His dam was by Cade, son of the Godolphin Arabian; g. d. by Bolton Little John; g. g. d. Favorite by a son of Bald Galloway, etc. The Cade mare produced Dulcine, a noted performer, and the mare Favorite was a distinguished performer herself. The poverty of this pedigree is all on the side of the sire, as will be seen by a brief tabulation.
{ Blaze. { Engineer { Sampson { Unknown. { { { { { Young Greyhound. Mambrino { { Miner’s dam { D. of Bay Barb. (1768). { { { Godolphin Arabian. { { Cade { Roxana. { Daughter of { { { Bolton Little John. { Daughter of { Favorite.
It is worthy of note here, as a curious fact, that Mambrino had two pacing crosses. Roxana, the dam of Cade, was by Bald Galloway and Favorite was by a son of Bald Galloway. This horse Bald Galloway was a distinguished representative of the famous old tribe of pacers known as the “Galloways,” from the province of Galloway in Southwestern Scotland.
Mambrino was not put upon the turf till he was five years old, and he proved himself a great race horse in the best company and for the largest class of stakes. He was on the turf most of the time for five or six years and until he was beaten by Woodpecker in 1779, in which race he broke down. He was beaten, but four times, and paid four forfeits. He went into the stud in the spring of 1777, although he ran after that, at 10gs. 10s. 6d. to cover thirty mares besides those of his owners. In 1779 he was again in the stud, in Cambridgeshire as before, at the same price; 1781 he covered at 50gs. 10. 6d.; 1784 at 15gs. 10. 6d.; 1785 at 25gs. 10s. 6d.; 1786 he dropped back to 15gs. 10s. 6d.
We give these prices to show the variations in the estimated value of his services. As a sire of race horses Mambrino was not successful. Some fifteen or twenty of his progeny ran more or less respectably, but none of them was at all comparable with himself. While he was a comparative failure as a racing sire there was another qualification in which he attained great eminence and distinction. In the second volume of Pick’s Turf Register, published 1805, on page 266, we find the following paragraph appended to the history there given of this horse:
“Mambrino was likewise sire of a great many excellent hunters and strong, useful road horses. And it has been said that from his blood the breed of horses for the coach was brought nearly to perfection.”
This paragraph, considering its date (1805), the authority from which it comes, and the peculiar circumstances which prompted its utterance, has a most striking significance. After years of familiarity with Mr. Pick’s works we can say freely that we never have been able to find any allusion or reference to the qualities of any horse portrayed by him other than his running qualities. This reference to the adaptabilities of the progeny of Mambrino stands alone. The “blood that brought the breed of coach horses nearly to perfection” must have been blood that gave the “breed” a long, slinging, road-devouring trot, as well as size and strength. The very same qualifications were observed and noted in the descendants of Mambrino in this country forty and fifty years ago, and at no time in our history have we had such unapproachable coach horses as the great-grandsons of Mambrino. What has been said, therefore, by Mr. Pick of the “coach-horse” qualities of the descendants of Mambrino in England has been fully realized and verified in his descendants, through Messenger, in this country.
The question here arises whether Mambrino ever showed any remarkable trotting action himself that would seem to justify this estimate of the trotting action of his descendants? Several writers, and among them Mr. Lawrence, have spoken of this peculiarity of Mambrino’s incidentally, but the most tangible account we have of it is furnished by an English writer to the Sporting Magazine, who dates his letter from the “Subscription Rooms, Tattersall’s, 1814.” These “subscription rooms” were the very focus of sporting events, and this writer seems to be unusually intelligent on this class of subjects. The object and point of his communication is to prove that no thoroughbred horse could be developed into a fast trotter. “Hence,” he says, “no thoroughbred was ever known capable of trotting sixteen miles within the hour, and only one stands on record as having trotted fifteen miles within one hour. That was Infidel, by Turk, who performed it in the North, carrying nine or ten stone. Several race horses have been supposed capable of trotting fourteen miles in one hour, and it is reported that the late Lord Grosvenor once offered to match Mambrino to do it for a thousand guineas.” Now this writer does not say that Lord Grosvenor really made such an offer, but only that he was “reported” to have made it. This does not prove that the offer was formally made, but it does prove that Mambrino had a very remarkable trotting step or such a topic would not have been considered at Tattersall’s subscription rooms. As this writer seems to refer to Mambrino and Infidel only as exceptional horses for their trotting step among thoroughbreds, we may take it for granted that Mambrino was considered exceptional, in his day. It is not probable that he was ever trained an hour at the trot, and we must conclude, therefore, that whatever speed he showed was his natural and undeveloped gait. It will be observed that Mr. Pick’s paragraph was dated 1805, and the letter from the “subscription rooms” 1814, so that they could not have been mere reflections of theories advanced on this side of the Atlantic in relation to Messenger being a great source of trotting speed. These two facts were on record long before any “Messenger theories” were in existence, and those “theories” were formulated long before these two facts were known. The conclusions reached on both sides of the water are entirely harmonious, but they were reached in complete independence of each other.
MESSENGER, son of Mambrino, was a grey horse about fifteen hands two inches high, with strong, heavy bone and a generally coarse appearance for a horse represented to be thoroughbred. From the Racing Calendar, and not from the Stud Book, we learn that he was foaled 1780, and came out of a mare represented to be by Turf, and she out of a mare by Regulus, son of Godolphin Arabian, etc., as represented by Mr. Weatherby in his Stud Book. By looking back to the beginning of this chapter the form in which the entry appears in the Stud Book will be fully comprehended. The identity, history, and breeding of the dam of Messenger is the central point in this inquiry, and we must do our work carefully and thoroughly. From the form of the entry in the Stud Book, it will be understood that the breeder of each animal is supposed to appear opposite the foals of his own breeding, but this we have found in more than a thousand instances to be wholly imaginary on the part of the compiler. If the animal ran, the name of the party running him is far more apt to appear than the name of the breeder. It will be observed, also, that the Turf fillies of 1773 and 1774 appear without their color being known. These fillies seem to be put in there to partially fill the gap between 1771 and 1777. Mr. Pick says the dam of Messenger was black, but he gives no account of her further than that. Whether Mr. Pick was indebted to Mr. Weatherby, or Weatherby to Pick, I cannot say, but they both give the pedigree just as we have given it in this country. I am not inquiring whether these authorities agree on this pedigree, but whether they knew anything about it, and whether there is such agreement in details between them as will support each other.
The first question that arises in every man’s mind is, whether there is any further trace of this Turf mare, the reputed dam of Messenger, in the Stud Book, by whom was she bred and owned, and by whom was Messenger bred? Pick says the Turf mare was bred by Lord Bolingbroke, and Weatherby says she was bred by Lord Grosvenor. To test the question whether either is right, I have gone through the English Stud Book, page by page, and pedigree by pedigree, wherever I found the name of Lord Bolingbroke, or Lord Grosvenor, to see if any trace of the Turf mare could be found. I found no shadow of trace. The certificate of pedigree that came across the ocean with Messenger represents him to have been bred by John Pratt, and Mr. Pick, or rather his successor, Mr. Johnson, says he was bred and owned by Mr. Bullock. These clear and explicit declarations gave new hopes of finding something of the Turf mare, and at it I went again, and searched every pedigree that had the name of Mr. Pratt or Mr. Bullock attached to it, with no better results than before. Now, Lord Bolingbroke, Lord Grosvenor, Mr. Pratt and Mr. Bullock were all breeders, and if any of them ever owned the dam of Messenger and bred from her, none of her produce was ever recorded or ever started in a race.
Thus, the more we search for the truth about Messenger and his origin, the more dense becomes the mystery. When we find an English authority that seems clear, we find another that contradicts him, and probably neither of them knows anything about it beyond uncertain tradition. When we consider these contradictions of authorities in connection with the fact that men were just as prone to lie and fix up a bogus pedigree a hundred years ago as they are to-day, and that stud-book makers were just as liable to be deceived then as now, we must conclude that there is room for very serious doubts as to whether Weatherby or Pick knew anything about the pedigree of Messenger, or by whom he was bred.
In pushing our inquiries still further in search of this mare, we must consider somewhat in detail Mr. Weatherby’s methods and the degree of responsibility he assumed for the accuracy of his compilations. In 1791 he published what he called “An Introduction to a General Stud Book,” containing, as he says, “a small collection of pedigrees which he had extracted from racing calendars and sale papers, and arranged on a new plan.” In May, 1800, he issued a supplement to his “Introduction” bringing down the produce of mares to 1799. In 1803 he issued what we suppose is the first edition of the first volume of the Stud Book. The title-page reads, “The General Stud Book, containing pedigrees of race horses, etc., from the Restoration to the present time.” The imprint is, “Printed for James Weatherby, 7 Oxenden Street, etc., London, 1803.” The volume contains three hundred and eighty-four pages, while the edition of 1827 contains four hundred and forty-eight pages. There is no “Volume I.” on the title-page, nor is there any indication that this is a continuation or revision of any preceding work. It brings down the list of produce in many cases to and including 1803, but none later than that year, so there can be no mistake as to when it was issued.
I have been thus particular in identifying this first edition of the first volume of the English Stud Book, for it gives us an insight into the methods employed by Mr. Weatherby in the progress of his work. Upon a careful comparison of the editions of 1803 with 1827 extending through the letters A, B, and M, we find that he has thrown out more than ten per cent. of the entire families in the edition of 1803. By “entire families” I mean brood mares, with their lists of produce. In making these exclusions he seems to have confined himself to what may be considered the historic period, at that day, and did not go back further than about twenty years. Beyond that period everything was traditional, and he appears to have shrunk from all responsibility of attempting the exclusion of families. On and near the border line between these periods he seems to have taken the responsibility of cutting off a great many individuals of doubtful identity, even though the family was left to stand on its uncertain basis of tradition. I cannot say positively that the dam of Messenger and her sister were cut off with the multitude of others, but I can say that neither of them ever appeared again in the Stud Book. Other members of the family of the Regulus mare have places for their descendants in subsequent volumes, from which I would infer that Mr. Weatherby considered her breeding all right, but the two fillies, one of them the dam of Messenger, have been treated as spurious and wholly omitted from the records. These are the facts relating to these two fillies claimed originally to be by Turf, and there can be no moral doubt that they were omitted or excluded because Mr. Weatherby deemed them unsustained and probably spurious.
In confirmation of the facts and circumstances already adduced, going to show that Messenger was not thoroughbred, we are now ready to consider one of the strongest arguments that can be advanced in support of that conclusion. This argument is founded on the laws of nature and is not dependent upon the mere writing down of uncertain traditions. Messenger possessed and transmitted qualities that no thoroughbred horse has ever transmitted, from the period when the breed of race horses was formed to the present day. It is practically conceded on all hands that Messenger, by his own power and by his own right, founded a family of trotting horses, and this fact will be fully demonstrated in coming chapters. It is equally plain and, with honest and intelligent people, it is accepted with equal readiness, that no thoroughbred horse has ever done this. This declaration has been much controverted, but always in a general way and without specifying any particular thoroughbred horse that had succeeded in establishing a family of trotters. In the progress of a discussion of this point with the late Charles J. Foster, a very clear and able writer, he was directly challenged, in a manner that could not be dodged, to name the thoroughbred horse outside of Messenger, that had accomplished this feat. Greatly to my surprise, and I might say, gratification, he came back at me with two of Messenger’s sons—Hambletonian and Mambrino. Thus he conceded the whole contention, for out of, literally, thousands he had to come back to two sons of Messenger.
In reply to an article in Wallace’s Monthly for December, 1887, going to show that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, Mr. Joseph Cairn Simpson, of California, an able man and a lifelong advocate of more running blood in the trotter, wrote a review of the article in question. After admitting the full force of the demonstration that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse, there is one sentence to which Mr. Simpson cannot subscribe, and he quotes it as follows: “Complete and conclusive as these facts may be, there is still another fact equally complete and still more convincing. Messenger possessed and transmitted qualities that no thoroughbred horse, in the experience of man, ever possessed and transmitted.” This was a declaration of Messenger as a progenitor against the whole world of thoroughbreds, and Mr. Simpson felt that he could not let it pass unchallenged, and after scratching about among the thousands of thoroughbreds without finding anything, like poor Mr. Foster, he “acknowledges the corn,” and comes back with Mambrino, the son of Messenger, without, seemingly, once realizing that he was proving my contention.
The theory that if any other English race horse had been in Messenger’s place and bred upon the same mares and had his progeny developed as Messenger’s were developed, he would have produced the same results, has always been very popular with the advocates of “more running blood in the trotter.” No doubt there are still some honest, but not well-informed people, who hold to this view merely because they have never heard of any other imported English horses that were contemporaneous with Messenger, and hence have concluded there were none. If Messenger had been all alone during the twenty years of his stud services, as this theory assumes, there might be some reason to doubt whether some other English race horses might not have done just as well in establishing a line or tribe of trotters. But was he alone? From the close of the Revolutionary War to the end of the last century was a period of great activity and enterprise in the way of importing running horses from Great Britain. The blood of Herod and English Eclipse was in the highest estimate, not only in the old but in the new world, and a great many distinguished horses were brought over possessing those favorite strains. During that period racing was carried on with just as much spirit and éclat on Long Island and the river counties of New York, New Jersey, and some of the eastern counties of Pennsylvania as it was in Virginia and South Carolina. Horses of the most fashionable lineage were sought after and patronized, not by a few great breeding establishments, but by the farmers generally, in all the region here designated. The following list of imported English race horses is made up of animals that were contemporaneous with Messenger, covering the same mares and the offspring subjected to precisely the same treatment and conditions. The list is limited to what may be called the trotting latitudes, and embraces such animals only as were brought into New Jersey, New York and Eastern Pennsylvania. We will not only give their names, but the blood elements also, so that all can see that Messenger not only had competitors but competitors of the highest grade of running blood.
Admiral, by Florizel, son of King Herod. Ancient Pistol, by Ancient Pistol, son of Snap. Arrakooker, by Drone, son of King Herod. Baronet, by Vertumnus, son of Eclipse. Benjamin, by Ruler, son of Young Marske. Creeper, by Tandem, son of Dainty Davy. Deserter, by Lenox, son of Delpini, by Highflyer. Dey of Algiers, Arabian. Diomed (Tate’s), by Phenomenon, son of King Herod. Driver, by Saltram, son of Eclipse. Drone, by King Herod. Dungannon (Young), by Dungannon. Expedition, by Pegasus, son of Eclipse. Express, by Postmaster, son of King Herod. Exton, by Highflyer, son of King Herod. Florizel, by Florizel, son of King Herod. Grand Seignor, Arabian. Highflyer (1782), by Highflyer. Highflyer (1792), by Highflyer. Highlander (Brown), by Paymaster. Highlander (Gray), by Bordeaux. Honest John, by Sir Peter Teazle. Joseph, by Ormond, son of King Fergus. King William, by King Herod. King William, by Paymaster. Light Infantry, by Eclipse. Magnetic Needle, by Magnet. Magnum Bonum, by Matchem. Nimrod, by King Fergus. North Star, by North Star, son of Matchem. Paymaster, by Paymaster. Prince Frederick, by Fortunio. Punch, by King Herod. Revenge, by Achilles. Rodney, by Paymaster. Royal George, by Jupiter, son of Eclipse. Royalist, by Saltram. Slender, by King Herod. Sour Crout, by Highflyer. Venetian, by Doge. Yorkshire, by Jupiter, son of Eclipse.
Here we have forty-one imported English stallions, contemporaneous with Messenger, occupying the same territory and covering the same mares that he covered. With the exceptions of two or three they were all ranked as not only thoroughbred, but they possessed the most fashionable and successful blood that England had then produced. A few of them were taken southward after a time, but the great body of them lived out their days here.
To this great array of imported English running horses we might add hundreds of their sons, and yet not find one that claimed to be thoroughbred that ever became a trotting progenitor or founded a family of trotters. Mr. Foster and Mr. Simpson, by far the two ablest writers on the wrong side of the question that this country has produced, with this list of forty English stallions before them from which to select their proof that Messenger was not the only progenitor of trotters, were at last compelled to take two of Messengers sons, as trotting progenitors, to prove that their sire was not a trotting progenitor. If the intellectual powers of these two gentlemen had enabled them to scratch ever so little beneath the glittering surface of the word “thoroughbred,” they would have saved themselves from this humiliating exhibition of absurdity.
What was true of Messenger’s contemporaries is equally true of all the strictly thoroughbred stallions that have lived on the earth from his day to the present. No one of them has ever founded a trotting family and no one of them has ever got a trotter out of a mare of his own kind. Out of the half-dozen instances on record where a thoroughbred horse has got a trotter there is no one instance in which the dam did not have a strong pacing or trotting inheritance. If we accept the known and recorded experiences of the past seventy years, in the trotting world, we find two great facts on every page of the record. First, Messenger left a family of trotters; second, no other thoroughbred horse did that. It follows, then, that if Messenger transmitted capacities different from those transmitted by thoroughbred horses, he must have had a different inheritance from thoroughbred horses, and if different, then that inheritance could not have been thoroughbred. From the facts we have developed in the history of his English ancestors; from the ten thousand demonstrations of his American descendants, and from the great laws which govern the transmission of special capacities, we are forced to the conclusion that Messenger was not a thoroughbred horse.
XVIII. HISTORY OF MESSENGER
Messenger’s racing in England—His breeder unknown—Popular uncertainty about the circumstances and date of his importation—The matter settled by his first advertisement—Uncertainty as to his importer—Description of Messenger by David W. Jones, of Long Island—Careful consensus of descriptions by many who had seen Messenger—His great and lasting popularity as a stock horse—Places and prices of his services for twenty years—Death and burial.
Messenger made his first appearance on the turf in October, 1783, then three years old, and ran twice, successfully, that year. He continued on the turf till November, 1785, winning eight races, losing six and receiving forfeits in two. Most of his races were practically matches, and all were single dashes but one, in which he was beaten. Two of his winnings were less than a mile, five at the distance of a mile and a quarter, and one at two miles. These distances are approximate. He was beaten at two and a quarter miles, three, and three and a half miles. He never appeared in any great racing event, but seemed to be managed with a special view to picking up small prizes at short distances. His owner and manager, Mr. Bullock, was a very shrewd “professional” at Newmarket, he had quite a number of horses in the same stable with Messenger and some of them seem to have been selected always to run for the more valuable prizes. Considering the short distances he was able to run and the unimportant character of the contests in which he was engaged, we must conclude that Messenger was a very ordinary race horse.
It is not known by whom Messenger was bred. In his first advertisement in this country it is stated that he was bred by John Pratt, of Newmarket, but in the fourth volume of Pick’s “Turf Register,” continued by Johnson, it is stated explicitly that he “was bred by and the property of Mr. Bullock, of Newmarket.” Mr. John Pratt was a breeder as well as a racing man of some prominence, in his day, and the certificate of pedigree from him and purporting to have been issued by him was probably a fraud, as he died May 8, 1785. This was while Messenger was still on the turf, and owned and controlled by Mr. Bullock for two years previous to this, still no mention is made of the fact, and Mr. Pratt is made to say that he sold him to the Prince of Wales, while all the evidence, which must necessarily be of a negative character, goes to show that the Prince of Wales never owned him. Mr. Pratt was a Yorkshire man, of Askrigg, in the North Riding, and although he died at Newmarket we have no trace of any of the family from which the dam of Messenger was said to have descended ever being in his possession. Besides this, it is not likely that the importer of Messenger got a certificate from him two years after his death.
The different representations that have been made about Messenger’s importation would fill a much larger space than would be profitable. About no horse has there been so much written, and about no horse has there been so little really known. His character and memory have never suffered defamation, for every writer was a eulogist of the most enthusiastic type, whether he knew anything of his hero or not. As a specimen of the admiration which he excited, it has been told a hundred times that when the horse came cavorting down the gangplank from the ship, with a groom hanging on to each side of his head, literally carrying them for some distance before he could be checked, an enthusiastic horseman shouted out, “There, in that horse a million dollars strikes American soil.” This story has been told so often, even in England, that no doubt many people believe the startling prophecy was really uttered. Indeed we have heard the name of the prophet, but as he was a distinguished New Yorker and as debarkation took place at Philadelphia, we never have been able to fully reconcile the actor with the occasion. The reputed prophecy, like the reputed pedigree, seems to have been an afterthought, but unlike the pedigree it proved true, whether uttered or not. Some said he was imported 1785, while others dribble along through the intermediate years till 1800 was fixed upon with great positiveness as the precise year. One of these gentlemen, we remember very well, was entirely confident he returned to England and was brought back again after a number of years. Less than twenty years ago the breeding world was favored with scores upon scores of this kind of teachers, not one of whom knew what he was talking about. The most surprising example of this kind of writing, however, is furnished by Mr. C. W. Van Ranst, himself, who was part owner of the horse a number of years. In a communication published in Skinner’s “Turf Register,” 1831, he says Messenger was imported into New York in 1792, and in the same publication for 1834 he says he was imported into New York 1791. As the sequel will show, Mr. Van Ranst, although his owner, had no definite knowledge of the early history of the horse.
From some slight investigations I became satisfied, years before, that Messenger made his first appearance in this country at Philadelphia, and that he was imported into that city instead of New York. In that view all the writers of the whole country were opposed to me; but, as it became more and more evident that those writers were merely copying from one another and that none of them had ever made an honest search for the truth, I resolved to follow my own convictions and to commence there an investigation that would settle the matter one way or the other. In a few hours after reaching that city I found a file of the old Pennsylvania Packet, and in the number dated May 27, 1788, an advertisement of which the following is a true copy:
JUST IMPORTED
The capital, strong, full blooded, English stallion,
MESSENGER.
To cover mares this season at Alexander Clay’s, at the sign of the Black Horse, in Market Street, Philadelphia, at the very low price of three guineas each mare, and one dollar to the groom.
Messenger was bred by John Pratt, Esq., of Newmarket, who certifies the following pedigree. The grey horse Messenger was bred by me and sold to the Prince of Wales; he was got by Mambrino (who covered at twenty-five guineas a leap). His dam by Turf, his grandam by Regulus; this Regulus mare was sister to Figerant and was the dam of Leviathan. JOHN PRATT.
The performance of Messenger has been so very great that there need only be a reference to the racing calendar of the years 1783, 1784 and 1785.
Any mare missing this season shall be served the next gratis, provided they continue the same properties, on paying the groom’s fees.
This is a literal copy of the first printed announcement of Messenger in this country, and there are two very striking features connected with it, namely, its bad grammar and the absence of the name of the importer and owner. The former we may attribute to the times, but to the latter I have been disposed to attach no trifling significance. It is a fact that till this day we have no direct information as to who imported this horse. The name “Benger” was developed indirectly as the man, but not till years after the horse was dead, and probably the importer too, did I learn from an advertisement of a son of his that stood in Jersey that the importer’s name was “Thomas Benger.” In 1791 and for two years afterward he was advertised to stand at “Mount Benger, two miles from Bristol, Pennsylvania.” When I visited Bristol for the purpose of identifying “Mount Benger,” which I supposed was the country seat of the owner of Messenger, I was greatly surprised to find that none of the “oldest inhabitants” had ever heard of such a place, and when I was informed that there was no locality within half a dozen miles of Bristol where the ground rose to a hundred feet above the level of the Delaware River, the name “Mount Benger” assumed the character of an absurdity as well as a myth. From a very intelligent man of middle age, who had learned the blacksmith trade with his grandfather, I learned that he had often heard his grandfather speak of Messenger, and as having put the last set of shoes on him when he was taken away to New York the fall the yellow fever was so bad in Philadelphia. The tradition was still preserved in the family that Messenger reared up in crossing the river in a boat, and struck his groom on the head with one of those shoes, from the effects of which he died. As our informant was able to name two other horses, Governor and Babel, brought over by Mr. Benger, we were ready to accept his tradition that he lived at a point known in old times as “China Retreat,” two miles below Bristol on the Delaware. This point has been known later as “White Hall.”
After all traditions were exhausted, without yielding anything tangible or satisfactory, we turned with great confidence to the records of the county of Bucks, in which Mr. “Benger” had lived for a number of years. After a diligent and protracted search, embracing a number of years before and after his known residence in the county, we were not able to discover that any person by the name of “Benger” had ever owned a foot of real estate in the county or had been in any way publicly connected with its affairs or its administration. We had search made in Philadelphia with the same fruitless results. There is a faint tradition that Thomas Benger, if that was his name, was a fox-hunting Irish baronet, and if this was so, it is probable he returned to the old country about the time he sold Messenger in 1793. However this may be, the owner is forgotten, but his horse will live forever.
Among the many eulogies and word-paintings of Messenger, by writers who knew the horse personally, we select the following from the pen of the late David W. Jones, of Long Island, as the most striking and picturesque. He says:
“Having scanned in my boyhood the magnificent form and bearing of this noble old horse, and for more than half a century having drawn reins over his descendants, I have for a length of time felt it incumbent to furnish such facts and impressions, as, when considered with those of others, will give the younger portion of the present generation, as well as posterity, a fair knowledge of the general characteristics of the noblest Roman of them all. The first time I ever saw old Messenger my father sent me to the farm of Townsend Cock, Esq., of the County of Queens, L. I., where the horse was then standing, to receive his services. On my arrival at his harem, I found the groom, whom I knew, and he at once placed me with the mare a short distance from the stable, by the side of a barrier erected for security. Having at home heard frequent and long discussions in relation to the wonder I was now to behold, you may suppose I was all eyes. Presently the stalwart groom, James Lingham, with, at the extreme end of the bridle rein, all the blood of all the Howards, turned the angle of the stable and came in full view. The moment the old horse caught sight of the paragon of beauty I had brought to his embrace, he threw himself into an attitude, with the grandeur of which no other animal can compare, and at the same moment opened his mouth, and distending his nostrils, raised his exultant voice to such a pitch as gave unmistakable evidence of the capacity of his lungs and the size of his windpipe. Indeed, if his nostrils were as much larger than ordinary as my boyish vision pictured them, I can almost suppose that Mr. McMann with his little bay mare (Flora Temple), and sulky, could drive in at one, down the windpipe, turn under his immensely long arching loin and out at the other.... At that early day I was only impressed by those extraordinary developments; but in after years as I sit behind his offspring, they invariably remind me of what was then to my youthful judgment less apparent—the extraordinary strength of his loin, the length and beautiful molding of the buttock, the faultless shape of the crupper bone, giving an elegant set to his fine flowing tail, as well as the remarkable swell of his stifle, altogether forming a most perfect and powerful hind quarter.”
A good many years ago I made a special study of all that had been written about Messenger, and I was fortunate in being able to supplement this information by interviews with a few old gentlemen who knew the horse personally. Nearly all that generation of horsemen had passed away before I commenced this personal search for them. But a few then remained with excellent memories and with characters above suspicion or reproach. From these sources I gathered a great many incidents, facts and descriptions which I succeeded in harmonizing, to my own mind at least, and thus was able, to compile a complete description of the horse at every point. That description was written out more than twenty years ago, and in presenting it now I will not change a single word. At the time it was written, as will be seen from its perusal, I had really no doubt the horse was thoroughbred. It will not be charged, therefore, that the coarse traits brought out in the description were influenced in any degree by a theory of his breeding:
“Messenger was a grey, that became lighter and flea-bitten with age. He was fifteen hands three inches high, and for a thoroughbred his appearance was coarse. He did not supply the mind with an idea of beauty, but he impressed upon it a conception of solidity and power. His head was large and bony, with a nose that had a decided Roman tendency, though not to a marked degree. His nostrils were unusually large and flexible, and when distended they were enormous. His eye was large, full, very dark and remarkably brilliant. In this particular he does not appear to have inherited the weakness of his great-grandsire, Sampson. His ear was larger than usual in the blood horse, but thin and tapering and always active and expressive. The windpipe was so unusually large and stood out so much as a distinct feature that it marred what otherwise would have been a gamelike throat-latch and setting on of the head. His neck was very short for a blood horse, but was not coarse and thick like a bull’s; neither did it rise into such an enormous crest as that of his sire. It was not a bad neck in any sense, but like Lexington’s of our own day, it was too short to be handsome. His mane and foretop were thin and light. His withers were low and round, which appears to have been a family characteristic in the male line, back for three generations at least. His shoulders were heavy and altogether too upright for our ideas of a race horse. His barrel was perfection itself, both for depth and rotundity. His loin was well arched, broad and strong. His hips and quarters were ‘incomparably superior to all others.’ The column of the vertebra being of unusual depth and strength, gave the setting on of the tail a distinctive, but elegant character. The tail was carried in fine style; like the mane, it was not in superabundant quantity, but there was no such scantiness as to detract from the beauty and grace of the animal. His stifles were well spread and swelling, but there appears to have been no unusual development at this point. From the stifle to the hock and from the elbow to the knee, no writer that we can now recall has given us any description of either length or strength. We may, therefore, take it for granted that these points had no unusual development of muscle, but were in harmony with the general contour and make-up of a great strong horse. His hocks and knees were unusually large and bony, with all the members strong and clearly defined. The cannon bones were short and flat and the ligaments back of them were very large and braced a good way off, so that the leg was broad and flat. Mr. Jones says this part of the limb was of medium size, but other writers all agree that he had an unusual amount of bone at this point. Considering the whole style and character of the horse, and especially the character of his ancestors in the male line, and of Turf, the [reputed] sire of his dam, all of whom were distinguished for their quantity of bone, we are disposed to think Mr. Jones’ memory has not served him with entire accuracy in this particular. The conviction is reasonable and grows out of evidence that comes from every quarter, and we have no disposition to surrender it, that the bones of Messenger’s limbs were unusually large and strong for those of a thoroughbred. His pasterns and feet were all that could be desired, and as an evidence of the excellence and health of his underpinning several writers have put it on record that whether in the stable or on the show ground he never was known to mopingly rest one leg by standing on the other three, but was always prompt and upright. This is our conception of the form and appearance of the horse as we have reached it after a diligent and careful study of all that has been said by those who saw him while he lived. From this description it is a very easy matter to pick out the features which gave him his coarse and badly bred appearance. His big head, long ears, short neck, low withers, upright shoulders, large bones and, possibly, coarse hair, complete the catalogue. From these features the purity of his blood has been doubted and denounced, just as that of his sire, his grandsire and his great-grandsire had been denounced. The coarseness, the cart-horse appearance was in the family, but it did not seem to prevent some of them from beating some of the best that England produced in successive generations. There are many traditions that have been handed down to us concerning his temper, some of which, no doubt, have accumulated and gathered strength and ferocity in the years through which they have rolled. There have been perhaps half a dozen stories about his killing his keepers, but we are not able to say whether any one of them is true. It is known with certainty, however, that he was willful and vicious and would tolerate no familiarity from strangers.”
The ownership of Messenger, after he was transferred from Philadelphia to New York, like his earlier history, seems to be very much muddled. Henry Astor, a New York butcher, certainly bought him in the fall of 1793, and located him at Philip Platt’s, four miles from Jamaica, on Long Island. In the spring of 1796 Mr. Cornelius W. Van Ranst bought one-third interest in him and removed him to Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York, and, without specifying the time, he says he afterward purchased the remaining two-thirds, for which he paid two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. There appears to have been some mistake about this, for in 1802 we find Henry Astor, of New York, conveying one-third interest in the horse to Benjamin B. Cooper, of Camden, New Jersey. Some other parties also claim to have owned an interest in the horse, and I heard that there was a lawsuit about him between Astor and Van Ranst. The latter claims to have owned an interest in him till the time of his death, in 1808. It is not known how much Mr. Astor paid for him when he bought him, nor have I any data from which to determine the probable market value of the horse except that Mr. Van Ranst says he paid two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars for two-thirds of him. If we accept this as a basis, he must have been valued at about four thousand one hundred and twenty-five dollars. It is true, beyond doubt, that for several years he brought to his owners a net annual rental of one thousand dollars. This would indicate a very large patronage at very high prices for those times. For the twenty years of his stud services in this country, we find him located as follows:
1788, at Alexander Clay’s, Market Street, Philadelphia, at $15 the season and $1 to the groom, privilege of returning.
1789, at Thomas Clayton’s, Lombard Street, Philadelphia, at $10 the season and $1 to the groom.
1790, at Noah Hunt’s, in the Jersies, near Pennington, at $8.
1791, at “Mount Benger,” two miles from Bristol, Bucks Co., Pa., at $16.
1792, at the same place and the same price.
1793, at the same place and the same price.
1794, at Philip Platt’s, fifteen miles from New York and four from Jamaica, Long Island, at $25 the season.
1795, at the same place and the same price, when, as Mr. Van Ranst expressed it, “he took with our horsemen.”
1796, at Pine Plains, Dutchess County, N. Y., where he covered 106 mares at $30 the season.
1797, I have no advertisement for this year, but it is probable he was at the same place at the same price.
1798, at Pine Plains, as before, and the terms $30 for the season and $40 to insure.
1799, I have no definite trace of him this year, but there are some indications he was in West Jersey.
1800, for the spring season he is not located, but he made a fall season at John Stevens’ in Maidenhead, Hunterdon Co., N. J.
1801, at Goshen, Orange Co., N. Y., and I have seen the book account of expenses, etc., while he was there.
1802, at Cooper’s Ferry, opposite Philadelphia, Pa., but the price of services is not mentioned.
1803, at Townsend Cock’s, near Oyster Bay, Long Island, at $20 the season.
1804, at the same place and the same price.
1805, at Bishop Underhill’s, in Westchester Co., N. Y., fifteen miles from Harlem Bridge. Price reduced to $15.
1806, back again at Townsend Cock’s, and the terms fixed at $15 for the season, and $25 to insure.
1807, again at Bishop Underhill’s on the same terms as before, and this was the last of his twenty years’ stud services. It will be observed that the horse is located every year except two, and these locations are determined, not by tradition or hearsay, but by copies of his advertisements for each year. In giving the prices charged for his services I have given the value of the guinea or the pound as five dollars.
Messenger died January 28, 1808, in the stable of Townsend Cock, on Long Island, in his twenty-eighth year. This date has been as familiar to all intelligent horsemen for the last forty years as any prominent event in the history of the nation. The news of the death of the old patriarch spread with great rapidity, and soon the whole countryside was gathered to see the last of the king of horses and to assist at his burial. His grave was prepared at the foot of a chestnut-tree some distance in front of the house, and there he was deposited in his holiday clothing. In response to the consciousness that a hero was there laid away forever a military organization was extemporized, and volley after volley by platoons was fired over his grave. Some of the young men and boys who witnessed and participated in the ceremonies of the occasion were still living twenty years ago, and as they related the incidents of the occasion to me, their recollections seemed to be as clear and bright as though the occurrence had been of yesterday.
XIX. MESSENGER’S SONS
Hambletonian (Bishop’s) pedigree not beyond doubt—Cadwallader R. Colden’s review of it—Ran successfully—Taken to Granville, N. Y.—Some of his descendants—Mambrino, large and coarse in appearance—Failure as a runner—Good natural trotter—His most famous sons were Abdallah, Almack and Mambrino Paymaster—Winthrop or Maine Messenger and his pedigree and history—Engineer and the tricks of his owners—Certainly a son of Messenger—Commander—Bush Messenger, pedigree and description—Noted as the sire of coach horses and trotters—Potomac—Tippoo Saib—Sir Solomon—Ogden Messenger, dam thoroughbred—Mambrino (Grey)—Black Messenger—Whynot, Saratoga, Nestor, Delight—Mount Holly, Plato, Dover Messenger, Coriander, Fagdown, Bright Phœbus, Slasher, Shaftsbury, Hotspur, Hutchinson Messenger and Cooper’s Messenger—Abuse of the name “Messenger.”
It is not my purpose to write a history of all the descendants of Messenger, for that would fill several volumes and would be simply writing over again the trotting and pacing records of the past twenty years. I will, therefore, limit the chapters on this topic to such of his descendants as have demonstrated the value and prominence of their blood, as a factor, in the make-up of the American Trotter. Naturally, the immediate progeny of Messenger will first demand consideration, and then will follow the succeeding generations that have written their own history in the official records of trotting and pacing. Completeness of description and space occupied will be determined, chiefly, by the prominence and historic value of the animal under review. In this scope and without following any chronological order, I will try to embrace all that is known that would be of value to the student of trotting-horse history.
HAMBLETONIAN (BISHOP’S), originally called HAMILTONIAN.—This was a dark-bay horse about fifteen hands two inches high. He was bred by General Nathaniel Coles, of Dosoris, Long Island, and was foaled 1804. He was got by Messenger, his dam Pheasant (the Virginia Mare), said to be thoroughbred, by imp. Shark and grandam by imp. Medley. I first unearthed the pedigree of this “Virginia Mare” in the advertisement of Hambletonian for 1814 when he was owned by Townsend Cock and standing that year at Goshen, New York. The “Old Turfman,” Cadwallader R. Colden, was thoroughly familiar with all turf subjects in the early years of this century, and was the best turf writer of his generation. He had no patience or tolerance with frauds in pedigrees and always exposed them without mercy. He stoutly maintains that the pedigree of the “Virginia Mare” was bogus, and, to use his own language, he says:
“When Hambletonian became a public stallion, his owners were in a dilemma; a pedigree was necessary, so to work they went, and, as many had done before and as many are doing now, made one; and in his handbills his dam was given as bred in Virginia, and got by imported Shark, with a train of maternal ancestors, with as much truth, and affording as much ability to trace it or discover the breeder of the dam, as though they had said hi, cockalorum jig.”
Mr. Colden goes into the pedigree of this mare and the non-racing character of her family at great length, and it cannot be denied that he has the whole argument. As a specimen of sharp and interesting turf writing of that period and from that pen, I must commend my readers to turn to this article, which will be found in Wallace’s Monthly, Vol. II., p. 67.
With the probabilities all against the truthfulness of the pedigree of the dam, as given, it is certainly true that he was a running horse and attained distinction in his day. I have no full list of his performances at hand, but the following may be taken as a fair summary of his principal achievements. He ran at Newmarket in the spring of 1807 (then three years old), one mile, beating General Coles’ colt Bright Phœbus, Mr. Terhune’s bay filly, and distancing two others. He also ran, two days after the above race, four heats of a mile each, beating Bright Phœbus again and distancing three others. In the fall of 1808 he ran five weeks successively, and the three last weeks he won three four-mile purses, running the distance in shorter time than it ever had been run in the State of New York. I must say here that these races were run on the then Harlem course, which was not a full mile in length.
While Hambletonian was on the turf, Tippoo Sultan, a grandson of Messenger, beat Bond’s First Consul in a famous four-mile race, and Mr. Bond determined that he would find a horse that would be able to lower Tippoo Sultan’s colors, and it was thought there was nothing in the North able to do it except Miller’s Damsel, so he made a match for four thousand dollars a side on condition that Damsel should prove not to be in foal. But the mare proving to be in foal the match was off. He then took Hambletonian into his stable and offered to match him for the same amount against Tippoo Sultan, but he went amiss and the match was off. This incident is here introduced to show that whatever his real merits, Hambletonian had some reputation as a running horse. It was said that the secret of Mr. Colden’s hostility to the “Virginia Mare” and her descendants was because those descendants were always able to beat the descendants of his fashionably bred mare Matilda. Whatever the motive in exposing a pedigree that has never been fully established, there is one particular and that the most important of all particulars, in which Mr. Colden has done justice to Hambletonian. He says: “Hambletonian got some excellent roadsters, good trotters.”
There seems to be no description of this horse extant that is fully satisfactory. For some seasons he was in the hands of Mr. Daniel T. Cock, who in 1869 furnished me the following: “He was a dark bay, a little heavy about the head and neck, fifteen and a half hands high, and rather an upright shoulder. Back, loin and hind quarters as good as were ever put on a horse. Fore legs a little light, but hind legs strong and good—pretty straight. He was a beautiful saddle horse, notwithstanding his head and ear were a little coarse.” Other persons who had seen him have described him as “a great strong horse, with bone and substance enough to pull the plow or do any other kind of drudgery.” It has been said that he had a fine open trotting gait and that, in a cutter with old Isaac Bishop behind him, he was able to show the boys the road.
In 1807 he became the property of Townsend Cock, of Long Island, and he remained on the turf till 1810, when he was put in the stud. That and the following season he was at the stable of his owner; 1812 at Cornwall; 1813 at Fishkill; 1814 at Goshen; 1815-16 at Fishkill; 1817 at White Plains. In the winter of 1819 Mr. Cock sold him to Stephen and Smith Germond of Dutchess County, New York, and Isaac Bishop of Granville, New York. The latter was probably the real owner, and the horse then became known as “Bishop’s Hambletonian.” He made several seasons in the region of Granville and was back in Dutchess County 1823 and 1824. The next year he was at Granville—1825. He made one season, at least, at Burlington, Vermont, and some seasons or parts of seasons at Poultney, Vermont. It is said he lived till 1834.
At Wallingford, Vermont, he was bred upon the “Munson Mare,” said to be a daughter of imported Messenger, and doubtless either by him or one of his earlier sons, and the produce was Harris’ Hambletonian, also known as “The Remington Horse” and Bristol Grey, and this son became the progenitor of a great tribe of trotters, known as the “Vermont Hambletonians,” some of which were very fast pacers, among them the famous Hero, the fastest of his generation. Another son of Mr. Bishop’s horse was the Judson Hambletonian, that was the sire of the Andrus horse, that got the famous Princess, that was pitted against Flora Temple. He was also bred on his half-sister, Silvertail, by Messenger, and produced One Eye, a very fast mare, the grandam of Rysdyk’s Hambletonian, and I have always thought that this combination was the very cream of the pedigree of that great horse. He was also bred on a daughter of Mr. Coffin’s son of Messenger and produced Whalebone, that was the phenomenal long-distance trotter of his generation. His son, Sir Peter, out of an unknown mare, was also a famous old-time trotter. One of his daughters was bred to Coriander, son of Messenger, and the produce was Topgallant, the fastest horse of his time. These individual enumerations might be extended indefinitely, but I have given enough to show that he was not merely a progenitor of trotting speed in remote generations, but that speed came directly from his own loins. Another most significant fact is here brought to light, namely, that when bred back upon the blood of his own sire he achieved his greatest successes.
MAMBRINO.—This great son of Messenger was a bright bay with a star and one white ankle. He was fully sixteen hands high, with great length of body and generally of coarse appearance. He was foaled 1806, and was bred by Mr. Lewis Morris, of Westchester County, New York. His dam was by imported Sour Grout, out of a mare by imported Whirligig, and she out of the famous Miss Slammerkin, that is a well-known landmark reaching beyond the Revolution. The late William T. Porter, of the Spirit of the Times, stoutly maintained that Mambrino was not a thoroughbred horse, and his reasons seemed to rest wholly upon his coarse and cart-horse appearance. Technically, Mr. Porter was right, but the trouble did not rest with the dam, as he seems to have supposed, for I have seen the original certificate of breeding in the handwriting of Mr. Morris, his breeder, and there is no slip on that side of the pedigree. Mr. Morris was a prominent breeder and racing man for many years and his character was without taint. The pedigree is a very long one and I would be very far from vouching for the truth of the remote extensions, but back to the mare by Cub, imported by Mr. De Lancey, who bred Miss Slammerkin, there can be no mistake.
In the spring of 1810, then four years old, he was purchased of his breeder by Major William Jones, of Queens County, Long Island, and in the autumn of that year he was trained and ran for the two-mile purse at the old Newmarket Course, Long Island, and it is said gave some evidence that he could run, but after that he was never trained nor started in a race, from which we may conclude he was not a race horse, or his owner, who bred and ran his horses, would have given him another trial.
In 1811 he was put in the stud and made the season at Huntington, Long Island, in charge of Ebenezer Gould. It is not known where he made the season of 1812, but probably in Orange or Dutchess County. The years 1813-14-15 he was in charge of my late highly esteemed and venerable correspondent, David W. Jones, on the borders of Queens and Suffolk counties, Long Island, where he covered about two hundred and fifty mares. In 1816 he was in one of the river counties, in 1817 at Fishkill, and 1818 at Townsend Cock’s, Long Island. In later years he changed hands many times, at from two hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars, and there is no published trace of him till we find that he made the seasons of 1825 and 1829 at Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, and he died the property of Benjamin Germond, on the farm of Azariah Arnold in Dutchess County, about 1831.
He took his beautiful color from his dam and transmitted it with great uniformity. His general structure was after the Messenger model, especially in the large bones and joints of his limbs. His head was long and bony and his ears were large and somewhat heavy. He was too high on his legs and his general appearance was coarse, all of which he transmitted. In speaking of his offspring Mr. Jones remarks: “When young they were somewhat leggy and lathy, but spirited, stylish and slashing in action. When matured, he must indeed be fastidious who would crave another.” With regard to his gait Mr. Jones uses the following very emphatic language: “I have been the breeder of some, and the owner of many good horses, and with the best opportunities of judging, having ridden him (he was never driven) many, many miles, I say, with entire confidence, he was the best natural trotter I ever threw a leg over. His walk was free, flinging and elastic; his trot clear, square and distinct, with a beautiful roll of the knee and great reach of the hind leg.” In the absence of actual training and timing, it is hardly possible to get better evidence that Mambrino was a natural trotter that might have been developed to a considerable rate of speed. It would be interesting to know just why the horse “never was driven.” Did he show an unconquerable aversion to harness, and did Abdallah inherit this aversion? This description of Mambrino’s gait was written in 1866, and the writer had spent a long lifetime in an intimate personal knowledge of many, or indeed most, of the best early trotters that this country had produced.
The only one of his immediate progeny that attained distinction as a trotter was the famous Betsey Baker. This mare was very prominent among the best of her day, and was able, on one occasion at least, to beat the great Topgallant, and in tandem with Grey Harry when she was old she trotted in 2:41¾-2:43¾. Others of his progeny were trotters of some merit, but none of them especially distinguished on the turf. His three sons, Abdallah, Almack and Mambrino Paymaster, are the bright links in the chain extending from Messenger to the two-minute trotter that will keep his memory green as long as there is a trotting horse on the earth. Abdallah at the head of the Hambletonians, Almack at the head of the Champions, and Mambrino Paymaster at the head of the Mambrino Chiefs embrace the major portion of the great trotters of this generation.
WINTHROP, OR MAINE MESSENGER.—Perhaps no son of Messenger, not excepting Hambletonian and Mambrino, produced a more marked effect upon the stock of any part of the country than this horse did in the State of Maine. The impress he there made was not only remarkable at the time, but it is still felt and acknowledged in his descendants to this day. There have been many conflicting statements made to the public about him and his history, but I think I am now able to give, in authentic and reliable form, all that is really known of his origin and history. He was foaled about 1807 and was among the last colts by the imported horse, but unfortunately we know nothing of the blood of his dam. Mr. Alvan Hayward, for many years a citizen of Kennebec County, Maine, but more recently of York, Livingston County, New York, says his dam possessed some imported blood; but as all his records and memoranda were burned up in 1845 he is not able to give the pedigree of the mare that produced him.
Mr. Hayward bought the horse about 1817 or 1818, in the village of Paris, Oneida County, New York, of a man by the name of Rice or Wright, but did not remember which. He took him to Winthrop, Maine, where he was first known as “Messenger,” then as “Kennebec Messenger,” or “Winthrop Messenger,” and when he became old, as “Old Messenger.” The earliest contemporaneous account I have of this horse is his advertisement for the season of 1819, which I copy from the Hallowell Gazette of May 12, of that year, and is as follows:
“THE VALUABLE HORSE MESSENGER.
“The subscriber hereby recommends to the public and all who feel interested to improve in the breed of good and serviceable horses, the good horse Messenger, that stock so well known and approved of on Long Island, New York, and Pennsylvania. Said horse was raised on Long Island, and owned by Mr. Rylander, a gentleman who has taken the greatest pains to import the best breed of horses that came to his knowledge. Said horse is a silver grey, well proportioned, of a large size, and a good traveler. Gentlemen who are desirous of raising good horses will do well to call and see for themselves.
“The Messenger will stand for the most part of the time in the village at Withrop Mills.
ALVAN HAYWARD.
“Winthrop, May 1st, 1819.”
From the foregoing it will be seen that the new element, brought out in the history of this horse is the statement that he was owned at one time by Mr. Rylander, of Long Island. There were two brothers of this name, and they imported a great many horses, but never before had I heard their names connected with Winthrop Messenger. This carries us back to a period in the history of the horse before he was taken to Oneida County.
Colonel Stanley, a prominent banker of Augusta, and at one time a leading horseman and stage proprietor, bought Messenger of his kinsman, Hayward, and owned him some seven years. He says the horse was brought to Maine as early as 1816, and that his Uncle Hayward had certificates that he was got by imported Messenger, out of a mare well-bred and part of imported blood.
In a communication from Mr. Sanford Howard, who had been prominently connected with the breeding interests of the country for many years, the following description is given:
“I saw him several times, first in 1828. In the latter years of his life he stood mostly at Anson, on the Kennebec River, and I think died there about 1831 [he died at Dixfield]. He appeared like an old horse when I first saw him, older, perhaps, from being much afflicted with grease, which had become chronic, and at length had almost destroyed his hoofs; so that the last time I saw him he was nearly incapable of locomotion. His feet and legs looked like those of an elephant. This trouble was transmitted to his offspring through several generations (though not invariably so), and constituted, perhaps, in connection with, in many cases, a flat foot and low heels, their greatest defect.
“Mr. Hayward states, in concluding his letter, that he has no doubt the horse he took to Maine was got by imp. Messenger. The remark is probably elicited by intimations that he might have been gotten by a son of Messenger. I presume Mr. Hayward’s belief was well founded. As imported Messenger did not die until the 28th of January, 1808, there is no discrepancy between that event and the age of Mr. H.’s horse. At the same time I must admit that Maine Messenger hardly looked like a half-blood horse. He was pretty large, rather short-legged, thick-set, with heavy mane and tail, very hairy legs, long hair on his jaws, and was heavy coated (in winter) all over his body. These characteristics were sometimes accounted for by saying he was probably out of a Dutch mare, meaning such mares as the Dutch farmers of New York kept. I never heard of any claim being set up for his speed in trotting, and I presume he was never tried at running. He was strong and plucky, and the story was told at Winthrop that on an occasion when all the stallions of the neighborhood were brought out to be shown, they were put to a trot in sleighs for half a mile or so, and Messenger was beaten. Whereupon his owner proposed that the horses should each draw a sled with six men on it up to Winthrop hill, and be timed. It was done, and Messenger beat them all. I think the first of his offspring that became noted for fast trotting was a gelding called Lion, taken to Boston by a well-known horse dealer by the name of Hodges, of Hallowell, Maine. He was sold, I think, for four hundred dollars, which made quite a sensation among the Kennebec farmers who had any stock of the same sort. I do not recollect the rate of speed this horse showed, but a mile in three minutes was then considered wonderful, and probably this was about his rate. Other horses of the stock were soon brought out as fast travelers. I remember a friend of mine showing me some young horses he was training, and I rode with him after several of them. They were natural trotters, and would do nothing but trot, even under severe applications of the whip. But I think the second generation from Mr. Hayward’s horse were generally faster trotters than the first. They were also generally handsomer horses, not so rough looking. Nearly all the horses of this stock which have acquired a reputation in Massachusetts, New York, etc., as fast trotters, had not more than a quarter of the blood of the horse that Mr. Hayward took to Maine, and consequently had not more than an eighth of the blood of imported Messenger.
“The mares that produced these horses were of no particular blood. Various stallions had been kept in that section. Morgans from New Hampshire and Vermont, with an occasional change to the French Canadians, and now and then a quarter or half bred horse from New York or New Jersey.”
This excellent communication from Mr. Howard is especially valuable, as the conclusions drawn by an accurate and competent observer from a personal acquaintance with the original horse and his progeny. There are some inferences, however, that may be drawn from Mr. Howard’s letter that would be unjust to this distinguished animal. His general coarse appearance, in connection with which Mr. H. says, “he hardly looked like a half bred horse,” was a prominent feature in the family. Mambrino, a very high-bred son of old Messenger, was very coarse, and the same remark was often made about him. The quantity and length of his coat in the winter of his old age are not conclusive against his pretensions to a large share of good and pure blood. They are the results oftentimes of neglect and ill health. It is somewhere stated that the famous Sir Archy before he died looked exceedingly shaggy, his hair being fully three inches long. Mr. Howard expresses the opinion that “the second generation from Mr. Hayward’s horse were generally faster trotters than the first.” In many instances this, no doubt, is true, for it would be altogether contrary to the uniform laws which govern these things if development and use did not strengthen and intensify the instinct to trot in successive generations. If Mr. Howard is right, and we do not doubt he is, the increased capacity did not grow out of the dilution of the blood, but out of the strengthening of the instinct by culture and use. At the time Mr. Howard made this remark he evidently did not know that the famous old-time trotters, Daniel D. Tompkins and Fanny Pullen, were both immediately from the loins of Winthrop Messenger. In their day these two were classed among the best and fastest trotters that the world had then produced. The facts that both these animals were the immediate progeny of Winthrop Messenger were never brought to light for many years, and all I will say about them now is that they do not rest on shadowy traditions or suppositions, but are fully and circumstantially established.
In a letter written by Mr. Hayward, May 12, 1852, in speaking of the useful and everyday qualities of this horse’s progeny, he used the following language:
“The stock produced by that horse I consider superior, as combining more properties useful in a horse than any other stock I have ever been acquainted with, being good for draft, for carriage, for travel, for parade, or any place where horses are required. They had great bottom and strength, and were of hardy constitution. There are some horses in this town twenty-two years old, that were by a son of Winthrop Messenger, which I brought with me when I left Maine. They have always been accustomed to draw the plow and to perform other hard labor, and yet they have the appearance of young horses, and will now do more service than many horses of seven or eight years old.”
Among the several sons of imported Messenger whose names are conspicuous as the progenitors of great tribes of the most distinguished trotters I know of no one entitled to a higher place on the roll of fame, all things considered, than this one that went to Maine, and there laid a foundation that has made the State famous throughout the length and breadth of the land for the speed and stoutness of its trotting horses.
With such noted performers from his own loins as Fanny Pullen and Daniel. D. Tompkins, and in the next generation the famous Zachary Taylor, this horse made about the best showing of all the sons of Messenger, but as his line failed to produce a Rysdyk’s Hambletonian or a Mambrino Chief, it dropped to a place somewhat removed from the front of the procession.
ENGINEER was a grey horse, about sixteen hands high and very elegant in his form, style and proportions. The earliest account we have of him is in the spring of 1816, when he was advertised in The Long Island Star to stand at the stable of Daniel Seely, near Suffolk Court House, and at Jericho, in Queens County. He was in charge of Thomas Jackson, Jr., generally designated as “Long Tom.” He was then well advanced in years, but no attempt was made to give his age. Mr. Daniel T. Cock, in charge of Duroc and one or two other stallions, was then in sharp competition with Engineer, and he assures me he was a horse of large size, great share of bone and sinew, most elegant form, and a fine mover. His elegant appearance was so captivating that he was a very troublesome competitor.
The advertisement referred to contains the following very unsatisfactory paragraph relating to his pedigree, viz., “The manner he came into this country is such that I cannot give an account of his pedigree, but his courage and activity show the purity of his blood, which is much better than the empty sound of a long pedigree.” This was a most unexpected discovery, for I had always understood that Engineer was a son of Messenger and never had heard of this mystery before. It is here intimated that the horse was imported, and the story that Jackson told was that he was brought from England to Canada by a British officer, and by some surreptitious means found his way from Canada to Long Island. What appears to be the real history of the horse, and the version accepted afterward by everybody on the island, will be found in the following extract from a letter written by David W. Jones, February 28, 1870. He says:
“I can well account for Mr. Cock’s recollections of the history of the first Engineer. Thomas Jackson and George Tappan, noted owners and keepers of stallions on Long Island and in the counties of Orange and Dutchess, in the course of their peregrinations met with a person in possession of this horse, who offered him for sale. Impressed with his fine appearance and pedigree, they at once entered into negotiations for his purchase, and finally obtained him at so low a price as to cause strong suspicions that he was not honestly in his vendor’s possession. They, however, determined to take the chances, and at once brought him to Long Island, their place of residence, and determined on what they deemed a harmless representation in regard to his history; for this they had several motives. First, Messenger stallions were then very numerous on Long Island; their blood coursed in the veins of nearly every brood mare. Secondly, imported stallions were much desired, and by a little added fiction they could give him considerable éclat, and thirdly, in case of his having been unjustly obtained this would afford the best means of disguise. Accordingly they represented him as having been imported from England to Canada and ridden in the army by Gen. Brock, who, in an engagement with our troops, was shot and killed. The horse, escaping into our lines, was secured by our soldiers and brought to the State of New York. On these representations they claimed to have purchased him. No pedigree, as I recollect, was attempted to be given, and though many doubted the truth of this statement, there was no evidence to controvert it. For a length of time this story was adhered to; but after several years, when all fears of difficulty had subsided, they acknowledged the deception. Mr. Tappan, who resided but a few miles from me, was a man of more than ordinary candor and fairness, for one of his position and employment. I knew him well, and occasionally rendered him a favor by preparing his horse bills. On one of these occasions, at my house, he gave a full and particular statement of the whole affair. Some of the details have escaped me, but the essential facts are distinctly recollected. The owner, with Engineer in possession, was met at some public place and the purchase completed, and this statement then made, ‘that he had become involved in debt, and that his creditor had begun a prosecution, with a view to levy on the horse, the only property he possessed, and he was determined not to lose all.’ This was certainly enough to arouse their suspicions with regard to his history. He declared the horse was bred and raised in Pennsylvania and that he was got by imported Messenger. Whether any further pedigree was given is not recollected. He was at this time (1814) a horse considerably advanced in years and perfectly white. Mr. Tappan also told me that he had afterward traced the horse, and was entirely satisfied of the former owner’s veracity. I will not apologize for the length of this statement, being desirous of giving you all the information here possessed and probably all that can now be obtained.”
I am not aware that in the past sixty years any question has ever been raised as to the truth of the universally accepted statement that Engineer was a true son of Messenger, and I would not have disturbed it now, nor thought of doing so, had it not been for that remarkable advertisement discovered in the obscure Long Island paper. That was contemporaneous history, however, and it must either be explained or accepted. The question has been examined down to the bottom by one of the most conscientious and capable men of his generation, in this department of knowledge. His verdict has been accepted as the truth by all parties of that day, and I cannot reject it.
It is not known that any of his immediate progeny attained distinction on the trotting turf. Several of his sons bore his name in the stud and while their blood seemed to be helpful in the right direction, only one of them made any mark as a sire of speed, and that was the horse known as Lewis’ Engineer, the sire of the world beater, Lady Suffolk. Burdick’s Engineer, another son, was taken to Washington County, New York, and got the dam of the famous Princess, which produced the great Happy Medium. In all these instances there was commingling with other strains from Messenger.
COMMANDER.—This was a grey horse, fully sixteen hands high and of massive proportions. He was a son of imported Messenger and out of a mare by imported Rockingham. This Rockingham was not a thoroughbred horse. Commander was bred in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and found his way to Long Island about 1812, where he was liberally patronized. His name frequently occurs among the remote crosses of good pedigrees, but his fame rests wholly on the progeny of his son, Young Commander, who was the sire of Screwdriver, Screws, Bull Calf and other good ones. This horse Young Commander was sometimes called “Bull” and sometimes “American Commander.”
MESSENGER, (BUSH’S), generally known as BUSH MESSENGER. This son of Messenger was bred by James Dearin, of Dutchess County, New York, and was foaled 1807. His dam was a Virginia mare, named Queen Ann, by Celer, son of imported Janus, and out of a mare by Skipwith’s Figure, son of imported Figure, and she out of a mare imported by Colonel Miland, of Virginia. This pedigree was not accepted without some misgivings, but as it was possible and as it had been indorsed sixty years ago by Cadwallader R. Colden and published before that by Mr. Dearin, I am disposed to accept it as reliable.
He was sixteen hands high, a light grey, becoming white with age. He was excellent in form and probably the most handsome and attractive of all the sons of Messenger. The first public notice we have of him, he was advertised at the stable of his breeder, six miles south of Poughkeepsie, in 1813. Soon after this he became the property of Philo C. Bush, and this was the first horse, he says, that he ever owned. This Mr. Bush was a noted “character” in his day. From early manhood, through good and evil report, and until he died a very old man in poverty and want, he was a habitue of the race track. He knew all about race horses and their breeding, and he could prattle pedigrees from morning till night. Added to this knowledge which his life pursuits had placed in his possession, he was endowed with a most vivid imagination which was brought into the most active play whenever he found it necessary. To maintain his “reputation” it seemed to be a necessity that he should be able to extend all pedigrees laid before him and give the remote crosses, whether he knew anything about them or not. He was the author of the running pedigree given to the dam of Major Winfield—Edward Everett, son of Hambletonian—and on it money was won in a bet. An investigation of just two minutes disclosed the facts that by established and known dates the whole thing was utterly impossible. He was literally a very “racy” raconteur, but his reminiscences soon became tedious, notwithstanding their brilliancy, and it was always important to have a call to some business that cut off further entertainment from his répertoire.
Mr. Bush says he paid one thousand seven hundred and forty dollars and a silver watch for this horse, and with him he got an elegant suit of clothing that had belonged to imported Express. It is said that he never ran but one race and that was at Pine Plains, in which he distanced all his competitors in the first heat. In 1816 Mr. Bush kept him at Kinderhook; 1817 at Kinderhook and Schodack; 1818 at Kinderhook and Albany; 1819-20 at Utica. In the autumn of 1820 he was sold to Dr. Millington, of Crooked Lake, Herkimer County, and he was kept there 1821-22. He was then sold to Edward Reynolds, of East Bloomfield, where he was kept three or four years, after which he made one or more seasons at Le Roy, and he died at East Bloomfield in July, 1829. This horse had probably more trotting speed than any of the other sons of Messenger. Mr. Bush assured me that he could trot very fast for a horse of that day, and when led by the side of another horse he could beat three minutes very easily, but as we have to take Mr. Bush’s assertions cum grano salis, we fortunately have very reliable testimony of contemporaneous date and from a source wholly disinterested. I have before me a letter written by Judge J. Porter, of East Bloomfield, dated June 4, 1828, in reply to inquiries from some correspondent about the horse, his terms, etc. He writes as follows:
“I should think he was a very swift trotter from what I have seen, and very sprightly and nearly white. He has got a great number of fine colts in this town which are three years old; and the probability of their drawing on the old horse’s business is the reason of his being removed to Le Roy and Batavia.”
Whether Judge Porter was a horseman or not he certainly reflected, in this remark which I have emphasized, the leading quality for which Bush Messenger was distinguished in that region and in that day.
Although he was certainly a very fast natural trotter, it is not known that he was ever trained an hour in his life, neither is it known that any fast or trained trotters ever came from his loins. This was the period of fast mail coaches running from Albany to Buffalo, and as the old proprietors of those great lines were pushed westward from State to State until they finally were driven across the Mississippi, I have many times heard them talk of the great slashing grey Messenger teams that would carry their coaches along at ten miles an hour, and lament that there were no such horses nowadays. There were other sons of Messenger and many grandsons, all known as “Messengers,” but as a progenitor of horses suited to the stage coach this particular one that broke his neck in trying to get out of his inclosure was the premier. He probably came nearer filling the place in this country that his grandsire filled in England—English Mambrino—than any other one of the tribe, for we can truly say of him, as Pick said of his grandsire, “from his blood the breed of horses for the coach was brought nearly to perfection.”
POTOMAC was a bright bay, fifteen and a half hands high, and was bred by Daniel Youngs, of Oyster Bay, Long Island. He was foaled 1796 and got by imported Messenger; dam by imported Figure; grandam by Bashaw. He was put on the turf in the spring of 1799 and was a respectable race horse at short distances. He ran against and beat some of the best of his day. He was on the turf about three years. In the midst of his racing career he was purchased by Mr. Van Ranst for five hundred pounds. In 1802 he was owned by Major William Jones, of Cold Spring Harbor, and made some seasons there. In 1806 he was at New Windsor, Orange County, New York. In 1808 he was in charge of Thomas Jackson, at Rahway, New Jersey, and 1811 at Crosswicks, near Trenton, New Jersey. It is probable he died about this time, as we find no further trace of him. Most of his stock were bays, of good size, and very salable animals. Nothing can now be recalled that connects him with any of the trotting strains coming from his sire. He was not strictly running-bred on the side of his dam.
TIPPOO SAIB was a bay horse with one white foot and was fully sixteen hands high, with plenty of bone. He was foaled 1795, got by imported Messenger; dam Mr. Thompson’s imported mare by Northumberland; grandam by Snap, etc. His fine size and elegant pedigree made Tippoo Saib a very desirable horse to breed to, but for some cause he did not appear much on the turf. He ran a few races and went into the stud early, in the neighborhood of Trenton, New Jersey, and in the following year was at Goshen, Fishkill, and Pine Plains, New York. My impression is he was then returned to West Jersey and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he was probably owned in his latter days. His sons Tippoo Sultan, Financier and others, acquired great fame on the turf. His connection with the trotting lines of descent is very distinct, but not very prominent.
SIR SOLOMON was got by imported Messenger; dam Camilla by Cephalus; grandam Camilla by imported Fearnought and out of imported Calista, etc. He was foaled about 1800, bred by General Gunn, of Georgia, who seems to have kept Camilla and perhaps others in the North for the purpose of breeding. The pedigree on the side of this dam is an excellent one and would seem to justify the owner in seeking to get the best crosses possible into his stud. When five years old he was sold to Mr. Bond, of Philadelphia, for two thousand dollars. His races were numerous and often successful, beating some of the best horses of his day, and among them the famous Miller’s Damsel, also by Messenger, over the Harlem Course in heats of four miles. Not much is known of his stud services, and he seems to have been kept several years in Union County, New Jersey. He seems to have labored under the disadvantage of having a greater horse of the same name—Badger’s Sir Solomon by Tickle Toby—in competition with him, and thus the son of Tickle Toby would steal many a chaplet from the brow of his namesake, the son of Messenger.
OGDEN MESSENGER was a grey horse, foaled 1806, got by imported Messenger; dam Katy Fisher, by imported Highflyer; grandam a mare imported by H. N. Cruger in 1786, by Cottager; great-grandam by Trentham; great-great-grandam by Henricus; great-great-great-grandam by Regulus. The pedigree of this dam is correct, and she was doubtless entitled to rank as thoroughbred. This horse was bred by Mr. Cruger, and at three years old was sold to David Ogden, and that summer he was pastured on the farm of Major William Jones, of Long Island, from whose books we have the foregoing facts. Mr. David W. Jones remarks: “I retain a perfect recollection of him. He was at that time a large overgrown colt, not particularly ugly nor exceedingly coarse, but having no special beauty nor finish. I cannot better describe him than to say he was a coarse pattern of a fine horse, with marked traits of his lineage.” Mr. Jones evidently saw him at his worst age and before he fully reached his maturity.
Judge Odgen, his owner, was a large landholder in St. Lawrence County, New York, and in the spring of 1810 he removed from New Jersey to an island of eight hundred acres in the St. Lawrence river, opposite the village of Haddington, and took the horse, then four years old, with him. It is not known that he ever ran a race for money, and it is not probable he ever did, for it was his owner’s aim and object to improve the stock of the country as well as his own, in which he was successful. After five or six years he was taken to Lowville in Lewis County, and made several seasons there in charge of Charles Bush, and from this fact he came to be known there, locally, as Bush Messenger. Thus it happened that there were two sons of imported Messenger in the State of New York at the same time, and both known as Bush Messenger, and to these we might add a grandson and a great-grandson in the State of Maine, and at later date both named “Bush Messenger.” It was at one time supposed that Mr. Ogden’s horse while at Lowville became the sire of the famous Tippoo of Canada that became the head of a very valuable tribe of trotters and pacers, but later developments showed that this was a mistake. (He appears to have alternated in his services between Lewis and Jefferson counties, but whether weekly or yearly I cannot state. He was taken to Lowville as early as 1815 and was there five or six years.)
The facts about this horse have been developed from much correspondence with different parties, but more especially from Mr. V. Sheldon, of Canton, New York, and from Mr. P. F. Daniels, of Prescott, Ontario. Both men knew the horse personally, and Mr. Daniels was seventy-five years old when he wrote. He still had a very clear recollection of the horse in his appearance and style of action. In describing him he says: “He was peculiarly marked about his hocks and knees, having a series of dark rings about his limbs, continuing at intervals down to his hoofs, and many of his sons and daughters were marked the same way.” Having ridden him many times he says: “He; had a long flinging step and was a fast trotter. His action was high and not easy to the rider, and he could not widen behind as some of our modern trotters.”
When Mr. Daniels was a young man he was engaged in carrying the mail, and in March, 1821, he believes it was, Judge Ogden gave him an order to bring the horse home from Lewis County. He led him all the way behind his mail conveyance and delivered him safely to young Mr. Ogden, who gave him to an Irish groom named Daley, and Daley remarked he would soon make him look like another horse. That night he gave him an overfeed of corn and he died of colic. He was never advertised while at home and he was not very liberally patronized. The Freemans and the Archibalds, however, Mr. Daniels says, bred to him largely. His stock were good and many of them excellent, especially those descended through his sons Blossom and Freeman’s Messenger.
MAMBRINO (GREY).—This son of Messenger was foaled about 1800, his dam was by Pulaski, grandam by Wilkes; great-grandam by True Briton. He was bred by Benjamin C. Ridgeway, near Mount Holly, New Jersey. In 1807 he stood at Flemington under the name of Fox Hunter. He was purchased by Richard Isaac Cooper, who resold him to William Atkinson for about one thousand two hundred dollars. He was a flea-bitten grey, mane and tail white, handsome and stylish, about sixteen hands high, head medium size, and a good, well-formed horse at every point, except his feet, which were big and flat. He was probably never harnessed and was a very popular stallion in Salem and adjoining counties for many years. Mr. Atkinson was a very prominent and influential member of the Society of Friends, and “Billy” Atkinson was always a welcome guest as he traveled through Salem, Gloucester, and Burlington counties with his horse, and his genial good humor made him as popular as his horse. He always claimed great speed for his horse; but owing to his position in the society he never could gratify his friends by showing it. When his offspring came into service they were not only performers of great merit on the road and the course, but they had bone and substance that fitted them for every kind of labor required of them. All the Quakers had Mambrinos and nothing else, after “Billy” Atkinson and his horse had been among them a few years. Some of his descendants attained to great local fame as trotters and some did well as runners. He was a very valuable horse and left a wonderfully numerous and valuable offspring.
BLACK MESSENGER.—Among all the progeny of Messenger, this is the only one that I can now recall that was black. He was bred by William Haselton, of Burlington County, New Jersey, and out of a mare highly prized in the Haselton family, but her blood cannot now be traced. He was foaled in 1801 and on the death of Mr. Haselton in 1804 he was sold to Charles or Richard Wilkins of Evesham, ten miles from Camden, New Jersey, who owned him till he died at an advanced age. As the birth of this horse is fixed by documentary evidence at 1801 it suggests that Messenger was kept in Burlington County, New Jersey, the unplaced season of 1800. Still as he was at Lawrenceville in the fall season of 1800 it is possible the mare was sent to him there. He was full sixteen hands high and possessed great muscular development and strength of bone. He was not handsome, but his figure and style were very commanding. In his day he was regarded as one of the best natural trotters ever in Burlington or Gloucester counties. This was not the claim of his owner merely, but the unprejudiced opinion of all the horsemen who knew him. His stock were very highly prized as horses suited to all purposes and especially for fast road work. Some of them were greatly distinguished locally as fast trotters, and among them was Nettle, the dam of the famous Dutchman, that was the greatest trotter of his day.
WHYNOT MESSENGER, Pizzant’s Messenger, Austin’s Messenger, and Cousin’s Messenger were all sons of Messenger and got by him while he was in West Jersey, but as nothing has been developed concerning their maternal breeding nor the character of their progeny, I will pass them over with this bare record that such horses existed.
SARATOGA.—This son of Messenger was a flea-bitten grey and was foaled about 1805. It is believed he was bred on Long Island, but nothing is known of the blood of his dam. He was driven in harness and did service in several counties in Pennsylvania, and was sold at auction in Philadelphia to James Dubois of Salem, New Jersey. He was a great, strong horse, and was kept at work on the farm of his owner, covering mares only as opportunity offered. He was a slashing trotter, but it was only when his owner was away from home and got an extra drink or two that anybody ever had an opportunity to see how fast he could go. A number of his progeny were fast trotters; among them a mare called Charlotte Gray that was the fastest of her day in all that region. Among his sons, one called Dove was greatly distinguished in the stud.
NESTOR AND DELIGHT.—These were sons of Messenger, the former bred in Orange County, New York, in 1802, and was at Warwick in that county, 1807 in charge of Nehemiah Finn. The latter was bred in Westchester County in 1806, and made the season of 1827 at Warwick, New York, in charge of John G. Blauvelt, and is probably the horse that was more widely known as Blauvelt’s Messenger. The breeding of the dams of both these horses is very uncertain.
MOUNT HOLLY was a grey horse, fifteen and a half hands high. He was foaled about 1807 and was bred by Colonel Udell, of Long Island. His dam was by Bajazet, and his grandam was by Bashaw. Not much is known of him till he was well advanced in years and was taken to Dutchess County. Daniel T. Cock knew him well on the island, and he assured me he was a trotter in the true sense of the word. The late Mr. Daniel B. Haight, a horseman of excellent judgment and knowledge, knew him very well, and he describes him as of the true Messenger grey, and a smooth, well-finished horse all over. His offspring were smooth, handsome, and remarkably tough, and from their kindly tempers they were easily managed and made horses fit for any service. The most noted of his get were the famous trotters Paul Pry and Mr. Tredwell’s grey mare that went to England. His cross appears in the pedigrees of many trotters and is very highly prized to this day. In the latter part of his life he was owned by Jacob Husted, of Washington Hollow, New York, and made several seasons there. His sight failed entirely as he grew old, and he died about 1835. With two such performers from his own loins as Paul Pry and the Tredwell mare, it cannot be doubted that he inherited and transmitted the true Messenger “trotting instinct,” and that without any assistance from the blood of his dam.
PLATO was a large brown horse, fully sixteen hands high, and was a full brother to Bishop’s Hambletonian, being by Messenger, out of Pheasant. He was bred by General Coles, of Long Island, and was foaled 1802. As he matured the general judgment was that his limbs were too light for his body, and this is the only instance that I can recall where the get of Messenger failed at this vital point. He was trained and ran a few races, and from a trial with Miller’s Damsel General Coles said he was the best horse that ever ran against that famous mare. In a race against his half-brother, Sir Solomon, he won the first heat of four miles and broke down in the second, which finished him as a race horse. He was a larger and a handsomer horse than his full brother Hambletonian, but at no other point was he so good. When they stood in the same stable he was advertised at a lower price. He was a number of years in the stud on Long Island, New Jersey, and the river counties of New York, and after 1816 at Pine Plains there is no further trace of him. In his physical structure and doubtless, in his mental structure also, he took after his dam, and the only link now recalled coupling him with the trotter is the fact that he was the sire of the dam of Lewis’ Engineer, that was the sire of the great Lady Suffolk.
DOVER MESSENGER was a grey horse, and was got by imported Messenger, but the blood of his dam and the year he was foaled are unknown. He was kept several seasons at South Dover, Dutchess County, New York, and left a very valuable progeny strongly endowed with the instinct to trot. He was taken to the town of Russia, in Herkimer County, where he died. There was a younger horse bearing practically the same name, a son of Mambrino Paymaster, with which this horse has often been confounded.
CORIANDER.—This son of Messenger was a bay horse, about fifteen and a half hands high; was foaled in Queens County, New York, about 1796, and his dam was by Allen’s Brown Figure; grandam by Rainbow; great-grandam by Dauphin. He seems to have been kept on Long Island as long as he lived. His progeny was much like their sire, and Mr. D. W. Jones describes them as “clean, wiry, and brilliant. In their make-up there seemed nothing wasted and nothing wanted.” He ran some races, as did many of his get. He was bred upon one of the early daughters of Hambletonian, and she produced the great trotter “Old Topgallant,” the sensation of his period and one of the most famous of the very early trotters. One of the most remarkable facts in the history of this remarkable old gelding is that he ran some races before he was trained to trot.
FAGDOWN.—This son of Messenger was bred on the Jersey side of the Delaware, not far from Philadelphia, and was foaled, I think, in 1803. His dam was represented to be by Diomed, and if this be correct it must have been Tate’s imported Diomed that was imported into New Jersey and kept there a number of years. This was a bay horse and must not be confounded with the chestnut horse of the same name imported into Virginia. Fagdown became vicious and dangerous, and from this trait in his character he was generally called the “Man Eater.” He was kept in the region of Philadelphia and south of there for many years, and left a very numerous and very valuable progeny. They were noted for their superior qualities as road horses, and some of them were very fast, for their day. For a number of years no family of horses were so popular about Philadelphia as the Fagdowns. He had a son called Cropped Fagdown that was fast, and another son called Jersey Fagdown that trotted some races against the great Andrew Jackson. Another son, named after his sire, was bred in Northeastern Maryland, and was taken to Eastern Ohio in 1829, and he was kept in Columbiana, Mahoning, and Jefferson counties for at least ten years. He was never in a race nor never trained, but his Quaker patrons all insisted that when led by the side of another horse he could trot as fast as a pretty good horse could run. This grandson of Messenger was the sire of the grandam of Wapsie, the well-known trotter and sire of Iowa.
BRIGHT PHŒBUS was foaled 1804, the same year as Hambletonian. He was out of the imported Pot-8-os mare, and his breeder, General Coles, of Long Island, sold him to Bond and Hughes, of Philadelphia. His most noted achievement was at Washington, D. C., in 1808, when in a sweepstakes he more than distanced the great Sir Archy, by catching him when he had the distemper. His racing career was respectable, but not brilliant, and when that ended it is not known what became of him.
SLASHER, SHAFTSBURY, HOTSPUR.—There was quite a famous brood mare owned somewhere in Jersey called Jenny Duter, or Jenny Oiter, as some authorities have it. She was got by True Briton; dam Quaker Lass by imported Juniper; grandam Molly Pacolet, by imported Pacolet, etc., tracing on six or eight more crosses that are all fudge. This mare was bred to Messenger about 1801, and produced Shaftsbury; her daughter by Liberty was bred to him about the same time and produced Slasher, and about the same time her granddaughter by Slender was also bred to him and produced Hotspur. These three sons of Messenger do not seem to have ever been trained, and very little of their history can be traced, except that they were kept as stallions in different parts of New Jersey. It is not known that their blood has had any influence upon the American trotting horse.
MESSENGER (HUTCHINSON’S).—This was a large grey horse, foaled in 1792, and bred by Mathias Hutchinson, of Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. His dam was by Hunt’s Grey Figure, son of imported Figure. He was kept in Monmouth County, New Jersey, 1797, and it is probable that he was often represented as imported Messenger himself. I have no knowledge of this horse or his progeny beyond the mere facts here given.
MESSENGER (COOPER’S).—This son of imported Messenger was generally known as “Cooper’s Grey” and sometimes as Ringgold. He was sixteen hands high and was foaled about 1803. He was bred in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and was kept about Philadelphia, on both sides of the Delaware, till 1821, when he was sold by the administrators of Jacob Kirk, and it has been said he was taken to the Wabash by Amos Cooper. He ran some races when he was young, and was a horse of a good deal of local fame. He was liberally patronized in the stud and left valuable progeny. It has been suggested that probably he was the sire of Amazonia, the dam of Abdallah; but as there is nothing to support this suggestion except the mere matter of location, and as all that has ever been claimed for her paternity is that she was by “a son of Messenger,” we must not forget that there were plenty of other sons of Messenger in the same locality that might have been her sire.
The name “Messenger” was more sadly abused in its duplication in the closing of the last and the early decades of the present century than that of any other horse, or perhaps of all other horses of that period put together. Multitudes of his sons were called “Messenger,” and, in the next generation, multitudes of his grandsons gloried in the same cognomen, and thus generation after generation perpetuated it, in widening circles, till “confusion became worse confounded,” leaving the historian in helpless and hopeless ignorance as to what was true and what was false. When grey horses in the second, third, or fourth remove from the imported horse became old, it required but little “diplomacy” to satisfy the public that they were true sons of the original, and this became the custom.
XX. MESSENGER’S DESCENDANTS
History of Abdallah—Characteristics of his dam, Amazonia—Speculations as to her blood—Description of Abdallah—Almack, progenitor of the Champion line—Mambrino Paymaster, sire of Mambrino Chief—History and pedigree—Mambrino Messenger—Harris’ Hambletonian—Judson’s Hambletonian—Andrus’ Hambletonian, sire of the famous Princess, Happy Medium’s dam.
ABDALLAH.—This grandson of Messenger has been popularly and justly designated as the “king of trotting sires of his generation.” He was bred by John Tredwell, of Queens County, Long Island, and was foaled 1823. His sire was Mambrino, son of Messenger, and his dam was Amazonia, one of the most distinguished trotters of her day. Concerning the breeding and origin of Amazonia there has been great diversity of opinion among horsemen and a great amount of controversy among writers. It is not my purpose to enter into a discussion of the questions raised on this point, but I would hardly be doing justice to history to pass it over unnoticed. I will, therefore, try to give a brief synopsis of the history and the arguments urged, and refer the reader to the first and second volumes of Wallace’s Monthly for a more extended consideration of the questions raised.
The first representation of her pedigree was that she was a daughter of imported Messenger, and the next was that she was by a son of Messenger. On the first claim, that she was by Messenger, no argument was possible, one way or the other, on account of dates; but against the second claim, that she was by a son of Messenger, the arguments were numerous and vehement. All these arguments were based wholly upon her coarse external conformation and the absence of all resemblance to the Messenger family. Among the supporters of this view were many of the most intelligent and trustworthy horsemen of the whole country. Indeed, the preponderance of intelligence as well as numbers seemed to be on that side. That she had “coarse, ragged hips,” that she had a “rat tail,” that she “had hair enough on her legs to stuff a mattress,” that she was “a muddy sorrel,” etc., were all urged to prove that she was not by a son of Messenger. It is true that many entered into this controversy who never saw the mare and who knew nothing about her appearance, but there were others who knew her perfectly, among them my venerable friend David W. Jones, to whom we are all indebted for so many treasures from his storehouse of very valuable memories.
On the other side there were some little scraps of history, that at the vital point may have been history or may have been fiction. In the certificate of sale of Abdallah, April 27, 1830, to Mr. Isaac Snediker, his breeder, Mr. John Tredwell, says: “And believe him to be the very best bred trotting stallion in this country, and be it enough to know that his sire was Mambrino and his dam Amazonia.” It has been argued that it would be very inconsistent for a man of Mr. Tredwell’s standing to certify that Abdallah “was the very best bred trotting stallion in this country,” if he knew nothing of the blood of his dam, drawing the inference that he must have known and believed the representations of his nephew, B. T. Kissam, from whom he got Amazonia. The story of the original purchase of Amazonia by B. T. Kissam and given to me by his brother, Timothy T. Kissam, in 1870, is as follows: Amazonia was purchased by B. T. Kissam, a dry goods merchant of New York, when on an excursion of pleasure in the vicinity of Philadelphia about 1814. She was brought out of a team and was then four years old past, his attention having been called to her as an animal of much promise. He used her for his own driving a short time and sold her to his uncle, John Tredwell. “Amazonia was represented to my brother to have been a get of imported Messenger.”
Now, in considering whether this scrap of history is probably true, the geographical question has been urged with telling effect. Messenger had been kept a number of years on both sides of the Delaware, right on the way to Philadelphia, his fee had been above that of any other stallion, and a large percentage of his colts had been kept entire. In no part of the country, perhaps, were there so many sons of Messenger seeking public patronage. The geography and the chronology of the question, therefore, both sustain the probability of its truthfulness. Whether Mr. Kissam crossed the river at Trenton, or Burlington, or Camden he was right in the hotbed of the sons of Messenger. “If Amazonia” it has been asked, “was as coarse and forbidding as represented in her appearance, what induced Mr. Kissam to buy her?” He wanted a carriage horse and he wanted one that could not only show good action, but one that had a right of inheritance to good action. He knew the Messengers and knew that beauty and style were not family traits in that tribe. Many of them were coarse, and possibly as coarse as Amazonia. Her very coarseness and lack of style is, under the circumstances, a strong argument that in choosing her Mr. Kissam had regard for her Messenger blood.
Another argument, resting on “the internal evidences,” has been urged with considerable force and it is very hard to answer it. Amazonia was a mare of tested and known speed. She was in a number of races to saddle and had won several of them in less than three minutes along about 1816-18, and when Major William Jones, in 1820, accepted the challenge to produce a horse that could trot a mile in three minutes for one thousand dollars, he knew very well what he was doing, for he had seen Amazonia do it a number of times. Her best time was about 2:54, which in that day was considered phenomenally fast. If we were to meet a running horse out on the plains that could run away from all others, we would naturally and justly conclude that he had some of the blood of the race horse in his veins. If we have a pacer and we learn he came from a section of the country where a certain tribe of pacers abounded, we would naturally conclude that he belonged to that tribe, especially if we knew there were no other pacers in that section. If we have a trotter that can go away from all other trotters, and we know that this trotter came from a section abounding in a family of trotters, and in nothing else that can trot, we naturally and justly conclude that this trotter came from some member of that family of trotters. This argument from the “internal evidences” seems almost axiomatic, and when taken in connection with the historical argument, unsatisfactory though it be, they together lay the foundation for a very strong probability that Amazonia was by a son of Messenger.
Abdallah was in color a beautiful bay, about fifteen and a half hands high, and there was a measure of coarseness about him that he could not well escape, as both his sire and dam were endowed with that undesirable quality. The one exception to this was in the character of his coat, which was very fine and glossy when in healthy condition. His reputation as a great trotting sire was very widely extended during his lifetime, but his lack of symmetry and his “rat tail,” which he inherited from his dam, so impaired his acceptability with the public that he never was very largely patronized. Besides this he had an unconquerable will of his own, which he transmitted to his offspring very generally. This willfulness was not a desirable quality in a horse for drudgery, and hence most of his patrons were such as were seeking for gameness and speed. When he was four years old he was not in the stud, and it is understood that Mr. Tredwell undertook to break him thoroughly and train him that year. It is also understood that when put in harness he kicked everything to pieces within his reach and that all thoughts of training were soon abandoned. He never was in harness again until, in extreme old age, he was sold for five dollars to a fish peddler, and the peddler’s wagon was soon reduced to kindling wood.
He was kept at different points on Long Island, and one season in New Jersey, till the fall of 1839, when he, with Commodore, another son of Mambrino, was sold to Mr. John W. Hunt, of Lexington, Kentucky, where they made the season of 1840. Commodore was much the more attractive horse of the two, and did a large business, while Abdallah was almost wholly neglected, leaving only about half a dozen colts. Meantime his progeny on the island began to show their speed and their racing qualities; a company was formed and he was brought back from Kentucky and made the seasons of 1841 and 1842 at the Union Course, Long Island. He was at Goshen, New York, 1843, at Freehold, New Jersey, 1844 and 1845, at Chester, New York, 1846-47-48, at Bull’s Head, New York, 1849, and did nothing, then at the Union Course and Patchogue, Long Island, and was not off the island again. After the period of his usefulness was past his inhuman owners turned him out on a bleak, sandy beach on the Long Island shore, and there he starved to death in the piercing November winds, without a shelter or a friend.
Abdallah was the sire of Hambletonian, 10, the greatest of all trotting progenitors and greater than all others combined. This fact alone has made his name imperishable in the annals of the trotting horse. A number of his other sons were kept for stallions and some of them lived to old age, but they were all failures in the stud. His daughters, generally, proved to be most valuable brood mares, producing speed to almost any and every cross. A pedigree tracing to an “Abdallah mare” has always enhanced the value of a family.
ALMACK.—Mr. John Tredwell bred his famous team of driving mares, Amazonia and Sophonisba, to Mambrino in the spring of 1822, and the next year they each produced a bay horse colt that he named Abdallah and Almack. Sophonisba, the dam of Almack, was a superior mare, but she was not fast enough for her mate. Almack, however, was a good horse and left some trotters. I have no particular description of him at hand and nothing can now be given of his history further than that some of his daughters produced well and that he seems to have been kept all his life on Long Island. His dam Sophonisba was got by a grandson of imported Baronet, as represented, but this is so indefinite as to be unsatisfactory and suspicious. As none of the Baronets could ever trot, even “a little bit,” it is evident that whatever trotting inheritance Almack possessed came to him from his sire. Aside from a number of his descendants that were recognized trotters of merit there was one in particular that established Almack as a progenitor of a great family of trotters. A son of his bred by George Raynor, of Huntington, Long Island, in 1842, and known as the “Raynor Colt,” out of Spirit by Engineer II., sire of Lady Suffolk, was led behind a sulky at a fair at Huntington, when he was eighteen months old, and he went so fast and showed such a magnificent way of doing it, that he was named “Champion” by William T. Porter, editor of the Spirit of the Times. At three years old he was driven a full mile in 3:05 and this was a “world’s record” for colts of that age at that time. In 1846 he was purchased by William R. Grinnell for two thousand six hundred dollars and taken to Cayuga County, where he founded a great tribe of trotters that is now known everywhere as the “Champion Family.” A fuller account of this horse will be found at another place in this volume.
MAMBRINO PAYMASTER (widely known in later years as Blind Paymaster).—This was a large, strong-boned, dark-bay horse, sixteen hands and an inch high. When young he was somewhat light and leggy, but with age he spread out and became a horse of substance. He was bred by Azariah Arnold, of the town of Washington, in Dutchess County, New York. There is some uncertainty about the year this horse was foaled, but it was somewhere between 1822 and 1826. He was got by Mambrino, son of Messenger, and his dam was represented to be by imported Paymaster. The late Mr. Edwin Thorne made a statement a few years ago that in an interview with Azariah Arnold he said that he did not know or remember the horse that was the sire of the dam. At that time Mr. Arnold was very old, and doubtless his mental faculties very much impaired, so it would not be remarkable that he should have forgotten all about it. On the other hand, Nelson Haight, Daniel B. Haight, Seth P. Hopson, and others of like high character, maintain that Mr. Arnold, in his younger days, always represented the mare to be by Paymaster, and the name of the horse itself is very strong evidence that he did so represent it, and is a standing proclamation to that effect. There can be no possible doubt that in earlier life Mr. Arnold constantly represented this mare to be by Paymaster; neither can there be any reasonable doubt that when his faculties were impaired with age he told Mr. Thorne that he did not remember her pedigree. Mr. Arnold’s neighbors all agree that he was a man of unblemished character and incapable of a willful misrepresentation, when in possession of his faculties. Again, that this Paymaster cross was not only possible, but probable, is shown by the fact that imported Paymaster was kept by Ebenezer Haight, in the year 1807, in the same township with Azariah Arnold, and the years 1808 and 1809 in the same part of the county. Therefore, Mr. Thorne to the contrary notwithstanding, I have but little doubt that the Paymaster cross is correct.
He had a small star in his forehead and a little white on one hind foot. His back, loin and hips were altogether superior, and those who knew him best say they never saw his equal at these points. His head was large and bony, with an ear after the Mambrino model. His neck was of medium length and his shoulder good. His hind legs were quite crooked and too much cut in below the hock in front, giving the legs at that point a narrow and weak appearance; his hocks were large and at the curb place showed a fullness. His cannon bones, all round, were short for a horse of his size, and his feet were excellent. He was slow in maturing, but when he filled out he lost all that narrow, weedy appearance which characterized his colthood. He was not beautiful, but powerful.
About 1828 he was sold and taken to Binghamton, New York. Meantime his colts came forward and proved to be so valuable that Nelson and Daniel B. Haight and Gilbert Jones purchased and brought him back to Dutchess County about the year 1840. He was not a sure foal-getter, but his stock proved to be of great value. When brought back from Broome County he was blind. He made one season on Long Island in charge of George Tappan; the other seasons till 1847 he was kept in Dutchess County in the neighborhood of his owners. In 1847 he was sold to Mr. Gilbert Holmes and taken to Vermont, where he died after getting one colt. Many of his sons were kept as stallions, but the most famous of his get were the mares Iola and Lady Moore, and last but not least, his famous son Mambrino Chief, the founder of a great family of trotters in Kentucky. His stock were probably more noted and more highly prized than that of any of the sons of Mambrino that stood in Dutchess County. As Abdallah was the link by which the greatest of all trotting families are connected with Messenger, so Mambrino Paymaster is the link through which the family easily entitled to second place reaches the same illustrious original.
MAMBRINO JR. (BONE SWINGER) was a beautiful bay horse, foaled 182-, got by Mambrino, son of Messenger; dam not traced. He was bred on Long Island and was owned by George Tappan, near Jericho, Long Island. About 1833-4 he made some seasons at Washington Hollow, Dutchess County. He was about fifteen hands three inches high and was considered more blood-like and handsome than most of his family. He was a strong breeder, giving most of his colts his own elegant color.
MAMBRINO MESSENGER (commonly known as the Burton Horse) was foaled about 1821. He was got by Mambrino, son of Messenger; dam by Coffin’s Messenger, son of Messenger; grandam by Black and All Black; great-grandam by Feather. He was bred by Abram Burton, of Washington Hollow, New York. He was a beautiful bay, about fifteen hands three inches high, and was the same age as Mambrino Paymaster, and they were rivals for a number of years, each having his friends and adherents. He was finer in the bone, having more finish and beauty than his rival, and what was still more effective with the public, he could out-trot him. Many of his offspring proved to be most excellent roadsters and some of them were fast. He was probably taken to Western New York, but I have not found any trace of his location or history. This name, Mambrino Messenger, was borne by several other horses of different degrees of affinity to the originals.
HAMBLETONIAN (HARRIS’) (also known as Bristol Grey and Remington Horse).—This was a grey horse, about sixteen hands high, and possessed great strength and substance. When young he was an iron grey and probably pretty dark, but as he advanced in age he became lighter in color. His head was large and bony, with great width between the eyes. He was short in the back, with long hips, and the rise of the withers commenced far back, showing a fine, oblique shoulder. He was a horse of unusually large bone formation; his limbs were large, but flat and clean, with a heavy growth of hair at the fetlocks. He was of docile and kindly disposition and worked well either alone or with another. His gait was open and decided and at a walk his long slinging steps carried him over the ground unusually fast. His speed as a trotter was never developed, but his action at that gait was so free, open and square that those who knew him well have insisted that his manner of going indicated the possibility of great improvement, if he had been handled with that view. His offspring were slow in maturing, and for many years, indeed till toward the end of his life, he was not appreciated as a stallion. He was in constant competition with the little, plump, trim and trappy Morgans, and at three and four years old his long, lathy, plain colts cut but a sorry figure against the well formed and fully developed Morgans of their own age. With such a rivalry, sustained by the question of profit to the breeder by early sales, it is not remarkable that he should have been neglected, till it was clearly demonstrated that he transmitted the true Messenger trotting instinct in greater strength than any of his competitors.
He was bred by Isaac Munson, of Wallingford, Vermont; foaled 1823, got by Bishop’s Hambletonian, son of Messenger; dam the Munson mare that was brought from Boston, 1813. There never has been any question about the sire of this horse, but up to 1869 the representation made by Mr. Harris that his dam was an imported English mare was generally accepted as the truth. I was led to doubt this, and in December of that year I made a thorough search of the records of the custom-house in Boston, and found the claim was without any foundation whatever. Through the kindness of Mr. Henry D. Noble I was enabled to get beyond Mr. Harris, who really knew nothing about the mare, back to the Munson family, and to Mr. Joseph Tucker, the earliest and best authority living in 1870. In order that this evidence may be preserved I will here insert Mr. Tucker’s letter entire.
“MILFORD, N. H., May 4th, 1870.
“MR. J. H. WALLACE, Muscatine, Iowa.
“DEAR SIR: Yours of 22d of April is duly received and contents noted. I was 24 years old when first acquainted with the dam of the ‘Harris Horse,’ so called, in the fall of 1813. Was then carrying on a farm, now owned by Wm. Randall, Esq., in this town, for Mr. Israel Munson, a commission merchant then doing business on India Street, and afterward on Central Wharf, Boston. I was in Boston in the fall of 1813, as above, and found the dam (of Hambletonian) and mate in Mr. Munson’s possession. He said they had been ‘leaders’ in a stage team, and they acted as if green about holding back, etc. He never said she was imported from England, neither did I hear such a story till two or three years ago. The dam was called ‘a Messenger.’ All the description I can give of her is that she was a strong, well-built, light dapple grey, and would weigh ten hundred, certain. The span was well matched. The nigh one (the dam) was more serviceable than the other. Led them all the way from Boston behind an ox team; kept them till the middle of April and then returned the pair to Boston. Mr. Munson drove them up, only stopping to dinner, when on his way to Vermont in August, 1814, and I didn’t see them again until December. I then drove them from Boston to Vermont, and used them a year on the Munson farm, on Otter Creek, in Wallingford. In June, 1815, I took them to Phœnix Horse (bay, black mane and tail, good looking and smart) in Clarendon Flats. Both stood and had foals the spring after I left Mr. Munson’s employ. The off mare was occasionally a little lame, I think in the off fore foot, when hard drove, but the nigh one was perfectly free from lameness or limping. I left Mr. Munson in the spring of 1816, and know nothing of mares afterward.
“Yours truly,
JOSEPH TUCKER,
“(By Geo. W. Fox).”
I have given this letter entire, with the exception of a few closing sentences, that the public may be able to judge of its authenticity. That these mares were leaders in a stage team when Mr. Munson bought them is confirmed by members of the Munson family, and that the nigh mare was represented to be a Messenger at the time of the purchase I have not the least doubt. But whether she was really a Messenger is quite another question. All I can say is, it was possible in the nature of things; and the employment and qualities of the mare, together with the representations of Mr. Munson, appear to make it probable. During the mare’s lifetime I find she was spoken of in the Munson family and about Wallingford as “the imported Messenger mare” and in this phrase, no doubt, was the origin of the story that she was herself imported. When this phrase, through her son, reached the next outer circle, “imported Messenger mare” no longer meant a mare by imported Messenger, but an imported mare by Messenger.
At the point where Mr. Tucker’s knowledge of this mare ceases, fortunately Mr. Isaac B. Munson, of Wallingford, takes up the history and carries it forward, with great particularity, to the time of her death about 1826. She produced several foals by different horses, and while they were all valuable animals, the only one that is known to history is the subject of this sketch. When Hambletonian of Vermont was two years old Mr. Munson sold him to Samuel Edgerton and others, of Wallingford, and they kept him in the stud till about 1828, when they sold him to Mr. Eddy, of Bristol, Vermont, and in the hands of the Eddy family he was kept at Bristol, New Haven, and other points in and about Addison County till about 1835, when he was kept one or two years again in Wallingford and adjacent towns. About 1837 he was sold to Joshua Remington, of Huntington, Vermont, and was taken there. He stood in various parts of Chittenden County, and became well known as the “Remington Horse.” Unfortunately there is no guide to dates in these transfers and it is not known just how long Mr. Remington owned him. He next passed into the hands of Mr. Russell Harris, New Haven, Connecticut, and remained his till he died late in the year 1847.
The location of this horse was unfavorable either to a large or to a numerous progeny of trotters. He was surrounded with Morgan blood, trappy and stylish and fast growing in popularity on the supposition that they were trotters—a most valuable tribe as family horses, but none of them were able to trot fast without the introduction of trotting blood from the outside. He lived in a period antedating the real development of the trotter and the keeping of records of performances, and hence we must not judge of his merits as a trotting sire by comparing the list of his performers with lists of later generations. Green Mountain Maid was one of the best of her day and made a record of 2:28½ in 1853, and the same year the famous pacing gelding Hero made a record of 2:20½. Probably the best trotter from his loins was Sontag, with a wagon record in 1855 of 2:31. This mare was originally a pacer, and whether his dam was by imported Messenger or not we must conclude that the tendency to the lateral action was strong in his progeny. Lady Shannon, Trouble, Vermont, Modesty, and True John were all famous performers in their day. The last named was kept in the stud a few years and was known as the Hanchett Horse. He fell into the hands of Sim D. Hoagland, of this vicinity, became ugly and was made a gelding. As a weight puller he had no equal in his day. His daughters became the dams of many noted producers and performers, and through the doubling of his blood and its predominating influence we have the famous General Knox and his tribe. But few of his sons were kept as stallions; among them the best known is Hambletonian, 814, known as the Parris Horse and the sire of the stout campaigner, Joker, 2:22½. Vermont Hambletonian (known as the Noble or Harrington Horse) was one of his best and best-bred sons. He died in 1865, leaving a valuable progeny.
HAMBLETONIAN (JUDSON’S) was a brown horse and resembled his sire very much in both size and form. He was foaled 1821, got by Bishop’s Hambletonian, son of Messenger; dam by Wells’ Magnum Bonum. This Magnum Bonum family abounded in that region, and it was a very good one, whatever the blood may have been. This horse was bred by Judge Underhill, of Dorset, Vermont, and sold, 1829, to Dr. Nathan Judson, of Pawlet, Vermont. He was kept in that region till he died about 1841. His progeny were very numerous and valuable.
HAMBLETONIAN (ANDRUS’) was a brown horse nearly sixteen hands high. He was a well formed and evenly balanced horse, all over, with an objectionable lack of bone just below the fore-knee. His head and ear were strongly after the Messenger model. I have never been able to determine just who bred him, and consequently his blood on the side of the dam is not fully established. He was foaled about 1840, got by Judson’s Hambletonian, and out of a mare which Mr. B. B. Sherman says was by old Magnum Bonum. He seems to have known this mare well and speaks of her as a very superior animal. This would indicate inbreeding to the Magnum Bonums, and as they were a light-limbed family we may account for this horse’s defects in that respect. He was owned a number of years by Mr. Andrus, of Pawlet, and passed into the hands of G. A. Austin, of Orwell, Vermont. In 1853-4 Mr. Austin sent him to Illinois, along with Drury’s Ethan Allen, Black Hawk Prophet, Morgan Tiger and some other stallions, in charge of Mr. Wetherbee, for sale. In 1854 they were removed to Muscatine, Iowa, and several of them sold there, among them the Andrus Horse. He was then stiff in his limbs, showing the effects of previous neglect and abuse. He died at Muscatine in 1857. His progeny there were defective in bone. I am told several of his daughters in Vermont have left good stock there and thus perpetuated his name in the second and third generations. But his chief title to fame has been secured to him by his renowned daughter Princess, the dam of the great Happy Medium. In 1851 Mr. L. B. Adams, who then owned her, bred the Isaiah Wilcox mare, by Burdick’s Engineer, son of Engineer by Messenger, to Andrus’ Hambletonian, and, in a nutshell, the union of this great-grandson of Messenger with this great-granddaughter of Messenger produced Princess. This pedigree of Princess is incontrovertibly established and will be given in fuller detail in the history of her son, Happy Medium.