XXVI. THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES…

XXVI. THE BLUE BULL AND OTHER MINOR FAMILIES

Blue Bull, the once leading sire—His lineage and history—His family rank— The Cadmus family—Pocahontas—Smuggler—Tom Rolfe—Young Rolfe and Nelson—The Tom Hal family—The various Tom Hals—Brown Hal—The Kentucky Hunters—Flora Temple—Edwin Forrest—The Drew Horse and his descendants—The Hiatogas.

BLUE BULL, the real head of this family, was one of the most remarkable horses that this or any other country has produced. He was a light chestnut, just a little over fifteen hands high, with one hind pastern white and a star in his forehead. He was strongly built and his limbs were excellent, except perhaps a little light just below the knee. He was foaled 1858 and died July 11, 1880. He was bred by Elijah Stone, of Stone’s Crossing, Johnson County, Indiana. For a time he was owned by Lewis Loder and Daniel Dorrel, before he passed into the hands of James Wilson, of Rushville, Indiana, who kept him many years and whose property he died. At one time he stood at the head of the list of all trotting sires in the world, and yet he could not trot a step himself, but he could pace amazingly fast, and it was claimed he could pace a quarter in thirty seconds. He was the first and only horse that was ever able to snatch the scepter from the great Hambletonian family, but after a brief reign of a couple of years he had to surrender it again to that family, where, from present appearances, it is destined to remain.

The breeding of this horse is very obscure, and after we have told all that is known about it we will not have given very much information. He was got by a large dun pacing horse that was known as Pruden’s Blue Bull, and he by a blue roan horse known as Merring’s Blue Bull, or Ohio Farmer. The latter was taken to Butler County, Ohio, from Chester County, Pennsylvania, and it has been said, without confirmation, that he was of Chester Ball stock. He was a large, strong farm horse, a natural pacer, as were many of his progeny, and dun and roan colors were very prevalent among them. He died the property of Mr. Merring about 1843. His son, Pruden’s Blue Bull, was of a dun color and a natural pacer, but his dam has never been traced. He was large, strong, rather coarse, and had some reputation as a fast pacer, for a horse of his size, and his color was quite prevalent among his progeny. He was bred in Butler County, Ohio, and about 1853 was taken to Boone County, Kentucky. In 1861 he became the property of G. B. Loder, of the same county, and in 1863 he traded him to James Pruden, of Elizabethtown, Ohio.

The pedigree of Wilson’s Blue Bull, the head of the family on the side of the dam, is equally unsatisfactory so far as the blood elements are concerned. We know that this dam was called Queen, that she was bred by Elijah Stone, and that she was got by a horse called Young Selim, but we know nothing about Young Selim. We also know that the dam of Queen was called Bet, and that Mr. Stone bought her of Mr. Sedan, and there all knowledge ends. Since the days of the great racing progenitor, Godolphin Arabian, of whose origin and blood nobody, living or dead, had a single shadow of knowledge, down to the day of Wilson’s Blue Bull, no horse equally obscure in his inheritance has ever been able to prove himself really great as a progenitor of speed.

In the days of Blue Bull’s rising fame, and indeed till his death, there was developed such a condition of muddled morals as one seldom meets with in a lifetime. Whenever a horse of unknown breeding, in any one of three or four States, began to show some speed, his owner at once called him a Blue Bull, and if he went fast enough to enter the 2:30 list, he was at once credited to Blue Bull by his friends, and they were all ready to fight for it. If the books of Blue Bull’s services did not show that the dam of the “unknown” had ever been within a hundred miles of that horse, it was all the worse for the books. With a large number of men interested financially in Blue Bull stock, ready to claim everything in sight and anxiously looking for something more to appear, it became a most laborious task to keep this class of frauds out of the records. Another cause of dissent and dissatisfaction among the “boomers” of Blue Bull blood was the final discovery of the breeder in Elijah Stone and that there was no “thoroughbred” blood in his veins. At that time a very large majority of the horsemen of the country honestly believed that all speed, whether at the pace or the trot, must come from the gallop. It was not the truth, therefore, that these people were looking for, but something to support that ignorant and stupid theory.

A careful study of the statistics of this horse will teach a valuable lesson. He put fifty-six trotters into the 2:30 list, varying in speed from 2:30 to 2:17¼, and five of this number in 2:20 or better. He also got four pacers with records from 2:24½ to 2:16¼. It thus appears that this horse, without any known trotting blood, got fifty-four trotters to four pacers, which clearly shows that an inheritance of speed at the pace may be transmitted at the trot, as well as the pace. When we come to his progeny, we find that forty-seven of his sons have to their credit one hundred and four performers, making an average of a little more than two each. These sons are all past maturity and some of them dead of old age, and not one of them has ever reached mediocrity in merit as a sire. He left seventy-seven daughters that have produced one hundred and seven performers, and if we had time to trace out these performers we would find that they were generally by strains of blood stronger and better than the blood of Blue Bull. While, therefore, we can acknowledge Blue Bull’s greatness as a getter of speed from his own loins, we must acknowledge that his sons and daughters as the producers of speed are failures. It is possible that some representative of the tribe may spring up and restore the prestige of the family, but as the source is sporadic and as the country is filled up with trotting elements that are more prepotent, it is more likely to be swallowed up and lose its family identity.

CADMUS (known as Irons’ Cadmus) was the head of a very small family that occasionally developed phenomenal speed either at the pace or the trot. He was a chestnut horse nearly sixteen hands high, strong and active, with four white feet. He was foaled 1840 and was got by Cadmus, the thoroughbred son of American Eclipse, and was bred by Goldsmith Coffein, Red Lion, Warren County, Ohio. His dam was a chestnut pacing mare that Mr. Coffein got in a trade, from a traveler, and nothing was ever known of her breeding. A pedigree was shaped up for her that seemed to make her thoroughbred and her son took a prize on it once, as a thoroughbred, but it was wholly untrue. Mr. John Irons of the same county became joint owner in this horse, and he became widely known as “Irons’ Cadmus.” To close this partnership he was sold, 1850, and taken to Richmond, Indiana; then to George Shepher, of Butler County, Ohio, and next to a company in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he made two seasons, and was sold to St. Louis, Missouri, and died without further service, in 1858. From birth he was double-gaited, inclining more to the pace than to the trot. From unskillful handling his gaits became mixed up so that it was never known whether he might have been able to show any speed or not.

Pocahontas, the pacer, was the most distinguished of his get, and if there were no others of merit from her sire this one alone would be sufficient to command a place in the volume. She was a large, strong chestnut mare with four white legs, a white face, and a splotch of white on her belly. She was bred by John C. Dine, of Butler County, Ohio, and was foaled 1847. Her dam was a very strong mare got by Probasco’s Big Shakespeare, a horse over sixteen hands and very heavily proportioned, a very valuable farm horse with good action, many of whose tribe were disposed to pace. The grandam was also a descendant of Valerius, that was brought to Ohio from New Jersey. Pocahontas passed through several hands at very low prices and was used for all kinds of heavy farming and hauling until she reached the hands of L. D. Woodmansee, when her speed began to be developed. She was soon matched against Ben Higdon, the fast pacing son of Abdallah, and beat him in 2:32. In December, 1853, she was taken to New Orleans, and beat several celebrities there early the next spring. Before her last race it was discovered she was in foal, and some two months afterward she dropped Tom Rolfe. In the autumn of 1854 she was brought to the Union Course, Long Island, and it was not till June, 1855, that her owners and managers could get a match with her. At last Hero, the famous son of Harris’ Hambletonian, met her for two thousand dollars, he to harness and she to wagon. In the first heat she distanced the gelding in 2:17½, and it was maintained by her driver that she could have gone at least five seconds faster, if it had been necessary. For racing purposes she was no longer of any value, for nothing would start against her. She was then sold and became a brood mare at Boston, Massachusetts, and produced the sires Tom Rolfe and Strideway, Pocahontas, 2:26¾, and the dams of May Morning, 2:30, and Nancy, 2:23½, thus ranking as a great brood mare.

Shanghai Mary, that has become so famous as the dam of Green Mountain Maid, one of the very greatest of all brood mares, was probably a daughter of this same horse, Cadmus. This mare, Shanghai Mary, was a trotter of speed, not far from a 2:30 gait, and she won some races, but she was hot-headed and unreliable. Notwithstanding continuous searches, for years, her origin remained a profound mystery, until of recent date certain facts point to Mr. Coffein as her breeder and Cadmus as her sire. This has not been established historically, but when the circumstances are understood and taken in connection with the internal evidences, which are amazingly strong, and had been pointed out and applied to this sire long before the recent developments, there remains hardly a moral doubt that she was by Cadmus. The fact that this mare is the maternal grandam of Electioneer, the greatest of all trotting sires to date, makes her pedigree a matter of special interest, and for details of the various investigations the reader is referred to Wallace’s Monthly, and to Chapter XXIX. of this volume.

Pocahontas seems to have produced but five foals that reached maturity: 1855, Tom Rolfe, of which hereafter; 1859, Young Pocahontas, by Ethan Allen, a very fast trotter; 1860, May Queen, by Ethan Allen; 1861, May Day, by Miles Standish; 1863 bay colt Strideway, by Black Hawk Telegraph. This was a very fast and promising young horse, and doubtless would have stood among the fastest stallions of his day, but he died on the very eve of his public appearance on the trotting turf.

TOM ROLFE had a checkered existence from his conception. His dam, Pocahontas, was bred to Pugh’s Aratus, by Abraham Pierce, her then owner, May 10, 1853, and ten days afterward she was sold without her new owner’s knowing she had been bred. He was thus carried in his mother’s womb, during her training and through her racing campaign in New Orleans, until a little over two months of the time he was dropped. During most of this period those handling the mare did not know she had been bred, and hence the story that Tom was a “catch” colt. He was a bay, about fifteen hands two inches high, and came to his speed with very little handling. In private trials, it is said, he had frequently shown a mile in 2:23. While on exhibition in a small ring at Dayton, Ohio, he met with an accident, from which he was ever afterward a cripple. In this condition however, he afterward made a record in 2:33½. His sire, Pugh’s Aratus, was a large, handsome farm horse, sixteen hands two inches high, and weighing one thousand three hundred pounds. He was got by Phares’ Aratus, out of a fast pacing mare. There is no evidence whatever going to show that Phares’ Aratus was a son of Aratus by Director. The type of the family did not indicate the possession of any running blood. Tom Rolfe put four trotters and three pacers, all with fast records, into the 2:30 list, and three of his sons left twenty-nine performers. In the latter years of his life he was sold by Mr. Woodmansee to Mr. Wesley P. Balch, of Boston, and died 1877.

YOUNG ROLFE was the best son of Tom Rolfe. He was a bay, foaled 1876, and came out of Judith, by Draco, son of Young Morrill, and she out of Lady Balch, by Rising Sun. He was bred by Wesley P. Balch, passed to C. H. Nelson, of Maine, then back to John Sheppard of Boston, and died 1884, when only eight years old. He was one of the best horses of his day, as a race horse, and his early death was universally considered a great loss to the breeding interests of the country. He has to his credit nine representative trotters in the 2:30 list.

NELSON, the great son of Young Rolfe, was bred and owned by G. H. Nelson, Waterville, Maine. He is a bay horse, foaled 1882, and out of Gretchen, the daughter of Gideon, by Hambletonian, 10, and she out of the fast trotting mare Kate, by Vermont Black Hawk. This horse Gideon, the son of Hambletonian, was, like his sire, very strongly inbred to old Messenger, tracing through mares by Young Engineer and Young Commander, both grandsons of Messenger, to the William Hunter mare, that was by Messenger himself. When the pedigree of Nelson is compared with the pedigree of Hambletonian, according to the rules of arithmetic, it may be found to contain nearly or quite as much Messenger blood as Hambletonian possessed, but, unfortunately, we know nothing of the trotting capacity of the intervening mares. If we had a “One Eye” and a “Charles Kent Mare” coming next to the William Hunter mare, we would have much greater expectations. But, as it is, when we consider the superlative capacity of Nelson himself, with his record of 2:09, and his nineteen trotters and seven pacers already to his credit, it is probable he will found a large and valuable family.

Through his son Blanco, sire of Smuggler, we have another notable line to Irons’ Cadmus. Smuggler was in his day the champion trotting stallion, taking a record of 2:15¼ when owned by Colonel Russell, of Boston, and driven by Charles Marvin, who after long and painstaking efforts converted him from his natural gait, the pace, to the trot. Wearing twenty-four ounces on each fore-foot to keep him at the trot, Smuggler defeated all the best horses of his day, including Goldsmith Maid. He was by Blanco, out of a pacing mare of unknown blood. As might have been expected, he failed to found a great family, though fourteen of his get are standard performers, and twelve of his sons and seventeen of his daughters have produced thirty-eight performers.

TOM HAL.—The original Tom Hal was taken to Kentucky, as early, probably, as 1824, and as was the custom in those days, he was called a Canadian, like all other pacing horses. The tradition is that Dr. Boswell got him in Philadelphia and rode him home to Lexington, Kentucky. Another statement is that he was taken to Kentucky by John T. Mason, and this statement appears in the advertisement of the horse for the year 1828. As the horse was in the hands of William L. Breckenridge that year, and as his advertisement was practically a contemporaneous record, we must give the preference to the Mason representation. He was a roan horse, as I understand, a little over fifteen hands high, stout and stylish. He was very smooth and pleasant in his gait and a very fast pacer. He was for some time in the hands of Captain West, of Georgetown, Kentucky, and then passed to Benjamin N. Shropshire, of Harrison County, and after some years he died his property.

BALD STOCKINGS, also known as Lail’s Tom Hal, was a chestnut horse with a bald face and four white legs. He was foaled early in the “forties,” and was got by the original Tom Hal, and his dam was by Chinn’s Copperbottom. He was bred by Higgins Chinn, Harrison County, kept for a time by John Lucas, and owned by Mr. Lail, of the same county. He was one of the prominent links between the old and the new, and was a fast pacer.

SORREL TOM was a son of Bald Stockings (Lail’s Tom Hal) and bore the same color and markings. He was bred and owned by John Shawhan, of Harrison County, Kentucky. His dam was a grey mare from Ohio, of unknown breeding. He was kept at Falmouth, Indiana, the seasons of 1857 and 1858, and was very widely known in that region as “Shawhan’s Tom Hal.” He was quite a large horse, and to take the description as given him, “he could pace like the wind.” He was then taken back to Kentucky, leaving a multitude of good colts behind him, among them the famous pacing gelding, Hoosier Tom, 2:19½. One of his Indiana sons passed into the hands of William Gray, of Rush County, Indiana, and became known as Gray’s Tom Hal. Nothing is known of the dam of this horse. He was the sire of Little Gipsey, trotter, 2:22, and Limber Jack, pacer, 2:18½, besides six daughters that produced nine performers.

About 1863-4 Mr. Shropshire, Jr., a son of the owner of the original Tom Hal, brought a little roan Tom Hal horse to Rushville, Indiana, where he stood a number of years and was known as Shropshire’s Tom Hal. This horse was probably by Lail’s Tom Hal, as he was too young to be by the original of the name. He was a fast pacer, but nothing is known of his progeny or history. The locating of this Indiana branch of the family is of particular interest, for it shows a concentration of pacing blood that was doubtless a strong reinforcement to Blue Bull.

TOM HAL (KITTRELL’S) was a large bay horse and a pacer, bought by Major M. B. Kittrell in 1850 of Simeon Kirtly, near Centerville, Bourbon County, Kentucky, and taken to Middle Tennessee. His sire was represented to have been a large pacing bay horse that was brought from Canada, thereby implying that he was the original of the name, brought to Kentucky. While it is possible that the original Mason horse may have been the sire of Major Kittrell’s horse, the size and color of that horse do not correspond with what has been accepted as facts. It is altogether more probable that the sire of the Tennessee horse was a son of the original Tom Hal, as the roan color seems to be strongly fixed in all branches of the family.

TOM HAL JR. (GIBSON’S) was a roan horse, foaled 1860. Got by Kittrell’s Tom Hal; dam (bred by John Leonard), by Adam’s Stump, pacer; grandam said to be by Cummings’ Whip, pacer. Bred by H. C. Saunders, Nashville, Tennessee; kept a number of years by T. D. Moore, Petersburg, Tennessee, afterward owned by Polk Bros. and Major Campbell Brown, of Springhill, Tennessee. Adams’ Stump was a roan horse and a fast pacer and he was not only the sire of Julia Johnson, the dam of this horse, but also of the dam of Bonesetter. He died of old age, July, 1890. The strong concentration of pacing blood in his veins gave him unusual power in transmitting his inherited habit of action. He put fourteen representatives in the 2:30 list, and what is unprecedented, they are all pacers.

BROWN HAL is a brown horse, as his name indicates, foaled 1879, got by Gibson’s Tom Hal; dam the pacing mare Lizzie, the dam of the pacer Little Brown Jug, by John Netherland, son of Henry Hal; grandam Blackie, by John Hal, son of John Eaton; great-grandam Old March, by Young Conqueror. Bred by R. H. Moore, Culleoka, Tennessee, passed to M. C. Campbell and Campbell Brown, Springhill, Tennessee. Here we have a still stronger intensification of the pacing instinct, for this horse not only has a pacing record himself of 2:12½, but he put twenty of his progeny into the standard list, and all of them pacers. It is not shown by the Year Book that either this horse or his sire has any trotters to his credit, but it can hardly be doubted that some of their progeny took naturally to the diagonal trot, and not showing encouraging speed, were never developed.

If the question were asked, “What is to result from this intensely pacing family?” it would be very difficult to frame a satisfactory answer. At present this family shows all the vigor of youth in its new development, but, judging by others that have come and gone, it too, in its turn, will be submerged in more prepotent strains, that will more nearly meet the wants of their masters. The pacer has been lifted from obscurity and made the equal of the trotter as a race horse; his blood has contributed to an unknown extent in giving speed to the trotter, but he must be as good a horse for all uses as the trotter, or nobody will want him.

KENTUCKY HUNTER, the head of the family bearing this name that, at one time, was very prominent in Central New York, was foaled 1822, and was bred by Louis Sherrill of New Hartford, New York, and was got by Watkins’ Highlander. His dam was a mare bought from a couple of dealers who were passing through New Hartford with some six or seven horses for sale, and they represented this mare to have been brought from Kentucky. On this representation she was called “a Kentucky mare.” She was a fine saddle mare and for this reason she was used chiefly for that service. From her superiority as a saddler, I think it is safe to conclude she was a pacer and could go the saddle gaits. Kentucky Hunter was a chestnut horse, a little above medium size. Mr. Sherrill sold him when young to Messrs. Bagg and Goodrich who kept him two years and sold him to William Ferguson, of Oriskany Falls, New York, and Mr. Ferguson continued to own him till he died in 1838.

During the lifetime of this horse the pacing gait was considered an evidence of bad breeding, and this prejudice has continued for many years. The saddle was going out of use and wheels were coming in. After Flora Temple electrified the trotting world, writers had a great deal to say of her origin and family, but no one ever intimated that her grandsire was a pacer. From sources that I have no reason to doubt, I have been informed he was not only a pacer, but a fast pacer. This habit of action was not popular with breeders, and Mr. Ferguson kept it concealed as much as possible. When the pacer, Oneida Chief, from his own loins, was beating Lady Suffolk, three miles in 7:44, to saddle, and many of the other cracks of that day, his sire was dead and nothing was then to be made by proclaiming from the housetops that Oneida Chief was by old Kentucky Hunter.

Very little is known of Watkins’ Highlander, the sire of this horse. He was brought to Whitestown, New York, 1821, by Julius Watkins, from Connecticut. Some of the older men who knew the horse insist that Mr. Watkins represented him to be by a son of imported Messenger, and out of Nancy Dawson by imported Brown Highlander. This is possible, indeed probable, but it is not established.

BOGUS HUNTER was one of the younger sons of Kentucky Hunter. He was a chestnut horse of good size and came out of a mare by Bogus. But little is known of this horse, and that little is rendered still more uncertain by the unreliable character of his owners, the Loomis brothers, of Sangerfield, New York. It is certain, however, that a horse owned by the Loomises and called by this name was the sire of the famous world beater, Flora Temple. This fact rests upon the testimony of Mr. Samuel Welch, a reputable and trustworthy man who owned the dam of Flora and had her coupled with this horse, under his own eye.

EDWIN FORREST, the most prominent representative of this family, was a large and rather loosely made bay horse, foaled 1851, got by Young Bay Kentucky Hunter, son of Bay Kentucky Hunter, that was by the original Kentucky Hunter. His dam, Doll, bred by Mrs. Crane, of Whitestown, Oneida County, New York, was by Watkins’ Highlander; grandam a chestnut mare owned in the Crane family, by Black River Messenger, son of Ogden’s Messenger. The identification of this grandson of imported Messenger was secured after the appearance of the fifth volume of the “Register.” This same mare, Doll, the next year produced Wamock’s Highland Messenger, that was taken to Kentucky, and was a valuable element in the road-horse blood of that State. Edwin Forrest was bred by Barnes Davis, Oneida, Madison County; owned two years by H. L. Barker, of Clinton, New York, sold to Marcus Downing, of Kentucky, by him to Woodburn Farm, and after a time he passed to a company at Keokuk, Iowa, and then to George W. Ferguson, of Marshalltown, Iowa, where he was burned up in 1874.

It has been said this horse was a pacer and converted to a trotter, but this does not seem to be sustained by the facts. He was shown as a three-year-old at the Oneida County Fair, and he was then a square natural trotter and was considered very fast, for he was fully able to distance all the other colts of his age. The story of his being a pacer probably grew out of the fact that there was a strong pacing strain in the family, as the original Kentucky Hunter was undoubtedly a pacer. Many of the Kentucky Hunters were speedy travelers and a few of them were fast. Black River Messenger was a horse of very wide local reputation for the superiority of his progeny as rapid travelers. The union of the Messenger blood with pacing blood produced excellent results in this, as well as in thousands of other cases. As was the common usage before the establishment of the “Trotting Register,” this horse was advertised with two fictitious crosses added to his pedigree—his grandam was given as by Duroc, and his great-grandam as by imported Messenger. Only two from his loins were able to enter the 2:30 list; six of his sons got seven performers and twelve of his daughters produced fifteen trotters.

SKENANDOAH (afterward called Kentucky Hunter) was a bay horse, foaled 1854, got by Brokenlegged Hunter, son of the original Kentucky Hunter; dam not clearly established. He was bred by Mr. Sykes, near Canastota, and passed through several hands to Henry Dewey, of Morrisville, New York, who trotted him in a number of races in Central New York and then took him to California, where he was kept in the stud a number of years under the name of Kentucky Hunter, and died there 1871. He got one trotter; one son that left two performers and seven daughters that left nine performers.

DREW HORSE, commonly called “Old Drew,” was a brown bay horse, foaled 1842, and was about fifteen and one-quarter hands high and well-formed. He was bred, or rather raised, by Hiram Drew, then of Exeter, Maine, who kept him all his life. The story of his supposed sire was one of those weakly devised fictions, so common in that day, and especially where the Canadian border could be made effective in rounding it out. To show that the mysterious colt that became the sire of Drew Horse was “thoroughbred,” the stereotyped “British Army officer” is made available, for the hundredth time, as having brought a mare from England in foal to a thoroughbred horse, the foal was dropped and at three years old he was traded by the aforesaid “officer” to the party that brought the colt to Maine. Unfortunately for the story, the party who made the trade and the story had a bad memory, and sometimes he located the trade at St. Johns and sometimes at Fredericton, New Brunswick. But the fiction served its generation and was not exposed till long after the Drew Horse was dead. The facts in the matter seem to be simply these: a stallion colt was running in a pasture adjoining Mr. Drew’s pasture, and that colt got over the fence, was found with Mr. Drew’s mare, and in due time she dropped the colt known as the “Drew Horse.” The fence-breaker was soon after made a gelding and sold, and nothing is known of him, either before or after this escapade. The dam of the Drew Horse was a bay mare about fifteen and one-half hands high, foaled about 1836, and bred by Mark Pease, of Jackson, Maine. Her sire was called Sir Henry and was represented to be by a son of American Eclipse, that was taken to Maine from Connecticut by Dr. Brewster and sold to General F. W. Lander. She was known as Grace Darling and afterward as Boston Girl. She was on the turf and was quite a trotter, and it is claimed she made a record of 2:37, and her dam was Lady Jane by Winthrop Messenger. While I don’t know what the inheritance of this horse was on the side of his sire, I do know that he had a trotting inheritance on the side of his dam. He lived till 1866 and then had to be destroyed on account of a broken leg.

This horse was never trained, and it is not known what he might have been able to do as a trotter. He put two of his sons in the 2:30 list, Dirigo and General McClellan. Of his sons, two put five trotters and three pacers in the list, and of his daughters left six representatives there. Besides these he left a number of others with records a little short of the limit of speed, and many without records that were fast and very game roadsters.

DIRIGO, at first called George B. McClellan, under which name he made his record, was the best son of Drew Horse. He was a brown horse, and in appearance much like his sire. He was foaled 1856 and came out of a mare that has not been traced, but was doubtless a pacing mare. He was bred by Horace McKinney, Monroe, Maine, and passed to David Quimby, of Corinna, Maine, and died 1884. He made his record of 2:29 in a single heat and never was on the track again. Four trotters and two pacers by him entered the 2:30 list. Two of his sons became the sires of three trotters, and five of his daughters each produced a performer. He left others with and without records that were fast and stylish drivers.

HIRAM DREW, at first called Bay Morgan, was a son of Old Drew, and his dam was a small bay mare, owned near Bangor and said to be of Morgan blood. This horse was on the turf some years and was engaged in some locally important contests, but never was able to make himself standard either by his own or the performances of his progeny. His best performance, I believe, was 2:31½.

WINTHROP was a bay horse, foaled 1864, got by Drew Horse; dam by the Eton Horse and grandam by Stone or Simpson’s Messenger. He was bred by E. J. Greene, Newport, Maine; taken to California 1870, and there owned by Judge W. E. Greens and L. E. Yates, of Stockton. It does not appear that he ever was trained, and consequently has no record. His opportunities, probably, were not very great, but whether or not, he was not successful in the stud. He left one trotter and one pacer and the dams of one trotter and one pacer.

This family never was large, and its popularity was up and down just as a few individuals might be successful or unsuccessful on the turf. To start with, it had a very weak inheritance of trotting instinct, and that weakness did not strengthen in succeeding generations. Of late years it has failed to maintain itself as a trotting family, and is now practically out of the reckoning of trotters.

HIATOGA, generally known as Rice’s Hiatoga, was a bay pacing horse and was bred in Rockingham County, Virginia, and taken to Fairfield County, Ohio, by Edward Rice, some time about 1836. He had the reputation of being a fast pacer, and was sold to William Shiruo, of the same county, and by him to William Munger, in whose possession he died. He was got by a horse known in Virginia as Hiatoga, and also American Hiatoga, but nothing is known of the blood of his dam. Nothing is known of his speed or his progeny except through the two sons here given.

Hiatoga, generally designated as “Old Togue,” was got by Rice’s Hiatoga; dam by Thunderbolt, grandam by Black or Bold Rover. He was foaled 1843 and was bred by David W. Brown, of Perry County, Ohio; sold 1849 to John Joseph, Kirkersville, Ohio, where he made some seasons and was sold 1855 to Alvah Perry, Lancaster, where he remained till 1863, and was sold to Harvey Wilson, and two years later to William McDonald, Columbus, Ohio, where he died 1871. This horse left excellent stock and many of them fast pacers, but they never cut much figure on the turf.

HIATOGA (HANLEY’S) was a bay pacing horse of good size and quality and was very popular as a sire. He was foaled 1849, got by Rice’s Hiatoga; dam an elegant bay mare sixteen hands high and represented to be of “Sir Peter and Eclipse blood.” This mare was formerly given as by Firetail, but the present rendering, whatever it may mean, comes from sources with opportunities to know. He was bred by John Bright, of Fairfield County, sold to Joseph Watt, and taken to Harrison County and then to Jefferson County, and sold to James Davis Tweed. He next passed through the hands of David Rittenhouse and Moses Hanley, of Hopedale, Ohio, and after three or four years in the stud Mr. Hanley sold him to David Rittenhouse, John Wiley and Samuel Hanley for two thousand five hundred dollars, and he died the property of Mr. Rittenhouse near Hopedale, Ohio, 1858. Two of his progeny entered the 2:30 list; three of his sons left thirteen performers, and three daughters produced five.

HIATOGA (SCOTT’S) was a bay pacer foaled 1858, got by Hanley’s Hiatoga; dam by Blind Tuckahoe (pacer); grandam by Consul. This horse was quite fast and paced under the name of Tuscarawas Chief. He was the best of the family and was bred and owned by Samuel Scott, East Springfield, Jefferson County, Ohio. He put five trotters and four pacers in the 2:30 list; seven of his sons and seventeen of his daughters were producers.

The Hiatoga family seems to have no trotting inheritance except from the pacer. It is a useful family and still has vitality.

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XXVII. THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY

Characteristics of the Morgans—History of the original Morgan—The fabled pedigree—The true Briton theory—Justin Morgan’s breeding hopelessly unknown—Sherman Morgan—Black Hawk—His disputed paternity—His dam called a Narragansett—Ethan Allen—His great beauty, speed and popularity—The Flying Morgan claim baseless—His dam of unknown blood—His great race with Dexter—Daniel Lambert, the only successful sire of the Black Hawk line.

Fifty years ago there was no family of horses so popular as the “Morgans.” They were carried into all parts of the country at high prices and they gave their purchasers general satisfaction. They were small, perhaps not averaging over fourteen and a half hands high, but compact, trappy movers and had most excellent dispositions. Many of them were ideal roadsters, where speed was not in great demand, for they were kindly, tractable and always on their courage. Many of them carried themselves in excellent style, and notwithstanding their diminutive size, it is not probable we will ever again see a better tribe of every-day, family horses. In all their outline and in every lineament they were the very opposite of the blood horse, and when bred on any strain outside of their own family, they almost universally failed to impress their own characteristics on their progeny. This failure I observed with deep regret more than forty years ago. The step could be extended and the speed increased by crossing with the long striders, but in securing this we lost the Morgan. In advance of their general distribution they had the misfortune to be heralded as great trotters, and in this respect, at least, they failed of meeting expectations. They went, largely, into the hands of inexperienced men, who knew nothing about how to cultivate speed, and the little, short, quick steps of their new trotters gave them all the sensations of going fast, without the danger incident to rapid traveling. In regard to the matter of speed, through the overzealous and not too conscientious editors and others to say nothing of the advertisements of those who had them for sale, they suffered greatly by too much praise. The result is that the original type has been extinguished, and it is doubtful whether a fair specimen could be found, even among the mountains of New England. Next to the injury which the family sustained from the exaggerated claims of speed put forward by its too sanguine friends, there was another and even greater injury from the absurd and foolish claims made for his blood. It is impossible to make a thinking and sensible man believe that a little hairy-legged “nubbin” of a pony, weighing eight hundred and fifty pounds, hired for fifteen dollars a year to drag logs together in a clearing, at which employment he was a great success, had the blood of the race horse in his veins. This was always a stumbling block to my immature enthusiasm for the Morgan horse. From an experience of a great many years and from the developments of horse history during that time, I find the “stumbling block” no longer worries me, for it has rotted away and disappeared. Although the family has ceased to exist as a factor in current horse history, it had a history in the past; and, as a historian, I must consider its origin as well as the deeds it has accomplished or failed to accomplish.

Mr. Justin Morgan, the central figure in this investigation, was born in West Springfield, 1747, where he married and lived till 1788, when he removed to Randolph, Vermont, where he died, March, 1798. He was a reputable citizen, fairly well educated for his time, and taught school for a living. He owned a house and lot in his native town, where he kept a wayside house of entertainment, and during the early summer he usually had a stallion to keep on the shares. In the spring of 1785 he had charge of the horse True Briton, or Beautiful Bay, and I will here add that three years later, John Morgan, Jr., had charge of the same horse at Springfield, for the seasons of 1788 and 1789. This John Morgan, Jr., removed to Lima, New York, late in 1790 or early in 1791. Justin had sold his place in West Springfield to Abner Morgan, on long payments, and in the summer of 1795 he came back to West Springfield to collect some money that was due him, presumably on the price of his former home, but he failed to get money and took two colts instead. One was a three-year-old gelding and the other was a two-year-old bay colt, entire. He led the three-year-old with a halter and the two-year-old followed. The date of this visit to the old home is the key to the main question to be settled, and it is fixed by Justin Morgan, Jr., then a lad of the right age to remember such things, and by Soloman Steele and Judge Griswold, who fix the date in the late summer of 1795. The horse was sold and resold and sold again, as a foal of 1793, and that date never left him till he died in 1821. I look upon this date as perfectly immovable, and every attempt that has been made to overthrow it has not been based on any reasonable evidence, nor prompted by a desire to get at the truth, but only to make a fictitious sire a possibility. This was the original Morgan Horse, and this date was thoroughly fixed by Linsley, without knowing that it upset the pedigree he had labored so hard to establish. After a lapse of fifty years an attempt was made to fix up a pedigree for the “Original Morgan Horse,” claiming that he was got by True Briton or Beautiful Bay—represented to be a great race horse, stolen from the great race horse man, Colonel De Lancey, in the Revolutionary War. I must, therefore, consider, briefly, this part of the fiction.

First—As a starting point in the pedigree, it is assumed that the race-horse in question was stolen, during the War of the Revolution, from James De Lancey, perhaps the largest and most widely known of all the colonial horsemen of that day. He was the first man to import race horses into this colony, and his name and the fame of his horses were discussed everywhere. He was very rich, in politics a Tory, and on the eve of hostilities he sold out every horse he owned, of whatever description, went back to England and never returned. This disposes of the false assumption that the sire of the original Morgan horse was stolen from him.

Second—There was another James De Lancey, cousin to the preceding, and not a rich man, who was colonel of a body of Tory cavalry operating in Westchester County from 1777 to the close of the war in 1782. It is not known whether he ever owned a race horse in his life, but it is certain he was a dashing fighter, and at the head of the cowboys he was known to the inhabitants of all that region. His name is not to be found anywhere in connection with horses. He bore, in full, the same name as the distinguished horseman, and was mistaken for him, although he was on the other side of the ocean.

Third—It is claimed that “one Smith” stole the horse in question from Colonel De Lancey and sold him to Mr. Ward, of Hartford, Connecticut, who kept him a few years and sold him to Selah Norton, of the same place, and remained his till he died. Who was this “one Smith” and where did he belong? Where is the evidence that this “one Smith” stole a horse from Colonel De Lancey?

Fourth—In the New York Packet, then published at Fishkill, under date of October 19, 1780, we find the following: “Last week Lieutenant Wright Carpenter and two others went down to Colonel James De Lancey’s quarters and lay in wait for his appearance. He accordingly came and having tied his horse at the door, went into the house; upon which Carpenter seized the horse and mounted. When De Lancey discovered him, he immediately alarmed his men, who pursued him to White Plains, but in vain,” etc., etc. This Lieutenant Carpenter was a dashing young fellow and was promoted next month to the position of first lieutenant in Captain Lyons’ company, of the Second Regiment of New York Militia, of Westchester County, and still commanded by Colonel Thomas. This is the man who stole the horse, this is the contemporaneous evidence of it, and “one Smith” had nothing to do with it.

In these four points we have what may be considered the first chapter of this investigation and, as will be readily seen, each of them must be fatal to the pretentious claim that has been maintained for about a hundred years. Avoiding all circumlocution, I think it is safe to say that this so-called pedigree did not originate this side of Hartford. The Second Regiment of New York Militia, called “The Skinners,” was made up of Westchester County men, and as Colonel De Lancey had been sheriff of that county, everybody knew him and knew that he was not the race horse James. We must, therefore, look further on for the time when and the person by whom this pedigree was manufactured.

In 1784 this horse was advertised at Lanesboro, Massachusetts, under the name of Beautiful Bay, and no attempt was made to give a pedigree or origin of the horse.

In 1785 he was at West Springfield, Massachusetts, in charge of Justin Morgan, still called Beautiful Bay, and still no pedigree.

In 1788 and 1789 he was in charge of John Morgan, Jr., of Springfield, Massachusetts, and here, for the first time, he is designated as “the famous full-blooded English horse, called True Briton or Beautiful Bay,” but no pedigree is given.

In 1791 he was advertised at East Hartford, Connecticut, by his owner, Selah Norton, and his pedigree is here given for the first time as follows: “True Briton, or Beautiful Bay, got by imported Traveler, dam De Lancey’s racer.” After advertising the horse for seven years without a pedigree, at last Mr. Selah Norton manufactures one and gives it over his own signature.

In 1793 he is again called Beautiful Bay, but no pedigree, at South Hadley, Massachusetts.

In 1794 and 1795 he was kept at Ashfield, Massachusetts, by Mr. Norton himself, and called Traveler, and his pedigree is again given in amended form as follows: “Sired by the famous old Traveler, imported from Ireland, dam Colonel De Lancey’s imported racer.”

This is the last trace we have of the horse Beautiful Bay, for that seems to be his honest name, and now I must ask some questions. These advertisements cover a period of eleven years and they are worthy of careful study. From 1784 to 1791 there is no attempt at giving any pedigree at all. With the exception of three seasons he seems to have been let, probably on shares, to different keepers, in different parts of the country. From first to last Selah Norton seems to have been his owner. If he had received the pedigree, and the romantic story of his theft, from “one Smith,” as claimed, is it conceivable that he would have concealed that story from the public when it would have added so much to the patronage of his horse? How does it come that not a single man having this stallion in charge, except Selah Norton himself, ever gave his pedigree? What prompted Selah Norton to withdraw the horse from public service, in Hartford, immediately after he first gave his pedigree? Was it because everybody there knew it was a fraud? When the horse was taken to South Hadley in 1793, why did his keeper there refuse to accept either the name True Briton or the new pedigree? It will be observed he was advertised there simply as Beautiful Bay and no pedigree given. The next two years we find him at Ashfield, Massachusetts, to which point it would seem his owner had removed from Hartford. For some reason that can be better imagined than explained, the names Beautiful Bay and True Briton are there dropped and he is rechristened as Traveler. To this change of name the old pedigree is attached, with a very important change in that also, as follows: “Sired by famous old Traveler, imported from Ireland, dam Colonel De Lancey’s imported racer.” These three words, “imported from Ireland,” are very important in two particulars, for they not only knock out the “featherheads” who have been always maintaining that the imported Traveler meant Lloyd’s Traveler of New Jersey, son of Morton’s Traveler, that was imported from Yorkshire into Virginia about 1750, but it convicts Selah Norton of inventing this pedigree, for there was no such horse brought from Ireland. It is certainly unnecessary to say another word in illustration of Selah Norton’s character. When we study these advertisements it becomes as clear as the light of day that nobody believed him or the story that “one Smith” stole the horse from Colonel De Lancey. The crimes of horse stealing and desertion were exceedingly common during the period of the revolution and it is quite possible that “one Smith” may have stolen a horse out of somebody’s stable and sold him to Mr. Ward or Mr. Norton as the same horse that Lieutenant Carpenter stole from Colonel De Lancey, but neither “one Smith” nor “one Norton” knew anything more about his pedigree than he did about the man in the moon, and I will here end the second chapter of this investigation.

I am clearly of the opinion that Justin Morgan was an honest man and that he would not tell a lie, even if he knew it might accrue to his present and personal advantage. He was poor, feeble in health, and had hard scuffling to get along. As a means of livelihood, in part at least, it seems to have been his business for a good many years to keep stallions on shares for different owners. As late as 1795 he had a horse from Hartford, Connecticut, called Figure, to which we will refer later on. In 1788 he sold his little place in West Springfield, Massachusetts, and removed to Randolph, Vermont, where he died in March, 1798 In the autumn of 1795 he visited West Springfield again, for the purpose of collecting some money that was still due him there, probably some deferred payments of his former home, and as he was not able to get the money he took two horses in lieu thereof. One was a three-year-old gelding, and the other was a two-year-old bay colt, entire. He led the gelding beside the horse he was riding and the colt followed all the way. The evidence that fixes the date of this trip in the autumn of 1795 and the age of the colt that followed seems to me to be completely bomb-proof. This evidence not only embraces the recollections of Justin Morgan’s neighbors, but when he died the colt, in 1798, was sold by his administrators as a five-year-old. In all the changes of ownership that took place through his life and at his death, in 1821, he was represented as foaled in 1793. He died from the effects of a kick that was neglected, and not from old age.

The only serious attempt that has been made to controvert the date of 1793 was that made in the name of John Morgan, of Lima, New York, in 1842, he being then eighty years old, in the Albany Cultivator. Unfortunately the editor fails to publish the letter he professes to have received from John Morgan and only gives his construction of it, which any child knows is no evidence at all. The editor represents him to say “that the two-year-old stud which he (Justin) took with him to Vermont was sired by a horse owned by Selah Norton, of East Hartford, Connecticut, called True Briton or Beautiful Bay.” Justin Morgan removed to Randolph, Vermont, in the spring of 1788, and this John Morgan removed to Lima, New York, about February, 1790. They were not brothers, but distant relatives. If John means to say that Justin “took with him” when he removed to Vermont a two-year-old son of Beautiful Bay, that colt must have been foaled in 1786, which would make him twelve years old instead of five when he was sold upon the death of his owner, and thirty-six years old instead of twenty-nine when he died from a kick. Now, if we concede that Justin did take with him a two-year-old son of Beautiful Bay, the dates render it impossible that he should have been the founder of the Morgan horse family and we have no trace of him whatever.

Another authority has very recently come to the front, and in order to avoid the difficulty of dates and still retain the possibility of the horse being by Beautiful Bay, insists that he was foaled 1789 and bred by Justin Morgan himself. Under this new light he was foaled in Vermont and didn’t have to travel there at all. He insists further that he named the horse Figure and kept him in the stud till his death in March, 1798, when the horse was sold and his name changed to Justin Morgan. It is true that Justin Morgan, still seeking to make a living, kept a stallion two or three years owned in Hartford, Connecticut, and advertised him as “the famous horse Figure, from Hartford.” Now, if this horse was foaled the property of Justin Morgan and owned by him as long as he lived, why should he advertise him as “from Hartford?” All these efforts to fix dates by shifting about so as to make it possible for the bogus stolen horse to come in as a sire, have already received more attention than their importance demands and I will therefore call this the close of the third chapter.

There are several incidents connected with the life of the colt of 1793 that fixed his identity and age upon the recollections of the neighbors and friends of Justin Morgan. Solomon Steele, Evans, Rice and others who knew the colt well, all agree that the colt followed his companion and playmate from West Springfield to Randolph in the autumn of 1795 and that he was not then halter broken. They all agree that Evans hired him for fifteen dollars a year to draw logs in his clearing, in the place of a yoke of oxen. They all agree that Justin Morgan died in March, 1798, and that the colt was then sold as a five-year-old. The death was an immovable date fixer around which everything in connection with these events must be determined. And when the horse died in 1821 nobody had ever doubted that he was foaled 1793.

Justin Morgan, Jr., was in his tenth year when the colt was brought home, and he was twelve years old when his father died. In 1842 Justin Morgan, Jr., in a communication to the Albany Cultivator, says: “One was a three-year-old gelding colt, which he led; and the other a two-year-old stud colt, which followed all the way from Springfield. The said two-year-old colt was the same that has since been known all over New England by the name of the Morgan Horse. I know that my father always, while he lived, called him a Dutch horse. I have a perfect recollection of the horse when my father owned him and afterward, and well remember that my father always spoke of him as of the best blood.”

When he made these clean-cut and emphatic declarations Justin Morgan, Jr., was fifty-six years old, and it has been suggested that he was too young, at the time, to have remembered about the colt. This is a grave mistake, for farmer’s boys remember a thousand things better then than they ever do afterward. I don’t think that my own memory is remarkable, but today, at over three score and ten, I can, with the utmost distinctness, recall the names, color, markings, size, peculiarities and, in some cases, the history of most of the horses that were on the farm when I was eight years old. I can, therefore, have no hesitation in accepting Justin Morgan’s evidence on account of his youthfulness, at the time of which he speaks.

Did Justin Morgan know what he was saying when he “always, while he lived, called his horse a Dutch horse?” And did he understand the historical meaning of his words when “he always spoke of him as of the best blood?” To answer these questions we must make some reference to history. The Dutch horses were a breed wholly distinct from the horses of the other colonies. The colony of New Netherlands (New York) received its supply from Utrecht, in Holland, commencing in 1624 and a few years following. In forty years they had so increased that the colony was well supplied. These horses were about fourteen hands and one inch high, which was about one hand higher than the horses supplied to the English colonies. They were not only higher, but they had more bone and muscle, and, I think, more shapely necks. In every respect they were better, except that they were not so good for the saddle, for the reason, as I think, that they were not pacers. The standard that determined their superiority was the higher prices at which they were bought and sold, over the New England horses, as shown by the official reports of the colony. When the colony passed under British rule, the first governor immediately established a race course on Hempstead Plains, Long Island, and there in 1665 the first organized race in this country took place. This was long before the English race horse had reached the character of a breed, and a round hundred years before the first representative of that breed reached New York. The horses that ran at Hempstead Plains were undoubtedly Dutch horses, for the inhabitants of New York and Long Island attended these annual meetings in great numbers, and as they were nearly all Dutch they would not have gone a stone’s throw to see an English horse run. These annual race meetings were kept up a great many years by the successive governors.

In 1635 two shiploads of Dutch horses, from the same quarter, chiefly mares, reached Salem, Massachusetts, and were sold at prices enormously high as compared with the prices of those sent from England to the same colony. These two shiploads added materially to the average size of the horses of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, as shown by statistics, as well as the other colonies getting their foundation stock from that source. We may safely conclude, I think, that some of the descendants of these shiploads were taken to the valley of the Connecticut when Hartford was planted, for we not infrequently meet with the term “Dutch horse” in the old prints of that valley. Besides this source the valley of the Hudson was full of them. They retained their distinctive appellation till about the beginning of this century.

Mr. O. W. Cook, of Springfield, Massachusetts, did a great deal of fundamental investigation on the origin of this family, away back in 1878-9, etc., and I am under special obligations to him for being the first man to open my eyes to the great confidence game that has been played for a hundred years, and all originating in the fabulous story of “one Smith.” Among other important things he unearths an advertisement of Young Bulrock that was advertised to stand at Springfield, 1792, as follows: “Young Bulrock is a horse of the Dutch breed, of a large size, and a bright bay color, etc.” In speaking of his pedigree, Mr. Cook most pithily remarks: “In view of the three-fold concurrence of time and place and breed, it fits into the vacuum in the Morgan’s lineage as a fragment of pottery fits into its complement.” There was another horse advertised in Springfield that year, but he had neither name nor breed and in color he was gray. The advertisement of Young Bulrock fits in time, fits in color and fits in breed; and thus removes all reasonable doubt that he was the sire of the original Morgan horse. This is the reason why Justin Morgan “always, while he lived, called him a Dutch horse;” and the little scrap of history given above will show why he always spoke of him as “of the best blood.” He was right in the former and he was right in the latter declaration. It is not possible, at this day, to prove, technically, these matters of a hundred years ago, but after considering all the facts in the case, we must conclude that they are satisfying to the human understanding, and that Justin Morgan told the truth.

For the past fifty or sixty years the breeding of the original Morgan horse has been a subject of apparently unending controversy. The real facts concerning his origin, however, have never been brought to light and fully developed until within the last few years, and it is probable that nothing of material value will ever be added to the foregoing tracing. We have found from contemporaneous history that Lieutenant Wright Carpenter stole a horse from Colonel James De Lancey and was successful in carrying him into the camp of the patriots at Fishkill, and that is all we know about that particular horse. After the war was over it is stated that “one Smith” sold a horse to Mr. Ward, of Hartford, and represented that he had stolen the horse from Colonel De Lancey, and Mr. Ward sold that horse to Selah Norton, who seems to have owned him as long as he lived. It must be accepted as true that Lieutenant Carpenter captured a horse from Colonel De Lancey, but we cannot accept it as true that this was the same horse owned by Norton. We must first know how and where “one Smith” got him. Norton had this horse and advertised him in different parts of the country for public service seven or eight years before the romance of his history and pedigree was given to the world. As this romance would have been a grand feature in an advertisement of a stallion, Mr. Norton was too slow in evolving it, and when he did bring it out nobody believed it. At that period many portions of New England abounded in stallions with bogus pedigrees and histories, and if we judge Norton by his acts in giving his horse three different names at different times and places, we must conclude he was ready to conceal or invent anything that would add to his horse’s popularity and patronage.

SHERMAN MORGAN.—In his history of the Morgan Horse, Mr. Linsley names this and three or four other sons of the original, that were kept for stock purposes, but none of them seems to have attained any eminence, except Sherman. As he never made any pretensions to being a trotter, he would have been forgotten long ago, had it not been for the lucky circumstances that he was the sire of Black Hawk, and thus his name has been preserved. He was scant fourteen hands high, with heavy body on short legs, and carried his head well up. He was a chestnut and foaled about 1809. There has always been a doubt in the minds of many as to whether he was the sire of Black Hawk, but that question will be considered when we reach that horse. His dam was a very handsome mare, brought from Narragansett, a pacer, and a very desirable saddle mare. In the trotting “Register,” three representations are given as to the breeding of this mare, namely, that she was of the Spanish breed; that she was an imported English mare; and that she was brought from Virginia on account of her beauty and speed. The first claim seemed to have the best historical support, and besides this she was brought from Providence, Rhode Island, and was a very fine pacer. The theory was then prevalent that the Narragansett pacers were of the “Spanish breed.” The elimination of that foolish notion from the history of the pacers does not affect the plain statement that she was a Narragansett pacer. It is not known that this mare ever produced anything else, either by the original Morgan or by any other horse.

BLACK HAWK.—As his name indicates, this horse was a jet black, and was something over fifteen hands high. He was foaled 1833, was got by Sherman Morgan, and was bred by Benjamin Kelly, of Durham, New Hampshire. As the question of his paternity has been the subject of a great deal of bitter controversy, continued through many years, and participated in by men of intelligence, on both sides, I must give the history, as I understand it. Mr. Kelly kept a tavern at Durham and Mr. Bellows, the owner of Sherman Morgan, made this house one of his points of stopping as he traveled his horse, in his circuit of the season. Along with Sherman he had another horse called Paddy, black as a raven, that did some service at seven dollars, while the price for Sherman was fourteen dollars. On one of his visits, Mr. Kelly’s black mare, called “Old Narragansett” was bred to Sherman and proved to be in foal. Not long after this Mr. Kelly sold the mare to Mr. Shade Twombly, living about two miles from Durham, and a part of the agreement was that if the mare should prove to be with foal, Mr. Twombly was to pay for the services of the horse. The next spring the mare dropped a fine black horse colt, and Mr. Twombly claimed the colt was by Paddy and not by Sherman, hence, he refused to pay fourteen dollars for the services of Sherman, but was willing to pay seven dollars for the services of Paddy. This resulted in a lawsuit in which it was proved that Sherman was the sire of the colt, and Mr. Twombly’s estate had to pay the money. The colt was kept by Mr. Twombly’s heirs, at pasture in Greenland, New Hampshire, till he was about two years old, when he was sold at auction to Albert Mathes, of Durham, for seventy dollars and from him he passed to Benjamin Thurston, of Lowell, for two hundred dollars. In Thurston’s hands he became quite noted, locally, as a trotter, and in 1844 he became the property of David Hill, of Bridport, Vermont, where he became altogether the most popular stallion in the United States, and died there November, 1856. He was the first horse to command one hundred dollars for his services; and many of the great mares of the country were sent to his embrace, among them the world-renowned Lady Suffolk, but unfortunately she failed to produce.

To understand why the fight against the Sherman Morgan paternity of this horse should have been so bitter and so persistent, we must consider the condition of the horse interests in New England at that time. When Black Hawk came to the front the Morgans of the real Morgan type had already attained some degree of popularity and here came a horse overtopping them all, with no trace of the Morgan type about him. He and his family attracted the attention of purchasers and threw a shadow of doubt over the little punchy, hairy-legged fellows that knocked out many a sale. Besides this, it was a serious and real question in the minds of a great many honest and intelligent men, as to whether Sherman Morgan, so typical of his family, could possibly have been the sire of a horse so completely outside of the family, not only in appearance and formation, but in his ability to trot. In 1847 Black Hawk was pitted against the Morse Horse, mile heats, best two in three, at the Saratoga State Fair. He won the first heat in 2:50½ and the second in 2:43½. He was then fourteen years old and this was very fast, for a stallion of that period. It is but justice to say that the Morse Horse contingent claimed that Black Hawk was set back in the first heat for running and that the heat was given to the Morse Horse in 2:52½ and that the second and third heats were won by Black Hawk in 2:54½ and 2:56. Just what the truth is in this disagreement I am not able to determine. As we look at this horse, so distinct from all his tribe; and as we consider the very indistinct knowledge of the laws of generation as held by the masses in that day, we cannot wonder that the paternity was so vehemently disputed. Neither can we wonder, as his descendants pass in review before us, that this dispute has never been settled to the satisfaction of the contending parties. The old Morgan type never reappears in the descendants of this family.

But, we must not forget that we have considered only half of the inheritance of this horse. He had a dam as well as a sire. To that half of his pedigree we must now give some attention. The story of the “half-bred English mare, brought from New Brunswick” has had its day and we may as well lay it aside as a humbug. Mr. Allen W. Thomson, of Woodstock, Vermont, has brought out the facts with regard to this mare in a form that is very clear and satisfactory. In 1876 Mr. Thomson visited Albany for the purpose of examining everything that had been said in The Country Gentleman newspaper touching on the paternity of Black Hawk. In this search for the sire he would necessarily find many references to the dam and among these references he was greatly surprised to find she had been described as “a pacing mare.” He goes on to say: “In our visit the same fall to Durham, Dover, Portsmouth and Greenland to learn more of her, we found a number that knew her when owned in Durham, and they said she was then known as the ‘Old Narragansett Mare.’ They said that Benjamin Kelly, deceased, brought the mare into Durham, that he had a son John L. living in Manchester, New Hampshire, and that he would know more about her, etc.” After learning that Mr. John L. Kelly was a very intelligent and responsible man, having been city marshal and mayor of Manchester, and known as “Honest John,” he wrote him and received the following reply:

“In answer to your inquiries about the dam of Black Hawk, I will give you my best recollections, aided somewhat by a diary which I kept at that time. I returned to Durham from a sea voyage in the fall of 1830. In the following spring I went to Boston with my father with a lot of horses. We stopped over night at Brown’s Hotel, at Haverhill, Mass., where we met a teamster from Portsmouth, N. H., with a team of four horses. In the hind span was a large gray horse and a dark bay mare. Among father’s horses was one which was a good match for the gray horse. The man noticed it and told father that the mare was too fast for the horse, was worth two of him for speed and bottom, yet he would trade with father for his gray horse. After a good deal of talk, with the aid of Mr. Brown, the trade was made and we drove the mare in the carriage to Boston, leading the others. We found her to be a splendid roadster, and as she was not in good condition to sell, we took her back to Durham. At this time she was chafed and bruised up very badly with the heavy harness, yet in a few months she came out of it, with no traces of it, except a few white spots on her back and breast. The teamster said she was a Narragansett mare. She would weigh 1,000 pounds. Father kept her as one of his stable horses. She was found to have great speed as a trotter, and father was always bragging about her. One day, late in the season, Israel Esty, of Dover, drove up to Durham with a trotter, and bantered father for a trot, mile heats on Madbury Plains, between Durham and Dover. I had great faith in the mare and pleaded with father to accept his offer, and he did, and fifty dollars was staked on the race. John Speed was father’s hostler at the time, and he commenced getting the mare ready for the race. He had only three weeks to do it in. At the time specified, a large collection of people from Dover and Durham collected to witness the race. Dr. Reuben Steele was one of the judges. The Esty horse won the first heat, the Kelly mare won the next two, distancing the horse in the last one. In the spring of 1832 John Bellows came to Durham with the old Sherman Morgan, and I persuaded father to have the mare bred to him. He did, as I saw the horse cover her. I was 21 in 1832; went to sea again that fall. My recollection of the dam of Black Hawk is she was a very fine pointed dark mare, with a nostril so large, when excited, that one could put his fist into it.

JOHN L. KELLY.

“Manchester, N. H., August 25, 1876.”

The only “trip” in this letter is where Mr. Kelly speaks of the mare as “a dark bay,” but as the identity of the mare is fully maintained by other witnesses, this shade of color is not material and is, doubtless a slip of the pen. We don’t know she was a Narragansett mare, but we do know that she was called a Narragansett. It is wholly possible she may have been a bastard Narragansett, or she may have been called a Narragansett merely because she was a pacer. At that date there were still many descendants of the old Narragansetts to be found, of greater or less degree of purity in their breeding. Among Mr. Thomson’s gleanings from persons who knew the mare there are some bearing upon her color and gait that are in order at this point of our inquisition. Mr. John Bellows, the owner of Sherman Morgan, says: “She was a good-sized black mare, a fast trotter, with a swinging gait, and resembled in appearance the Messenger stock of horses.” The following description was gathered from several persons who knew the mare well and among them Mr. Wingate Twombly, son of her former owner. “She was a large, rangy mare, a little coarse and brawny, did not carry much flesh, might have weighed some over one thousand pounds and was a trifle over fifteen and one-half hands high. Head and ears rather large, neck long and straight, withers low and thin, medium mane and tail, had more hair on the fetlocks than her son, was called black a little way off, but close to one could see her grey hairs mingled with her coat and close to she was called a steel mixed. She had a white strip in her face and some say a little white on one hind foot. She was smart to go, but her gait was not a smooth, square trot. Some called it a sort of a pace, others that she single-footed. She went with her head low when trotting fast. One person said it was about a straight line from her back to her head when she was going fast.” She was called the Narragansett Mare when Mr. Kelly owned her. From other sources and from men who personally knew the mare and had ridden beside her, we have undoubted evidence that she was very fast, but all through there is some confusion about the character of her gait. Mr. Bellows, who ought to know something about the gait of a horse, says: “She was a fast trotter, with a swinging gait.” Now just what he means by the phrase “swinging gait” is hard to determine. Putting all these bits of evidence together, the reasonable conclusion seems to be that she was double-gaited, and when speeded she would go from the trot to the pace or from the pace to the trot as the case might be.

From this synopsis of all that has been developed in the blood lines of Black Hawk, there can be no longer any mystery about where he got the characteristics making him so intensely different from the representatives of the typical Morgan. His sire was out of a high-class Narragansett pacer, and his dam was probably a fast Narragansett pacer, thus giving him presumably seventy-five per cent. of Narragansett blood and twenty-five per cent. of Morgan blood. The fight that was made against him all his life, as not being a genuine Morgan, had its foundation in justice and truth. He was not a Morgan in either blood or character. He founded a very valuable line of trotters, something that no other branch of the Morgan family has ever accomplished, and of right his descendants should be designated as “the Black Hawk Family,” and not jumbled up with the heterogeneous mass of nondescripts still called “the Morgan Family.” Black Hawk’s gait was spluttery and uneven, rather than square and mechanical. A few of his progeny were very perfectly gaited, but a great many of them manifested their evil inheritance, which, together with unskillful handling, destroyed all possible value as trotters. He placed three in the 2:30 list; fourteen of his sons were sires of 2:30 performers, six of them with two or more, and two daughters produced 2:30 performers. He died November, 1856.

ETHAN ALLEN, 43.—This was a handsome, bright bay horse, less than fifteen hands high, with three white feet and a star. He was foaled 1849, got by Black Hawk, 5; dam, a fast trotting grey mare of unknown pedigree. With a list of all the celebrated American horses before him, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for the best informed horseman to select an animal that has been so great a favorite with the American people, and for so long a time, as the famous Ethan Allen. When four years old he gave the world a sensation by eclipsing everything that had appeared before him at that age; and again when he was eighteen years old he renewed and intensified the sensation by trotting in 2:15 with a running mate. These sensations of his youth and his old age, did much to give him a standing with the people; but his wonderful beauty and remarkable docility and kindness, with the elegance and ease of his action, made him the favorite of everybody. His trotting gait was recognized by the best judges and experts as probably more perfect than that of any horse of his day. Others have gone faster singly, but no one has done it in greater perfection of motion. In his great flights of speed he was not bounding in the air, but down close to the ground, with a gliding motion that steals from quarter-pole to quarter-pole with inconceivable rapidity. He was bred by Joel W. Holcomb, of Ticonderoga, New York, and as the result of a practical joke he played, for the purpose of annoying his uncle, David Hill, the owner of Black Hawk, against whom he had some pique just at that time, many well-meaning and no doubt honest people once believed, and possibly still believe, that Ethan Allen was by Flying Morgan and not by Black Hawk. The fact that Ethan Allen was the same color as Flying Morgan and that there was some resemblance in size and style of action of the two horses, lent a strong suggestion to the joke as a truth. I am indebted to Mr. I. V. Baker, Jr., of Comstock’s Landing, S. B. Woodward, then of Ticonderoga, and B. H. Baldwin, of Whitehall, New York, for the details of the way the Flying Morgan story started, and need only say the narrator was an eye-witness to the whole affair. In the spring of 1852, in the barroom of S. B. Woodward’s hotel, at Ticonderoga, quite a number of the villagers being present, Mr. Joel W. Holcomb came in and said he was going to write a letter to R. M. Adams, of Burlington, Vermont, the owner of Flying Morgan, and he was going to have some fun with him; and, going to the desk in the room, he wrote, substantially as follows: “I don’t know but I have made all the reputation for David Hill and old Black Hawk that I care to. I am willing to have the credit go where it belongs, and desire to let yourself and the public know that my colt Ethan Allen is got by your horse Flying Morgan.”

“There,” he said, “you will see this in all the Vermont papers next week. Won’t Uncle David be mad?”

“What!” exclaimed some of his neighbors, after hearing it read, “you won’t put your name to such a falsehood as that? It’s a shame.”

“Well, well,” said Holcomb, “I’ll add a postscript.” And going to the desk he wrote below his signature, leaving a good wide space between his signature and the following words:

“Flying Morgan never covered the dam of Ethan Allen, never smelt of her and never saw her, consequently Ethan Allen was not by Flying Morgan, but he can beat Flying Morgan or any other stallion in the State of Vermont.”

The next fall Mr. Adams visited many of the fairs with his horse and showed Holcomb’s letter, and, it is said, with the postscript torn off. Every man in Ticonderoga knew as well as Mr. Holcomb how Ethan Allen was bred, and this letter created much indignation. But Holcomb was a reckless man and cared for nothing more than what he called a good joke, and the more it hurt any one’s feelings the better it suited him.

This account of the “joke” was written down by Mr. Baker, at the dictation of Mr. Woodward, April 22, 1875, and I have implicit confidence in its substantial accuracy. It has been said that the reason Holcomb did this was out of ill feeling toward Mr. David Hill, the owner of Black Hawk, and Holcomb’s uncle, because he dunned him for payment of the horse’s services in getting Ethan Allen. One day at the Fashion Course, in the spring of 1867, as I was looking at Ethan while he was taking his daily exercise, either Mr. Holcomb or Mr. Roe, his partner—I knew them both by sight as the owners of Ethan Allen, but not well enough to distinguish one from the other, but I think it was Mr. Holcomb—came up to me and expressed a good deal of solicitude to know how I was registering the horse. He appeared gratified when I assured him I had no doubt he was a son of old Black Hawk and would so enter him. He remarked “that was right,” and said the Flying Morgan story originated in a practical joke and should not be permitted to go into history as a fact. This is the full history of the basis of the controversy, and certainly, to a reasonable man, it does not leave a single peg on which to hang a hope for the Flying Morgan story.

But, the paternity of Ethan Allen is not left to the uncertainties of recollection nor to be trifled with by practical jokers. The books of Black Hawk’s services show that the dam of Ethan Allen was bred to him on a certain day or days of the season of 1848, and was taken away believed to be in foal. This fact is conceded on all hands as wholly indisputable, but it is claimed that Flying Morgan was kept in Holcomb’s stable one night, after the mare returned from Bridport, and the two were there surreptitiously coupled. I have studied this claim in all its details, I have examined every detail minutely, and I do not hesitate to say there is not a single shadow of evidence to support the claim. In Vermont, as in Kentucky, there are many people who can remember things that never occurred, but in the former State these people are at a great disadvantage, for they are not able to get so many to agree with and support their remarkable memories. The Vermonters are very far from being all honest, but they are very much disposed to make up their own minds, whether right or wrong.

In searching for the breeding of the little flea-bitten grey mare, “called a Messenger,” that produced Ethan Allen, I have not been sparing of either time or labor. I have assiduously followed every clew that presented itself, and waded through “sloppy” correspondence “knee deep,” but I never have been able to reach a single point that was relevant and tangible. From the first that is known of her at Hague, New York, her identity has been maintained by a spavin on one leg and one hip knocked down, and thus she has been traced through the hands of many owners till she reaches Mr. Holcomb, of Ticonderoga, New York. A pretence has been set up that she was by some Morgan horse, but this was only a wish of the originator, and not a fact founded on reasonable evidence. It is said she was quite a fast trotter, in her younger days, and that she could beat all the farmers’ horses against which she was started. That she had a trotting inheritance, and probably from Messenger, there can be no reasonable doubt.

Ethan Allen made his first appearance as a trotter at the Clinton County Fair, as a three-year-old, and made a record, over a very bad track, of 3:20-3:21. In May following, then four years old, at the Union Course, he beat Rose of Washington in 2:36-2:39-2:42. This was then the fastest time ever made by a four-year-old. He then retired to the stud and did not again appear till October, 1855, when, over the Cambridge Park Course, he beat Columbus, Sherman Black Hawk, and Stockbridge Chief for the stallion purse in 2:34½-2:37. Three of the contestants here were sons of Black Hawk. The next season he defeated Hiram Drew twice, to wagon, making a record of 2:32¾. October 15, 1858, at Boston, he beat Columbus Jr., and Hiram Drew, 2:37-2:35-2:33. The same month, on the Union Course, he beat George M. Patchen, to wagons, distancing him the first heat in 2:28. At the Union Course, Long Island, July 12, 1860, he beat Princess, distancing her the second heat in 2:29½-2:25½. This is his fastest record. He was frequently beaten by George M. Patchen, Flora Temple, etc., and it was thought by many that he could not take up the weight and “hold the clip” for the full mile out. His most famous performance was made in 1867, and as I had the pleasure of witnessing it, from a very eligible position, I will here repeat the description as then made:

“On the 21st of June, 1867, on the Fashion Course, it was my good fortune to witness the crowning event of his life. Some three weeks before, with running mate, he had beaten Brown George and running mate, in very fast time, scoring one heat in 2:19. This made horsemen open their eyes, and there at once arose a difference of opinion, about the advantage to the trotter of having a runner hitched with him, to pull the weight. This resulted in a match for two thousand five hundred dollars to trot Ethan Allen and running mate against Dexter, who was then considered invincible. As the day approached the betting was about even; but the evening before the race, word came from the course that Ethan’s running mate had fallen lame and could not go, but they would try to get Brown George’s running mate, then in Connecticut, to take the place of the lame runner. As the horses were strangers to each other, it was justly concluded that the change gave Dexter a great advantage and the betting at once changed from even to two to one on Dexter. Long before noon the crowd began to assemble; the sporting men everywhere were shaking rolls of greenbacks over their heads, shouting “two to one on Dexter.” I met a friend from Chicago, who sometimes speculated a little, and when he told me he was betting two to one on Dexter, I took the liberty of advising him to be cautious, for I thought the team would win the race, and that its backers knew what they were doing. Before the hour arrived I secured a seat on the ladies’ stand, from which every foot of the course, and the countless multitudes of people, could be taken in at a glance. The vehicles in numbers were simply incalculable, and the multitudes were estimated at forty thousand people. Upon the arrival of the hour, the judges ascended the stand and rang up the horses, when the backers of the team came forward, explained the mishap that had befallen the runner, that they had Brown George’s mate on the ground, but, as he and Ethan had never been hitched together, they were unwilling to risk so large a sum, and closed the race by paying one thousand two hundred and fifty forfeit. When this announcement was made there was a general murmur that spread, step by step, through all that vast multitude. The betting fraternity were just where they started and every spectator realized a feeling of disgust at the whole management. As soon as this had time to exert its intended effect upon the crowd, the backers of the team came forward again and expressed their unwillingness to have the people go away dissatisfied, and proposed a little match of two hundred and fifty a side, which was promptly accepted by the Dexter party; and when it was known there would be a race after all the shout of the multitudes was like the voice of many waters.

“This being a new race, the betting men had to commence de novo. The surroundings of the pool stands were packed with an eager and excited crowd, anxious to get on their money at two, and rather than miss, at three to one on Dexter. The work of the auctioneers was short, sharp and decisive, and the tickets were away up in the hundreds and oftentimes thousands. But the pool-stands did not seem to accommodate more than a small fraction of those anxious to invest, and in all directions in the surging crowd, hands were in the air, filled with rolls of greenbacks, and shouting “two to one on Dexter.” I was curious to note what became of these noisy offers, and I soon observed that a quiet-looking man came along, took all the party had to invest and then went quietly to another of the shouters, and then another and so on, till I think that every one who had money to invest, at that rate, was accommodated. The amount of money bet was enormous, no doubt aggregating a quarter of a million, in a few minutes.

“When the horses appeared on the track to warm up for the race, Dexter, driven by the accomplished reinsman Budd Doble, was greeted with a shout of applause. Soon the team appeared, and behind it sat the great master of trotting tactics, Dan Mace. His face, which has so often been a puzzle to thousands, had no mask over it on this occasion. It spoke only that intense earnestness that indicates the near approach of a supreme moment. The team was hitched to a light skeleton wagon; Ethan wore breeching, and beside him was a great strong race horse, fit to run for a man’s life. His traces were long enough to allow him to fully extend himself, but they were so much shorter than Ethan’s that he had to take the weight. Dexter drew the inside, and on the first trial they got the send off without either one having six inches the advantage. When they got the word, the flight of speed was absolutely terrific, so far beyond anything I had ever witnessed in a trotting horse, that I felt the hair rising on my head. The running horse was next to me, and notwithstanding my elevation, Ethan was stretched out so near the ground that I could see nothing of him but his ears. I fully believed that, for several rods at this point, they were going at a two-minute gait.

“It was impossible that this terrible pace could be maintained long, and just before reaching the first turn Dexter’s head began to swim and the team passed him and took the track, reaching the first quarter-pole in thirty-two seconds, with Dexter three or four lengths behind. The same lightning speed was kept up through the second quarter, reaching the half-mile pole in 1:04, with Dexter still farther in the rear. Mace then took a pull on his team, and came home a winner by six or eight lengths, in 2:15. When this time was put on the blackboard, the response of the multitude was like the roar of the ocean. Although some distance away, through the second quarter of this heat I had a fair, unobstructed side view of the stallion and of his action, when going at the lightning rate of 2:08 to the mile. I could not observe that he received the slightest degree of propulsion from the running horse; and my conviction was then, and is now, that any such propulsion would have interfered with his own unapproachable action, and would have retarded rather than helped him. The most noticeable feature in his style of movement was the remarkable lowness to which he dropped his body and the straight, gliding line it maintained at that elevation.

“The team now had the inside, and in the first attempt they were started for the second heat, but they did not appear to me to be going so fast as in the first heat. Before they had gone many rods Ethan lost his stride and Dexter took the track at the very spot where he had lost it in the first heat. The team soon got to work, and near the beginning of the second quarter collared Dexter, but the stallion broke soon after and fell back, not yards, nor lengths, but rods before he caught. Incredible as it may seem, when he again got his feet, he put on such a burst of speed as to overhaul Dexter in the third quarter, when he broke again and Mace had to pull him nearly to a standstill before he recovered. Dexter was now a full distance ahead and the heat appeared to be his beyond all peradventure. I was watching the team in its troubles very closely and my idea of the distance lost was the result of a deliberate and careful estimate at the moment; and the query in my mind then was whether the team could save its distance. At last the old horse struck his gait, and it was like a dart out of a catapult, or a ball from a rifle. The team not only saved its distance, but beat Dexter home five or six lengths in 2:16.

“In the third heat Mace had it all his own way throughout, coming home the winner of the race in 2:19. The backers of Dexter, up to the very last, placed great reliance on his well-known staying qualities; but the last heat showed that the terrible struggle told upon him more distressingly than upon the team. It is said by those who timed Dexter privately that he trotted the three heats in 2:17, 2:18, and 2:21. As an opinion, I will say that if ever there was an honest race trotted this was one, but there was such an exhibition of sharp diplomacy, of the “diamond cut diamond” order, as is seldom witnessed, even among the sharp practices of the turf. It is not probable that Ethan’s running mate fell amiss at all, the evening before, as represented; and if she did, it was not possible to send to Connecticut for another horse and have him there early in the morning as was pretended. This was a mere ruse put out to get the advantage of the long odds. The managers of the team knew just how the horses would work and knew they had speed enough to beat any horse on earth. When the race was called and they came forward and paid forfeit, it was merely to give the ‘two to one on Dexter’ money encouragement to come out. It did come out most vociferously and was all quietly taken. It was said John Morrissey was the manager in chief, and that his share of the winnings amounted to about forty thousand dollars.”

I have here given my personal impressions of this race, not because the performance was of any special value, as a test of speed, but because the time was then phenomenal, even with this kind of hitch, and as an illustration of what certain horses can do when relieved of all weight. This was among the first of the contests of this kind, and although some effort was made to introduce this plan by which a poor horse could beat a good one, it never has received much encouragement. With all his perfection of gait and wide popularity, extending from early life to old age, Ethan Allen was not a success as a progenitor of speed. He placed but six in the 2:30 list, and the best—Billy Barr—with a record of 2:23¾. He left but one son equal to himself as a sire, and several daughters that became the producers of single performers. He was kept several seasons in Kansas and died there September, 1876.

DANIEL LAMBERT, 102, was a chestnut horse, foaled 1858; got by Ethan Allen, 43; dam Fanny Cook, by Abdallah; grandam by Stockholm’s American Star, etc. His color was a light chestnut, and his mane and tail were of the yellow, flaxen shade. He was about fifteen hands high and long and light in the body, with no indications of Morgan blood about him unless it was in the kinkiness of his mane and tail. But why should he not resemble almost anything else than the little nondescript Morgan, when he had only one-sixteenth of his blood in his veins? He had more Messenger than Morgan blood, and according to the rules of arithmetic it is a misnomer to call him a Morgan. More than this, his dam was a daughter of the great Abdallah, far and away the greatest trotting sire of his generation. When we consider that he had four times as much of the blood of Abdallah as he had of the original Morgan, we can see the absurdity of sticking to the right male line after that line has been wiped out by other lines far more potential. Lambert was bred by Mr. John Porter of Ticonderoga, New York, and as a colt he showed great promise on the ice, and was thought to be the fastest and best of the get of Ethan Allen. He was known far and wide as the “Porter Colt,” and he was the popular heir to very great expectations. To have created so much enthusiasm he must have shown great speed for a youngster, and he is credited with a record of 2:42 as a three-year-old. As a sire of trotters he stood very high at one time and was even with Blue Bull in his number of representatives in the 2:30 list, but in the end the little “plebeian” pacer outstripped him a long way. Lambert put thirty-seven trotters into the 2:30 list, but when we come to study this list we are not very favorably impressed, for about one-third of the animals have but a single heat inside of the mark, with only five or six reputable campaigners and a single one—Comee—that ranked among the real good ones. Comee had seventy-one heats to his credit and a record of 2:21¼. Thirty-three of Daniel Lambert’s sons have put one hundred and thirty-six in the list, and forty-four of his daughters have produced seventy-four performers.

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XXVIII. THE ORLOFF TROTTER, BELLFOUNDER, AND THE ENGLISH HACKNEY

Orloffs the only foreign trotters of merit—Count Alexis Orloff, founder of the breed—Origin of the Orloff—Count Orloff began breeding in 1770—Smetanka, Polkan, and Polkan’s son, Barss, really the first Orloff trotting sire—The Russian pacers—Their great speed—Imported Bellfounder—His history and characteristics—Got little speed—His descendants—The English Hackney—Not a breed, but a mere type—The old Norfolk trotters—Hackney experiments in America—Superiority of the trotting-bred horse demonstrated in show-ring contests.

It may be a little outside of the field of our discussion to include the Orloff Trotter, but as a few of them have been brought to this country, and as that is the only organized and recognized breed of trotters in all the world beside our own, it seems to be necessary to give a brief synopsis of the origin and history of that breed, so far as we may be able. An additional and probably a more cogent reason for making this foreign detour is the fact that there are now many American trotters on the turf in Europe, and practically their only competitors, whether on the turf or in the breeding studs, are the Orloffs of Russia.

“Wallace’s American Trotting Register,” the first volume of which was issued in 1871, was an individual enterprise. Two years afterward the director-in-chief of the Russian Imperial Studs submitted a series of questions to different scientific gentlemen, whose studies were in the right direction, soliciting their views, on the practicability and advisability of establishing a governmental standard by which the Orloff trotters should be classed and officially registered. The report was favorable and the Russian trotting register was established under governmental direction. This was the second movement toward establishing a breed; not merely by writing a lot of names in a book, but by writing those names on the turf of two continents. A delegation from France once visited me to consult about establishing a Register in that country, and to learn how to commence such an enterprise. When I asked them what strains of blood they had that could trot, they did not seem to know of any particular strains, or any one strain better than another, to serve as a foundation, but they were sure they had plenty of trotters. This was the first I ever had heard of French-bred trotters, and it was the last I ever heard of the French trotting register.

The stalwart Alexis Orloff took a very active part in making Catherine II. Empress of Russia—for which he was loaded with honors as well as lucrative offices. In the war with the Turks in 1772 he was given command of the Russian fleet, and with the assistance of the English fleet under Admiral Elphinstone, he achieved a great victory and captured the pasha in command of the Turkish fleet. Owing to some unusual kindness Count Orloff was able to extend to the captured Turkish commander, or his family, he presented the count with a pure white stallion, said to be a Barb, which he took home with him and placed in his stud of horses, that he had established but a short time before. Another story is that the count bought this white horse, which he called Smetanka, while he was in Greece and paid a large price for him. I am not able to say which representation is the more probable, and it is not material to our history, as there is no dispute about the identity of Smetanka as the nominal head of the Orloff breed of horses, and neither story gives any information about his blood. No doubt he was a Turk. Count Alexis commenced his breeding stud in 1770, and there appears to have been a good deal of system about it or else a large amount of very free guessing. When first established, the horse breeders say, it consisted of stallions and mares as follows: Arabs, 12 stallions, 10 mares; Turkish, 1 stallion, 2 mares; English, 20 stallions, 32 mares; Dutch, 1 stallion, 8 mares; Persian, 3 stallions, 2 mares; Danish, 1 stallion, 3 mares; Mecklenburg, 1 stallion, 5 mares. From this it will be seen that he had more English running blood than all the other varieties put together, and yet no trotters came from that source. From this great variety of composite material the count had free rein in his grand experiment of producing the type of horse that best pleased his fancy. As a matter of course the indiscriminate commingling of these different strains and types would produce a mongrel lot, from which a few superior animals might be selected, and doubtless were selected, for breeding purposes.

The different writers who have discussed the result of this experiment seem to agree, substantially, that two distinct types were the result—the galloper for the saddle and the trotter for harness—but they assume what appears to me to be a very unreasonable conclusion that both these types were indebted to the super-excellence of Smetanka. The count was one of the most prominent sporting men of his day, an inveterate horse-racer and cock-fighter, and under this kind of management it is hardly credible that the twenty English thoroughbred stallions should have been put aside for the little white horse of positively unknown origin. But whatever may have been the predominating blood in the saddle department, it is certain that the trotter is lineally descended from Smetanka. He was bred on a Danish mare and produced Polkan (Volcan), without anything new or striking in his characteristics. Polkan was bred on a Dutch mare and produced Barss, and this was the first to manifest a disposition to extend himself to his utmost at the trot and to stick to it. Barss became a great favorite with his master; for, although stumbled upon, he was a new creation and is the real progenitor of all the horses that bear the name Orloff. His component elements are easily expressed. He had twenty-five per cent. of the blood of Smetanka; twenty-five per cent. of the blood of the Danish mare, and fifty per cent. of the blood of the Dutch mare, it seems to be reasonable to conclude, therefore, that the trotting instinct must be found in the unknown elements of the Dutch mare.

Some years ago Prof. —— (the name I cannot now recall), from the Imperial Agricultural College, near Moscow, Russia, paid me several visits for the purpose of gathering up what information he could obtain about the origin and history of the American Trotter. He was very intelligent and thorough in his methods of obtaining information, and each succeeding day he came back to me with a new series of questions hinging upon previous interviews, and all carefully prepared. These questions were so admirably shaped to reach the vital points of the subject that I became greatly interested in the man. When it came my turn to ask questions, my first one was, What was the origin and lineage of the Dutch mare that produced Barss? He replied, “Ah, the scientific men of Russia would give a great deal to be able to answer that question.” We both agreed, perfectly, that the living instinct of the trotter came from that mare, but he was not able to tell me anything of her history or habits of action. He told me there were many pacers in Russia and that the best ones came from the province of Viatka and from the region of the Volga River.

As the true source from which the Russian trotters have drawn their ability to trot fast has not been developed nor determined by history, we must consider the problem in the light of the surrounding conditions, and possibly our American experiences may lead to its solution. In 1873 Prof. Von Mittendorf, at the request of the director-in-chief of the imperial stud, prepared a very able paper on the scientific questions involved in the establishment of a Government Register for the Orloff trotters. In this paper he discusses the pace and the trot as both original and natural gaits and insists that there are no outward indications in form or shape by which the animal, when at rest, can be decided to be a pacer or a trotter. In his own words he says:

“In answer to the question whether, from the form of a horse at rest, it can be ascertained what gait would be easiest assumed by it, viz., trotting or pacing, I must confess that I have never seen, read or heard of such marks, and, indeed, there never are any symptoms or signs of inclination for pacing in the proportions of any horse with the single negative exception, viz., that great speed in one-sided motion does not agree with a large frame, which is more adapted to leaping, and hence fast pacers are never found among large horses.”

This is the view as taken by a Russian scientist of the distinction, or rather lack of distinction, between the trotter and the pacer. I have not quoted this paragraph from Prof. Mittendorf because it contained anything new in the economy of breeding, but to prove that there were pacers in Russia and that their relation to the trotter was considered in the formation of the rules of admission to the Orloff trotting register. A very intelligent writer, evidently a Russian and one who knew what he was talking about, contributed an interesting article to the New York Sun of July 9, 1877, from which we get a clear and strong light on the practical side of the Russian pacer, and I will here again quote:

“Up to the middle of the last century horses in Russia were not scientifically bred; they ran wild in many parts of the country. Those caught on the steppes of the river Don, and in the wilderness of the district of Viatka, obtained early celebrity, which they still maintain. The Don horses are those famous Cossack steeds about which so much has been written of late. The Viatka horses, or Bitugues, as they are called are the genuine trotters of Russia. They are all pacers, equally remarkable for their speed and their endurance. But since the Orloff breed has been introduced, the Bitugues have been excluded from all matches, on the ground that their pacing is not orthodox.

“It is with these Bitugues that the peculiar troika team, of which a specimen was shown in Fleetwood Park, on Saturday, originated. A fast, sturdy Bitugue is put in shafts, and a light running horse from the steppes harnessed on each side of him. A good Bitugue trots so fast that the wild steppe runners have to be whipped all the time to force them to keep up with him. The idea of putting an Orloff trotter in the place of a Bitugue is very queer, as no square trotter can equal the speed of those famous pacers of Viatka, and keep abreast with side runners.”

From these three several sources we learn a number of facts that may have a more or less important bearing upon the true origin of the Orloff trotter. (1) That there are now, and have been for generations past, plenty of pacers in Russia. (2) That these pacers have a common habitat, north and east of the Don. (3) That they are a very old race, running back in the centuries away beyond the knowledge of man or the records of history. (4) That they are a very fast and very enduring race, and that they have been trained for generations as the shaft horses of the troika and their speed so well developed as to require good running horses to keep abreast with them. (5) That they are of smaller size than the average and lack symmetry, and thus, notwithstanding their great speed and bottom, they and their blood are excluded from registration with the Orloffs. (6) That they are also excluded from competing for any prizes that may be offered, and no other reason is suggested than that they would be sure to win.

Russia and America both have pacers and they are both carrying forward the breeding and development of the trotter with great intelligence and success. No other nation has been able to make even a beginning in this field of animal economy except by the introduction of the foundation stock from one or other of these two countries. It may be taken as historically true, and as applying to every nation on the face of the earth, that where there are no pacers there are no trotters. Hundreds of unmistakable experiences in this country go to show that the pacer is a great source of trotting speed. At one time a pacing stallion of obscure pacing origin stood at the head of the list of all stallions as the sire of the greatest number of trotters with fast records. A great multitude of our fastest trotters at maturity were foaled pacers from trotting parents. It is no longer a matter of wonder or surprise that with two animals from the same parents one of them should be a fast trotter and the other a fast pacer. Neither is it any longer remarkable that a fast trotter with a very fast record should turn around and make just as fast a record at the pace. The American people are just beginning to realize, in its full force, the declaration of more than twenty years ago; that the trot and the pace are simply two forms of the same gait, in the economy of motion. The only difference that has been observed as between two brothers, the one a pacer and the other a trotter, is that with the same skill in handling the pacer will come to his speed much quicker than the trotter, which is of itself a strong suggestion at least that the pace is the more natural and easier form of the one gait.

Now, in view of the fact that Smetanka was of Saracenic origin—a strain of blood that has always been antagonistic to the pacer, and never produced a pacer or a trotter; and in view of the fact that his grandson, Barss, is accepted as the first of all Orloff trotters; and in view of the further fact that in thousands of American experiences the trotter has come from the pacer, it seems to be a reasonable conclusion that the “Dutch Mare” that produced Barss had a strong pacing inheritance, and possibly had her speed fully developed, as the Bitugue in the count’s own team.

Among all the pleasures which Count Orloff derived from his experiments in breeding, whether of gamecocks, or race horses, or saddlers, or trotters, Barss was his greatest favorite because he was his highest achievement in the art of breeding. This judgment of his master has been confirmed in the experiences and history of all succeeding generations for a hundred years, and the name of Barss will be known through the coming centuries as the founder of a mighty breed of trotters. I once possessed a fine picture of Barss hitched to a sleigh and driven by his breeder, Count Orloff, himself; and I have seen it stated somewhere that this picture was a copy of a bronze statue erected to the memory of the Count Orloff and the greatest horse of Russia.

It has been stated by some writers, but with what measure of authority I do not know, that for about thirty years after the appearance of Barss his daughters were bred to English thoroughbreds, to Arabs, to Anglo-Arabs, and, indeed, to all the highly bred crosses that the great establishment was able to furnish, and there was no improvement in either the quality or the speed of the produce. From this it is evident that the count and his managers were at that period entangled in the same foolish notions that befogged the minds of so many very worthy gentlemen in this country some years ago, viz., that the way to improve the trotter was to go to the runner—the horse that never could trot. This foolish notion, that never had a spark of reason in it, naturally and necessarily weakened the trotting instinct of the descendants of Barss, and would have wiped it all out if it had been followed persistently, and there would have been no Orloff trotters to-day.

After this narrow escape from the annihilation of much of the good that Barss had done, the management then began to look for the same blood and the same habit of action that the “Dutch Mare” transmitted to her son, and, with this element to the front, progression was resumed. Out of his great variety of forms and of strains of blood the count and his managers could pick and choose for the size, shape and forms they wanted, but they were not able to transfer with the size, shape and form the instincts and psychical nature of the horse. The count seems to have carried forward his great enterprise rather with a view to experimentation than its commercial possibilities. Smetanka lived but a year or two, and when he stumbled upon the production of Barss, a magnificent individual and a great trotter, his head seems to have been turned, as he evidently supposed that he could breed any kind of horse he wished to breed, and be able to do anything he wished him to do. At his death, in 1808, he left no male heir to succeed him, but he provided in his will that his stud should not be dispersed. It was kept intact till about 1845, when it was purchased by the government, and finally divided among a number of prominent breeders in different portions of the empire.

Without having any knowledge on the subject that is definite and specific, I am led to infer that the rules on registration and racing in Russia are a hindrance to the breeding and development of the trotter. As I understand it, no horse can be registered unless he is purely descended from Barss. And I understand further, that he must possess the same requirements in order to enter and start in a public race against the Orloffs. If it be true that these restrictions are really in existence and are enforced, we can understand why the American trotter is so far ahead of the Orloff in speed and in the markets of Europe. The Orloff is restricted to certain lines of blood and is protected against competition from others that might beat him. The American is free from all restrictions of blood and gathers up all that is best and fastest. He neither asks nor accepts protection from any quarter, but throws down the glove to all comers.

BELLFOUNDER was imported from England, July, 1822, by James Boott, of Boston, Mass. He was placed in the hands of Samuel Jaques, Jr.—a very shrewd manager who understood the use of printer’s ink and did not hesitate about employing it liberally. In his advertisement for 1823 he says: “This celebrated horse is a bright bay with black legs, standing fifteen hands high.” From this we are safe in concluding he was not more than fifteen hands, and from another contemporaneous source it is learned that he was a little below that measurement. On this point the recollections, or perhaps impressions, of Orange County horsemen are not very trustworthy, as one of them places his height at sixteen hands and others at fifteen and a half. His pedigree was given on the card which was distributed by his groom in the form following: “Got by old Bellfounder, out of Velocity by Haphazard, by Sir Peter out of Miss Hervey by Eclipse.” “Velocity trotted on the Norwich road in 1806, sixteen miles in one hour, and although she broke five times into a gallop, and as often turned round, she won her match.” Although after diligent search I have not been able to find this performance of Velocity, it may be true that a mare so named may have trotted as represented, but she was not a daughter of Haphazard. The dates make this utterly impossible, and Mr. Jaques was smart enough never to put this humbug pedigree in his elaborate advertisements that appeared in the leading agricultural papers of the country, year after year.

As the great mass of people of that day knew nothing and cared but little about pedigrees, the astute manager of the horse struck an expedient in the way of advertising that was very effective. He had a cut made of a horse trotting loose on the road, at the rate of a hurricane, and in the background was an entablature with the legend “Seventeen and a half miles an hour,” which anybody and everybody would interpret to mean that this was a record made by imported Bellfounder, and there he was doing it. This cut in reduced form went the rounds of the agricultural press, and in 1831 made its appearance in the “Family Encyclopedia of Useful Knowledge.” This dodge was exceedingly effective, and as it appeared in a book it must be true. Thousands of people interpreted the picture to mean that imported Bellfounder had trotted seventeen and a half miles in an hour. Mr. Jaques did not say this in letters and figures, but he said it even more plainly in a picture. The basis of this deception is found in the advertisement itself, where, in speaking of the speed of old Bellfounder in England, he says: “His owner challenged to perform with him seventeen miles and a half in one hour, but it was not accepted.” Here we have a possible challenge of the sire transmuted into an actual performance of the son, for the sole purpose of securing public patronage.

There can be no doubt that this horse was a true representative of what was then known as the Norfolk Trotters and at this time designated as Hackneys or Cobs. Bellfounder was of a quiet, docile disposition, with a display of great nervous energy in his movements when aroused. His knee and hock action was high and showy, giving the impression of a great trotter, without much speed. At several points his form was measurably reproduced in Hambletonian, especially in his low, round withers and his great, meaty buttocks. In seeing these points so plainly developed in his idol it is not remarkable that Mr. Rysdyk should have placed too high an estimate on Bellfounder blood as a factor in the American trotting horse. If he had thoughtfully asked himself the question, What has Bellfounder blood done in its own right in the way of getting trotters? the illusion would have vanished.

Bellfounder was in the control of Mr. Jaques for six years, and never in my knowledge of trotting stallions have I known one so widely and successfully advertised. The name “Bellfounder” was heard and known everywhere. From 1829 to 1833, inclusive, he was under the control of Mr. T. T. Kissam, of Long Island. After that time he seems to have gone “a-begging” wherever there seemed to be a chance to earn his oats. At last, at Jamaica, Long Island, he died, having made twenty-one seasons in this country—one more than Messenger. The question was once raised as to where Hambletonian got his aversion to the chestnut color, and it was flippantly assigned to Bellfounder. The truth is, quite a number of Bellfounder’s get were chestnuts, perhaps as large a percentage as would naturally come from the average stallion.

It is the testimony of several gentlemen who were familiar with trotting affairs in the time of the Bellfounders, that a number of them were skillfully and persistently trained and none of them could trot faster than about 2:50. The one exception to this fact so widely established is the case of the dam of Hambletonian. After this filly passed into the hands of Peter Seely he gave some attention irregularly to the development of her speed, and before he sold her he gave her two trials to saddle on the Union Course and she trotted in 2:43 and 2:41. As she was then but four years old it is safe to conclude that she would have made a trotter, beyond all doubt. This is the only one, old or young, from the loins of Bellfounder that ever trotted so fast. I once put the question directly to Mr. Rysdyk as to whether the Kent Mare was as good and as fast as her dam, One Eye, and he promptly replied that One Eye was much the faster and greater mare. To this answer he added that One Eye, under the same circumstances, would have been the equal of Lady Thorn or any other that ever lived. This may account for the superiority of the Kent Mare over all the other Bellfounders, and it may account for the superiority of Hambletonian over all other stallions.

BELLFOUNDER (BROWN’S OR KISSAM’S), was a bay horse, foaled 1830, got by imported Bellfounder; dam Lady Alport, by Mambrino, son of Messenger; grandam by Tippoo, son of Messenger; great-grandam by imported Messenger. With such breeding he should have been a great horse. He was bred by Timothy T. Kissam, of Long Island, and sold along with a full brother one year younger, named Bellport, about 1834-5, to L. F. and A. B. Allen, of Buffalo, New York. Bellfounder was a bay horse, sixteen hands high, and Bellport was sixteen and one-half hands, but was poisoned and died at four years old. Bellfounder passed into the hands of some parties at Cleveland and then to Mr. Brown, of Columbus, Ohio, made most of his seasons in that portion of the State, and died September, 1860. This was altogether the most valuable son the imported horse left—indeed the only one that made any mark in the world. He was not much of a trotter and did not get trotters, but got colts that were excellent types of the coach horse, and for that purpose was very highly esteemed. Some of his sons and daughters, especially the latter, are met with sometimes in trotting records as having produced something that had more or less speed.

CONQUEROR was a bay gelding, foaled 1842, and got by La Tourrett’s Bellfounder, a grandson of the imported horse, and out of Lady McClain by imported Bellfounder, and she out of Lady Webber by Mambrino, and she out of a mare brought from Dutchess County and represented to be a daughter of imported Messenger. This gelding had been pounded about in slow races for years and had the reputation of being a stayer. In 1853 a match was made with him to trot a hundred miles in nine hours. The race was started and the horse won in 8h. 55m. and 53s., and he died three or four days afterward. This is the only instance that I know of in which the advocates of Hackney blood can point to a trotting record made in this or indeed in any other country.

In closing the account of this family—for out of courtesy we have called it a “family”—we find we have nothing left but a name with nothing in it. The name that was more widely known than that of any other horse of his generation has now practically ceased from the earth, with nobody so poor as to do it reverence.

The type of horse now known as the “Hackney” is found chiefly in the shires bordering the northeastern coast of England—Norfolk, Lincoln and Yorkshire. The name now given is not only new but it is appropriate and applies to any one part of England as well as another, and applies to any one horse, suited to the general use of a Hack, as well as another, no difference what his blood or what his country. The name “Norfolk Trotter” fifty or a hundred years ago was often applied to horses of this type coming from that part of the country, but it did not follow that they were “trotters.” In the discussions of the association preceding the adoption of a name it was urged that the qualifying word “trotter” would imply the ability to trot fast, and as the material to be registered could not do this, it would subject the whole movement to ridicule and contempt. It was also urged that the name “Norfolk” would give that particular region an advantage over all other parts of England in the prospective sales of registered stock, and thus the old title was fully disposed of. When the name “cob” was suggested, it was conceded that it represented just what they had, but it was too common, as everybody in all England, rich and poor, had “cobs.” Then came the term “Hackney,” which meant the same kind of a horse as the cob, but as it was not in such universal use it was adopted. On this point it must be admitted that it is an honest name.

The Hackney is a good horse for all the uses to which he is adapted. He is short on his legs and stout, with a good share of nervous energy. He is symmetrical, and, we might say, handsome, if we can use that word without any show of fine breeding, for he is far short of the ideal blood horse. But he is not a saddle horse, he is not a hunter, he is not a runner, and he is not a trotter. As against these desirable and useful qualifications, he has been bred and trained when in action to jerk up his limbs to the highest point anatomically possible, and put them down again with a thud at a point but little removed from where he started. In this showy, undesirable action he exhausts his nervous energy, pounding the earth without covering much of the distance. In this excessive knee action every element of easy, graceful and rapid progression is wanting. This fad will have its day and then along with the barbarous excision of the caudal appendage they will disappear together as they came, and we will know them no more forever.

There are two points in advocating the merits of the Hackney with which every Englishman is thoroughly familiar and which he will call to your attention on the slightest provocation: (1) Bellfounder was a Hackney and it was his blood that gave us the greatest trotting sire that the world has ever produced. This is the Englishman’s estimate of Bellfounder when he has a Hackney for sale, and especially if the prospective purchaser be an American. (2) He is descended from a long line of distinguished trotters. To the first of these reiterated and parrot-like claims an answer will be found in the chapter relating to that horse, where his twenty-one years of stud service have been carefully considered, and where he is shown to have been a monumental failure. In the second claim there is some truth and we must consider it very briefly.

Of all the elements entering into the families of horses locally and indefinitely called Norfolk Trotters, there were two that might be looked upon as the founders—Useful Cub and Shales—for they were more conspicuous and valuable than any others. Mr. John Lawrence was not only a practical horseman, but he was the most intelligent and reliable of all the writers on the horse in the latter part of the last century. He was the only one who gave any attention to the trotter and trotting affairs. He says: “To old Shales and Useful Cub the Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk are indebted for their fame in the production of capital Hackneys.” Useful Cub was bred by Thomas Jenkinson, of Long Sutton in Lincolnshire, and was foaled about 1865-70, and was got by a Suffolk cart horse, doubtless a light weight, and his dam was by Golden Farmer, a son of the famous half-bred Sampson, that was the great-grandsire of Messenger and beat most of the best horses of his day. Mr. Lawrence knew Useful Cub well, and was beaten by him in Hyde Park. We have no details of this horse’s performances, but it seems to be conceded that he trotted fifteen, sixteen and seventeen miles in the hour. Old Shales, or Scott’s Shales, as he is sometimes called, is described by Lawrence as “the bastard son of Blank,” son of Godolphin Arabian, but Mr. Euren, the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book maintains that he was the son of Blaze and not the son of Blank. The reasons given for this change I do not remember, but they would have to be well founded before I could throw overboard the contemporaneous evidence of Mr. Lawrence. It will not do to say that Mr. Lawrence mistook the name Blaze for Blank and so wrote it by mistake, for he knew all about both horses. This distinction, however, is of but little practical value. The horses Shales and Useful Cub were both fast and successful trotters, in their day, and they both became distinguished sires of trotters. By this I do not mean that they were the sires of all the trotters, for there were many that were wholly unknown in their breeding.

Judging from the numbers of leading contests that were reported in the Sporting Magazine and other publications, we must conclude that trotting contests reached their height as well in numbers as in public interest about the last decade in the last century. The contests were all to saddle, on the road, and the leading ones were made under the watch and over a long distance of ground, specifying such or such a distance to be made inside of an hour. To form a correct estimate of the speed of those horses, I will copy one paragraph, entire, from the description given by Mr. Lawrence concerning his own mare Betty Bloss:

“My own brown mare, known by the name of Betty Bloss, was the slowest of all the capital trotters, but at five years old trotted fifteen miles in one hour, carrying fourteen stone, although fairly mistress of no more than ten. She afterward trotted sixteen miles within the hour, with ten stone, with much ease to herself and her rider. She was nearly broken down at four years old, had bad feet, and, besides, too much blood for a trotter, having been got by Sir Hale’s Commoner, out of a three-part-bred daughter of Rattle, son of Snip.”

In this paragraph, from the best-informed man of his generation, it will be noted incidentally that the cry, “no more running blood in the trotter,” is not new, but more than a hundred years old. The best performances were about sixteen miles in the hour, but there was an occasional one that reached sixteen and a half. A black gelding called Archer was recognized as the fastest of that period, and on one occasion under a stop watch he trotted the second one of two miles in a little less than three minutes. From my gleanings I find but a single instance from which we might be able to approximate the money value of trotting horses of that day, and this is given as a phenomenal price, viz., Marshland Shales, a paternal grandson of the original Shales and out of a mare by Hue and Cry. He had beaten Reed’s Driver in a match of seventeen miles for 200 guineas. He was foaled 1802 and in 1812 he was sold at auction for 3,051 guineas—$15,255. He was a great horse, but this price was just as startling to Englishmen of that day as the $105,000 was in our own day, when Axtell was sold. This seems to have been the culmination of the “boom” in Norfolk Trotters, and from then till the present there has been a steady deterioration in the trotting step of the Norfolk horse. In the earlier part of this period of eighty or ninety years, possibly some exceptions may be found, but they are only individual exceptions and do not controvert the broad fact that must be apparent to all observers. They had been breeding and training their horses to strike their chins with their knees—the up-and-down motion—instead of getting away and covering some ground in their action. I have stood and watched scores of them in the show-ring, on their native heath, with their grooms at the ends of long lines running and yelling like wild Indians to rouse up their horses, and they called this training the trotters. When I privately expressed the wish that saddles might be put on a few of the best and the ring cleared so that the trotting action might be studied, I was very kindly and politely assured that they did not show their trotters that way in England. Thus with the taut check-rein, the long leading-line and the whoops of the groom they got the up-and-down action upon the perfection of which the prizes were awarded. This explained why the splendid foundation of a breed had been lost by non-use and why England had produced no trotters in the past fifty or eighty years.

While our English cousins know they have no trotting horses of their own they seem to be exceedingly anxious, possibly for commercial reasons, to make it appear that the American trotting horse is the lineal descendant of the Norfolk Trotter. This effort is not restricted to the idle twaddle about Bellfounder, which everybody on this side of the Atlantic estimates at its true value, but it has taken an official and wider range, which, trifling though it be, my duty as a historian impels me to expose. Mr. Henry P. Euren, the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, wrote to the Commissioner of Agriculture, at Washington, D. C., in 1888, taking exceptions to some conclusions reached in an article written by Mr. Leslie E. Macleod, in my office, on “The National Horse of America,” and published in the report of the Department of Agriculture for 1887; Mr. Euren claiming that the American trotting horse came originally from Norfolk, in England. In proof of this he says: “I beg to inclose you a cutting which confirms my idea.” And now for the “cutting” which he offers as proof:

“It appears from an Act of Parliament, passed December 6, 1748, in the Legislature of the State of New Jersey, America, that on and after the publication of this Act, all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain, or for any sum or sums of money at any time (excepting such times as are hereafter expressly provided for by this Act), shall be and are hereby declared public nuisances, provided always that at all fairs that are or may be held within this province, and that on the first working day after the three great festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, etc., etc.”

The act passed by the provincial legislature of the colony of New Jersey in 1748 embraced very stringent regulations against dice, lotteries, etc., as well as horse racing. It is divided into several sections, and at Section 4 we reach the provision against racing as follows:

“And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that after the publication of this Act, all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain, or for any sum or sums of money at any time (excepting such times as are hereafter expressly provided for and allowed by this Act), shall be and are hereby declared public nuisances, and shall be prosecuted as public nuisances, in manner hereinbefore directed. Provided always, and it is the true intent and meaning of this Act, that at all fairs that are or may be held within this province, and that on the first working day after the three grand festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, etc., etc.”

These quotations are sufficiently extended to afford an unmistakable comparison, and on their face evidence that cannot be doubted for one moment that they both purport to be copied from the same act of the Jersey Colonial legislature. In the official printed copy which is before me as I write, the mandate is against “all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain.” In Mr. Euren’s “cutting” the mandate is against “all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain,” etc. The substitution of the word “Norfolk” instead of “horse racing,” is in the nature of a forgery, and I cannot believe that Mr. Euren would be guilty of any such execrable piece of trickery. It must have been conceived and written by some horse sharp who was trying to sell a Hackney to an American with a pocket full of money, and after he had effected his sale he could mutter quietly, when at a safe distance from his victim, the couplet from “Hudibras:”

“The paltry story is untrue And forged to cheat such gulls as you.”

Unfortunately, however, for Mr. Euren, he indorsed the trick, and not only indorsed it, but sent it to the Commissioner of Agriculture with the hope and possible expectation that it would receive public recognition and become part of the horse history of this country. Did he not know that somebody would be nosing round among the old laws and expose the dirty deception? But, on the basis that Mr. Euren was deceived by this wretched interpolation of a fraud into the law, could he not see that the date of the law—1748—was before old Shales or Useful Cub was foaled, and long before the very first “Norfolk trotter” was ever heard of either in Norfolk or in any other part of England?

The exposure of this foolish attempt, wherever it originated, to incorporate into an old New Jersey statute a fiction, or a forgery, as it may be called, carries with it a punishment that should be felt by the most unscrupulous of horse sharps; but when we find it unequivocally indorsed and given to the world as true by the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, it destroys all confidence in the accuracy and reliability of that work. This is a misfortune that the friends of the Hackney in England as well as in this country must feel as a blow at the value of the whole interest. Opinions may change with new light, and opposing conclusions may be honestly reached from different standpoints, but running against a fixed and certain date, as in this case, is like running against a two-edged sword.

In conclusion, the Hackney is merely the dear-bought and far-fetched fashion of the hour. A few years ago he was “something new in horses,” just as the modiste has “something new in dresses.” He was found in England, where there are no flies, without a tail, and as that was the fashion in England we must have horses in America without tails, notwithstanding the millions of torments they have to endure without the natural means of defense. As hack-a-bouts they are good horses, but their “churn-dasher” style of action will never become acceptable to the American people.

A few years since a quite persistent attempt, backed by unlimited wealth and all the prestige that metropolitan “fashion” and “society” could bestow, was made, particularly in New York, to create a Hackney “boom” in America. All that element in the social life of our great cities that affects a disdain for things distinctively American, and particularly for American horses, and that glories in the stultifying habit of aping things “English, ye know,” took up the Hackney fad with unbounded enthusiasm. As a park and road horse the American horse—the incomparable trotting-bred driver—was to be incontinently crowded out of the driveways, the markets and the shows. The National Horse Show Association, whose annual show at Madison Square Garden is the great social fête of the year in New York, lent all its powerful influence to forward the Hackney “boom,” which was, it must in fairness be said, consistent; for the miscalled National Horse Show has always catered more to foreign horses and foreign customs in horsemanship than to American horses and horsemen. Men of great wealth and prominence established extensive Hackney studs, imported famous prize-winning stallions and mares, and there was only one thing left to be done, and that was to convert the American people to the belief that the driving horse they had been breeding and developing with a special purpose and care—the fleetest and most versatile harness horse in the world—was inferior to an imported nondescript. In that attempt the Hackney advocates have failed in America as completely as did Mr. Blunt and others in England, when they sought to make racing men believe that the Arab was a better race horse than the English thoroughbred.

Perhaps nothing illustrates better what I have called the versatility of the trotter than this contest with the Hackney in the latter’s own especial field—if he may be said to have any. Of course there could be no contest between the horse of a special breed and the nondescript as a harness horse for speed or usefulness on the road, whether the distance were half a mile or a hundred miles; but in the show-ring the Hackney men claimed absolute pre-eminence for their “high-acting” horses. They did not dare contest with the trotter in the matter of road speed, so to have any contest at all the trotting horse men had to “carry the war into Africa.” This they have done with a vengeance. They have taken the pure-bred trotting horse, dressed him in the fashion dictated by the Hackney “faddists,” taught him the Hackney tricks, the preposterous Hackney action and all that, and have beaten the Hackneys not once but time and again right on their own ground, viz., at the National Horse Show in Madison Square Garden. In almost all cases in classes where trotters have been admitted to compete with Hackneys, the former have carried off the honors within the past two years. Many notable instances might be cited, but one will suffice. At the National Horse Show, 1896, a class was offered for “half-bred Hackneys,” sires to be shown with four of their get. The Hackney end of the argument was upheld by Mr. A. J. Cassatt’s renowned prize-winner, imported Cadet, with four of his get. Against him was entered the well-known trotting sire Almont Jr., 2:26, with four of his get, and though the judges were gentlemen identified more or less with the Hackney interest, so superior in form, action and style were the four youngsters by the trotting sire that they carried away the honors from the chosen progeny of one of the most noted Hackney show horses in the world.

In the sale ring this verdict has been corroborated. The highest prices—the record figures—paid in the fashionable New York market for park horses, “high steppers,” or by whatever name the merely spectacular harness horse may from time to time be called, have been paid for trotting-bred horses: and in advertised sales of “Hackneys” it has become somewhat common to encounter half-trotting-bred and full-trotting-bred horses.

While no genuine American and horseman can without regret see a typical American horse mutilated and his action perverted in the manner required to bring him into “Hackney” classes at the National Horse Show, or in the markets where New York society people buy their stub-tailed horses, it is some compensation to know that these experiments have demonstrated the superiority of the American-bred horse even in the field claimed as especially that of the Hackney. And the Hackney “fad” in America, while it lasted, accomplished a good end in so far as it directed the attention of American breeders more to the importance of form and style, and taught them that in their own trotting families they have the material from which may best be produced, in form and style and quality as well as in speed, pre-eminently the most excellent park horses in the world.

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XXIX. INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES

Tendency to misrepresentation—The Bald Galloway and Darley Arabian— Godolphin Arabian—Early experiences with trotting pedigrees—Mr. Backman’s honest methods—Shanghai Mary—Capt. Rynders and Widow Machree—Woodburn Farm and its pedigree methods—Victimized by “horse sharps” and pedigree makers—Alleged pedigree of Pilot Jr. conclusively overthrown—Pedigrees of Edwin Forrest, Norman, Bay Chief and Black Rose—Maud S.’s pedigree exhaustively considered—Captain John W. Russell never owned the mare Maria Russell—The deadly parallel columns settle it.

A few years more than forty have slipped away since I first began to give serious attention to the subject of horse history and to contribute an occasional article to the press on that subject. Among my very earliest observations, or I might say, experiences, was the realization of the fact that exaggeration as a habit of thought and utterance was practically universal among horsemen. Sometimes I have thought this tendency to the untrue resulted from the ammoniacal exhalations of the stable, but this thought is not a satisfactory solution, for some of the greatest liars about horses have never known anything about stables. Then, again, I have thought that a really skillful metaphysician might write a learned disquisition of the question and satisfy himself as to the cause of this moral delinquency, but nobody would be able to understand him when he had completed it. This wretched vice, so prevalent everywhere, was not restricted to the professional country “hoss jockey,” ready to “swap” with every man he met on the road, but it reached up to men of otherwise excellent character, and these men would “stretch the blanket” tremendously about the blood and other qualities of the horses they were selling. The only way we can account for an otherwise honest and truthful man exaggerating the merits and blood of his horses must be (1) in the fact that he has become attached to him and thinks him better than he is, or it may be (2) that he bought with a false pedigree and without examining it, he assumes it is true and represents it accordingly. But underlying all this, the representation cannot be disproved, and (3) it may add to the market value of the horse.

This weakness of human nature, so pervasive of all interests connected with the horse, did not originate in this country, but came from the old world. We inherit it from our ancestors. “The fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Take the case of the little bald-faced, pacing-bred horse known in the old records as “The Bald Galloway” and while it is not probable he had a single drop of Saracenic blood in his veins, he is fitted out with a grand pedigree, full of that blood. Although I have already referred to this horse as an exemplification of the dishonesty of the early records of English pedigrees, I will again look at it in a more specific manner. He was nothing more nor less than a little native horse, belonging to a tribe of noted pacers in the southwestern part of Scotland and in the northern part of England. These Galloways were probably the very last remnant of pacers to be found in Great Britain. He is represented in the books to have been by a horse called “St. Victor’s Barb;” dam by Whynot; grandam a Royal Mare. The Bald Galloway was foaled not later than 1708, and it was probably a few years earlier. His reputed sire, “St. Victor’s Barb,” is not to be found anywhere and was probably fictitious. His dam was represented to be by Whynot, and this horse was not foaled till 1744—thirty-six years after his grandson was foaled. The grandam is given as a “Royal Mare,” which in that day was a convenient way of rounding out a pedigree, just as we now attempt to round them out when we know nothing of the blood by saying “dam thoroughbred.” “The Bald Galloway” was one of the most successful stallions of his day, and yet he was nothing in the world but a good representative of the old pacing Galloways of that portion of Scotland then called Galloway. He was low in stature, but he was esteemed as one of the greatest and most valuable racing sires of his generation. One of his sons—the Carlisle Gelding—was still a race horse when he was eighteen years old.

“The Darley Arabian” was contemporaneous with the Bald Galloway, and they commenced service in England about the same year. It is said he was brought from Aleppo, in Syria, or, perhaps I had better say Asia Minor. Aleppo is but a short distance from the borders of ancient Cappadocia and Cilicia, countries that were famous in history for the great numbers of fine horses that they produced far more than a thousand years before the first horse was taken to Arabia. This horse is called an “Arabian,” and in the brief record of his importation we have the same venerable “chestnut” served up to us that has served so many generations of speculators in “Arabian blood.” The record says that Mr. Darley had a brother who was an agent for merchandise abroad, who “became a member of a hunting club, by which means he acquired interest to procure this horse.” This “gag” has been played too often to give éclat to horses claimed to be brought from Arabia, in the past two hundred years, to have much effect on the minds of people who have any sense. That it required great social or political influence to induce the old Arab sheik to part with him, was intended merely to secure the attention of prospective customers to his superlative excellence in order to obtain their patronage. This horse probably never was within five hundred miles of the nearest part of Arabia, and to call him an Arabian is a misnomer wholly unjustifiable. He came from a country where horses were abundant and cheap on all sides, and of a quality far superior to any Arabian. He was simply a Turk, he was for sale, and it required no influence to buy him except the contents of the purchaser’s purse. This horse has always been classed as one of the two great founders of the English race horse. His progeny from well-bred mares were not numerous, and his greatest distinction is in the fact that he was the sire of Flying Childers. In accordance with the truth, he should be known in the records as “Darley’s Turk.”

The horse bearing the dishonest misnomer of “Godolphin Arabian” was really the greatest regenerator and upbuilder of the running horse that England ever possessed. There seems to be no historical doubt that he was brought from France, and that is all we know about his origin and early history. It may be laid down, therefore, as a safe proposition, that the odds are as a thousand to one that he was a French horse. The only evidence that can ever be furnished as to the strain of blood that he may have possessed must be found and studied in his portrait, which appears in this volume. I believe this portrait to be a correct and true delineation of the horse, and there is not a single lineament in or about it that indicates the blood of either the Arabian or the Barb. His pedigree is in his picture, and, from what is known in history and from what has been preserved in art, instead of “Godolphin Arabian” his true title should be “Godolphin Frenchman.” But this subject has been discussed at greater length in the chapter on the English Race Horse, to which my reader is here referred.

In the chapter on the American Race Horse, I think sufficient attention has been given to the frauds and impossibilities that are to be found everywhere in the extended pedigrees of our own running horses to satisfy any one that the remote extensions of pedigrees are a great mass of dishonest rubbish, with scarcely a speck of truth to be found. I will, therefore, pass along to the consideration of some of the difficulties, of the same nature, that have been developed in investigating and recording the pedigrees of the American Trotting Horse. In entering the untrodden wilderness of trotting-horse history it became the ambition of my life to reach the truth in every possible instance and to cut off and reject all frauds wherever they showed their heads. This meant war from the beginning with a great many horsemen, but it also meant the enthusiastic support of a great many honest men. The trouble, at this point, was in the fact that a number of prominent, wealthy and influential breeders insisted upon their right to state their pedigrees in their own way and thus compel me to indorse them by inserting them in the Trotting Register. When at work on the early volumes of the Register, especially the first, if a man of unblemished reputation and intelligence sent me a list of his stock to be registered, I assumed that he had too much regard for his reputation and standing as a breeder to print a lot of pedigrees in his catalogue that he did not know to be correct, and hence I accepted many a pedigree that was based upon fiction. In course of time it began to dawn upon my understanding that there were many men in the world of unsullied reputation, as they were known in their business relations, who would stand up boldly for a fiction or a fraud in the pedigrees of their stock. It is but just to say that all the men who uttered fraudulent pedigrees were not equally guilty, for in some cases the owners had been victimized by unscrupulous rogues from whom they had purchased, and in others they had been betrayed by the still more unscrupulous rogues whom they had employed to make up their catalogues on the supposition that they were capable and honest. This state of things soon developed another line of thought and observation in my mind which evolved a rule by which I could determine the difference between the degrees of honesty among horsemen. One man, when a fiction in a pedigree was pointed out, would go to work and carefully investigate it; while another would hang and higgle about it and finally investigate, not to find the truth, but to find how many old rummies, swipes and negroes he could get together, who would support his claim and swear to it for a half-dollar each. The first man investigates to find the truth wherever it may lead; while the second man investigates merely, not to find the truth, but to find some kind of evidence to sustain the untruth. In the everyday affairs of life these two men may stand on the same plane, but, at heart, the one is honest and the other a rogue.

When Mr. Charles Backman founded the great Stonyford breeding farm in Orange County, New York, he was an excellent horseman, in a general sense, although he did not pretend to know much about pedigrees. About 1869 he placed all his pedigrees in my hands with the request that I would give them a careful examination, strike out everything that was wrong and note everything that was doubtful or uncertain, that it might be investigated and the truth fully determined, no difference where it might lead. Many investigations followed which were conducted by his secretary, Mr. Shipman, either by mail or by personal visitation—so many, indeed, that Mr. Shipman became quite an expert in this kind of difficult work. As an illustration of the methods pursued, one instance will serve to show how it was done, and more than this, it is a very interesting history in itself. In the first volume of the Register I had entered Green Mountain Maid, the dam of the famous Electioneer and all that family, as “by Harry Clay, dam said to be by Lexington.” This was the form in which Mr. Backman had received the pedigree, except that it was stated positively and without any “said to be” that the dam was by Lexington, the great running horse. After a time I called Mr. Backman’s attention to this “said to be” and suggested that if the mare was really a daughter of Lexington she could certainly be traced and established. The next day, Mr. Shipman started to Western New York and to Ohio. On his trip he found the mare had been known in Western New York as the “Angelica Mare” and afterward as “Shanghai Mary,” that she was a trotter, well known locally, and that she had trotted a race and won at a State fair, in very fast time for that day. She had been brought from Ohio by some sheep-dealers, who were able to give her exact age, and it was thus found that she was older than her reputed sire. Several expert horsemen, from a picture secured by Mr. Shipman on his trip, have not hesitated to give it as a strong conviction that she belonged to the Cadmus family, in Southern Ohio. In the last two or three years a correspondent of the Chicago Horse Review brings out some local facts that make it almost morally certain that she was bred by Goldsmith Coffein, of Red Lion, Ohio, and that she was got by Iron’s Cadmus, the sire of the great Pocahontas. The final nail has not been clinched in establishing this pedigree, and probably never will be, but the circumstances are so fully detailed as to scarcely leave room for a doubt that she was a half-sister to the famous Pocahontas.

From what has here been said about the methods of Mr. Backman, the leading breeder of that period, in the North, it should not be inferred that all Northern breeders were like him. The first real battle I ever had against fraudulent pedigrees originated in Orange County, New York, with the notorious Captain Rynders, in which the pedigree of the once famous Widow Machree, the dam of Aberdeen, was involved. The pedigree of this mare had been registered as obtained from Mr. James W. Hoyt, who once owned her, and her dam was given as by Durland’s Messenger Duroc. When Aberdeen came before the public for patronage, his owner, Rynders, advertised him as out of Widow Machree and she out of a mare by Abdallah. This was challenged as untrue by Mr. Guy Miller and Mr. Joseph Gavin, of Orange County, and I was called upon to demand the evidence upon which the change had been made from Messenger Duroc to Abdallah. As a matter of course “the fat was in the fire” at once, and out came Rynders with a terrific explosion of anger, abounding in threats and denunciations against anybody and everybody who attempted to interfere with his “business.” The good names of Guy Miller and Joseph Gavin carried too much weight as against that of Isaiah Rynders, and, as his last card, he brought out a duly and formally executed affidavit, sworn to by a man whose name I will not here mention, stating that he bred the Abdallah mare; all of which was the very rankest perjury, which was so easily exposed that it did Rynders far more harm than good. At last the whole truth came out in a form that was complete and conclusive, showing that the mare in question was bred by Garrett Duryea, of Bethel, Sullivan County, New York, and was got by a horse known as Pintler’s Bolivar. Rynders had been a leader in New York politics so long that he knew just how to manage things where the truth must be suppressed. He was a liberal advertiser, the two sporting papers were needy for patronage in that line, and their columns were closed to any and all communications against his side of the question. But all this failed to suppress the truth and uphold a fraud, and I doubt whether there is a man living to-day who does not believe that the fight was fairly and honestly won. This contest taught me a very important lesson, and that was, that if I expected to fight bogus pedigrees I must have a channel of communication of my own. Hence Wallace’s Monthly, which, in its day, was not only able to expose bogus pedigrees, but lead intelligent thought and experience on all breeding subjects, till it fell into the hands of an unscrupulous neocracy, where it soon died for want of brains.

Having given a very brief illustration of the methods which governed Mr. Backman in ascertaining and determining the blood elements which entered into the foundation of his great breeding establishment, and the care and promptness with which errors were eliminated, it is now in order to take a glance at the methods pursued at the great Woodburn Farm, founded by R. A. Alexander in Kentucky. These were the two earliest establishments, of any prominence, for breeding the trotter, in the whole country. The one was the northern center of the interest and the other the southern, and they together may be considered as representative of both sections. Mr. Alexander, I think, was reared and educated in Scotland, and there inherited a large estate. Upon coming into this inheritance he determined to transfer his interests to Kentucky, where he bought up a cluster of farms and shaped them for the purpose of building up a mammoth establishment for the breeding of all varieties of domestic animals of the highest type and excellence. I think his fancy ran more to Short Horn cattle than to any other line of breeding, probably because he knew more about the value and merit of the different tribes of that breed than he did of any other variety. The founding of an establishment so immense, and for the grand purpose of the breeding and improving the varieties of domestic animals, was the agricultural sensation of the period, and everybody, from one end of the land to the other, soon knew of and applauded the great enterprise. There had been great enterprises on similar lines before, and there have been even greater ones since, but Mr. Alexander’s Woodburn Farm, of Kentucky, may always be looked upon as the real pioneer in stock breeding on a large and methodical scale, and without limit as to resources. A university education in Scotland, with all its training in the refinements of logical distinctions, did not bring to Mr. Alexander a knowledge of the pedigrees of Kentucky horses, nor did it train him in the detection of the tricks of Kentucky horse dealers, and thus as a purchaser of his breeding stock he was looked upon by the “sharps” as a fat goose, ready to be plucked. After these “sharps” had secured their pluckings, Mr. Alexander called in a professional pedigreeist to put the lines of the blood he had purchased in order and print a catalogue. This “professional” was not a pedigree tracer, for he never traced anything in his life, but a pedigree maker, and wherever he thought that anything was needed he added it, whether true or not, and it went to the world in that form. This is more conspicuously true in the department of trotting pedigrees, as will appear below. Thus the acts of an incapable and dishonest employee were given the indorsement of an honorable and eminent name; falsehoods were made to appear as truths; counterfeits were put in circulation that are still circulating as genuine coin, with many people. Under the circumstances, Mr. Alexander could hardly be blamed, for, knowing nothing of such matters of his own knowledge, he employed what he supposed was the best authority then to be found. For my own part, when I came to register the Woodburn stock, I was ready to accept as true whatever I found in the catalogue, believing that Mr. Alexander was incapable of publishing to the world a misrepresentation. In this estimate of his character I was right, and I have never changed my opinion on that point, but when I came to examine the structure of his catalogue I found there was rotten wood all through it. A few examples that have been carefully investigated will serve to show the value of the work done by the “pedigree maker” for Mr. Alexander.

Pilot Jr. was a gray horse, foaled 1844, was got by Old Pacing Pilot and attained the distinction of being the head of a well-known family of trotters. He was foaled 1844, bred by Angereau Gray, and owned a number of years by Glasgow & Heinsohn, of Louisville, Kentucky. He was kept a number of years about Lexington, Kentucky, by Dr. Herr, Mr. Bradley, and perhaps others, and always advertised as “by Pilot (the pacer), dam Nancy Pope, grandam Nancy Taylor.” Nobody then ever pretended to know what horse was the sire of either Nancy Pope or Nancy Taylor. He was then owned by the parties who afterward sold him to Mr. Alexander, and it is evident they did not then know anything about the sires of these mares. Mr. Alexander bought him in 1858, and immediately his “pedigree maker” furnished the sires of these two mares; Nancy Pope was given as by Havoc, son of Sir Charles, and Nancy Taylor as by imported Alfred. The controversy about this pedigree was long and sharp, the one side, headed by the modern management at Woodburn, as usual laboring to sustain the infallibility of the Woodburn catalogues, and the other to reach the exact truth, whatever it might be. The Board of Censors of the National Breeders’ Association sent out a call for information on certain abstract points and finally reached a decision as follows: (1) That Havoc, the reputed sire of Nancy Pope, the dam of Pilot Jr., died in 1828. (2) That Nancy Pope was not foaled till 1832. (3) That the breeding of Nancy Taylor, the dam of Nancy Pope, was unknown. These dates were fixed by undoubted evidence, and, as afterward developed, another might have been added with equal authenticity. Imported Alfred, the reputed sire of Nancy Taylor, was not imported till several years after Nancy Taylor was foaled, and thus it was clearly shown by the absolutely insuperable difficulties of dates that both the sires inserted in the pedigree were nothing more than very stupid fictions.

Edwin Forrest seems to have held second place in the list of stallions in the Woodburn Stud at that period, and the remote extensions of his pedigree were also fictitious. His grandam was represented to be by Duroc, the famous son of imported Diomed, and his great-grandam by imported Messenger. The first two crosses were technically inaccurately stated, but the second two, as given here, were purely fictitious.

Norman, the third stallion in the catalogue, had his sire correctly given as the Morse Horse, but his dam was given as by Jersey Highlander and his grandam as by Bishop’s Hambletonian, son of Messenger, both of which were wholly fictitious. His dam was by a horse called Magnum Bonum, a representative of a family of that name, and that is all that is known of his pedigree. A full showing of this pedigree will be found in the “Trotting Register,” Vol. III.

Bay Chief was a bay son of Mambrino Chief, with a bald face, and was often called Bald Chief. He was the sensational trotter of the whole Mambrino Chief family, and I believe it is true that when four years old he showed a half-mile on Mr. Alexander’s track in 1:08 and repeated in 1:08½. In the catalogue he is given as foaled in 1859, got by Mambrino Chief, dam by Keokuk, son of imported Truffle; grandam a thoroughbred mare by Stamboul Arabian. As this was found in Mr. Alexander’s catalogue I took it for granted it must be true, but I never had heard of a running horse called Keokuk before, and I kept hunting for ever so many years without finding hide nor hair of him, until 1885, when the whole mystery was developed. Mr. Richard Johnson, of Scott County, Kentucky, had business interests in Keokuk, Iowa, in the early fifties, probably locating land warrants, and he bought a pair of mares in Keokuk to travel over the prairies, and when he was through with his work he brought the team home with him to Scott County. He knew nothing whatever of the breeding of those mares, but they were a good pair of drivers and one of them was quite a smart roadster that he called “Old Keokuk.” He bred this mare, Keokuk, in 1858 to Mambrino Chief, and in 1859 she produced the colt called Bay Chief. In 1862 he was bred to some sixteen or eighteen mares, and the fall of that year Mr. Alexander bought the colt at public auction, paying one thousand dollars for him. He was taken to Woodburn, put in training and never covered any more mares. In the spring of 1865 he was killed in a raid of Southern troops upon the horse stock at Woodburn. (For further particulars of this little sketch the reader is referred to Wallace’s Monthly for 1885, page 285.) To fix up a pedigree for the maternal side of this colt was no easy matter, but Mr. Alexander’s “pedigree maker” proved himself fully equal to the occasion. There was the nasty name Keokuk fastened to the old mare, and it would stick as tight as wax to the end of her days, coming from a region where there was no drop of running blood; so he made a “thoroughbred” horse, right on the spot, and gave him the name of Keokuk, which would account for the name of the mare, and pronounced him a son of imported Truffle. To supply a “thoroughbred” grandam was comparatively easy, for Mr. Johnson had long been a resident of Scott County, and the horse Stamboul had been kept in that county, hence there could be no doubt that she was a “thoroughbred” daughter of that horse. With this review of the misfortunes of Mr. Alexander in placing the arrangement and, I might say, care of his pedigrees, in dishonest hands, we will pass whatever may remain of his early stallions, and take a glance at some of the pedigrees of his brood mares.

Black Rose proved to be one of the best brood mares ever owned at Woodburn. I am told she was a pacer, and certainly all that is known of her blood was pacing blood. She was sought after and procured by Mr. Alexander because she had produced several trotters, and it can be read all through his purchases for the trotting stud, that he had undoubting confidence in the theory that trotters must come from trotters. When this mare first appeared in the Woodburn catalogue no dam was given to her, but meantime the “pedigree maker” had come around, and the next year she was fitted out with the following, in fine style.

“Black Rose, bl. m., foaled about 1847; got by Tom Teemer; dam by Cannon’s Whip; g. d. by Robin Gray, son of imp. Royalist.”

The pedigree stood in this form a number of years, and probably would still be so standing had it not been that in trying to learn something more about the sire, Tom Teemer, I received some intimations that made me doubtful about the maternal side. On a certain occasion I asked Mr. R. S. Veech, of Kentucky, what he knew about it, and he replied that he had made a trip to Clark County for no other purpose than to trace and investigate the pedigree of Black Rose, and he was not able to get a single syllable of information about her dam, any more than if she never had a dam. Some time afterward I wrote to Mr. Brodhead, manager at Woodburn, inquiring where the pedigree of Black Rose as given and perpetuated in the Woodburn catalogues came from and on what basis it rested. He replied promptly and briefly that Mr. Veech had made a trip to Clark County in search of this pedigree and the result of that search was what appeared in the catalogue. These are the facts, substantially, as given me by these two gentlemen, and this is the first time I have ever given them to the public. I have known Mr. Veech intimately and trustingly for twenty-eight years and I know him to be eminently truthful. I have not known Mr. Brodhead so long, and if he had not published the fraudulent extension of this pedigree in his catalogues every year for more than ten years, before Mr. Veech made his trip to Clark County, I might at least express my sympathy with him in having so bad a memory. Mr. Brodhead had nothing to do with either the original construction or utterance of this fraud, for he was not then connected with the management of Woodburn. My readers can employ their own terms in characterizing, as it deserves, the fraudulent act of manufacturing a pedigree out of whole cloth; and they can also exercise their own ethical discrimination in determining whether the man who executes the fraud is any worse than the man who maintains and supports it after he knows it is fraudulent.

We pass on to Sally Russell, the grandam of Maud S. It is not a pleasant task to review an old controversy, whatever it might bring to light; but a controversy which involves the true lines of descent of so great a family as that of Maud S., Nutwood, Lord Russell, etc., is worth preserving for the enlightenment of future generations. It all turns upon the breeding of Sally Russell and the identity of her breeder. She was a little chestnut mare, represented to have been foaled 1850, got by Boston and out of Maria Russell, by Rattler, and so on, claimed to be thoroughbred. She was bought by Mr. Alexander from the foreman on Captain John W. Russell’s farm, with the pedigree given as above. The name of her breeder was not given to Mr. Alexander, I think, but Bruce has it that her dam, Maria Russell, and this mare Sally Russell were both bred by Benjamin Luckett. In 1863 this mare was offered, with others, to the highest bidder, at Mr. Alexander’s annual sale, being then thirteen years, old according to the records of the establishment, and the auctioneer was not able to coax a bid of ten dollars on her and she was led out unsold. Five years later—1868—I attended the Woodburn sale, and a little scrubby-looking old mare was brought into the ring, represented to have been stinted to imported Australian, and when this was announced a subdued whisper went round the ring, “She’ll never raise another foal.” The auctioneer was eloquent upon the value of the Australian blood on the Boston blood, and the possibilities of the coming foal, but all to no purpose, as the mare was led out of the ring the second time, with no person willing to bid a dollar. I was astonished that such an animal should have been put up at auction, for she had all the appearance of being twenty-eight instead of eighteen. She died that summer, apparently of old age, and I have no shadow of doubt that she sank under the weight of years. On two separate occasions great crowds of practical horsemen had, in this manner, proclaimed that Mr. Alexander had been victimized in the age of the mare, and fifteen years later I determined to settle the question as to whether this judgment was right.

As the supposed age and breeding of Sally Russell has been made to turn and rest upon the ownership of her dam, Maria Russell, it is important that we should have the antecedent circumstances set out in the plainest possible manner. Captain John A. Holton and Captain John W. Russell were farmers in Kentucky, living a few miles apart, and I think they were both river men at one time or another; certainly Russell was in command of a snag boat on the Ohio and Mississippi along about 1836-40. Like many other Kentucky farmers, they both bred a few running horses, but not enough, singly, to justify the expense of separate training establishments, so they united their strings in one stable, sharing the expense and dividing the profits, if any, equally. The partnership did not extend to the joint ownership of any of the horses, but simply to the losses or profits of training and racing, and Major Benjamin Luckett was in their employ as trainer.

Before going to work in earnest on this investigation, I learned that Mr. Llewellyn Holton, a son of Captain John A. Holton, still resided on the old farm and that he was old enough to know all about the origin and history of Maria Russell, as well as the other stock belonging to his father at that time. This was very encouraging, but I wanted to know whether he was a man who could be relied upon to tell the truth. On this point I addressed an inquiry to the late Colonel R. P. Pepper, and his reply is as follows: “Your letter of the 29th received. I regard L. Holton, of this county, as a man of honor, integrity and intelligence, and the peer of any gentleman of my acquaintance. In my opinion any statement he will make upon any subject, as to his own knowledge, will be accepted in this community as readily as that of any gentleman in it. He is a man who sometimes gets on sprees from intoxicating liquors, but I have never heard of it affecting his intelligence, honor or integrity, and, as above stated, his word will be accepted in this community at this time as soon as the word of any gentleman in this county or community.”

With this very high indorsement I did not hesitate to send a commissioner to interview Mr. Holton and get from him the exact facts in the case, without any leading questions and without any shading of the truth or bias on either side. What this commissioner learned will be given further on.

Let us now turn to the other side and see how Mr. Brodhead manages to get Maria Russell into the ownership of Captain John W. Russell. Under date of April 30, 1883, he wrote to the Turf, Field and Farm as follows:

“A Colonel Shepherd, of the South—New Orleans, I think—gave or sold to Captain J. W. Russell and Captain J. A. Holton a Stockholder mare, out of Miranda, by Topgallant, etc. This mare was called Miss Shepherd. They owned and bred this mare in partnership. Among the produce thus owned were Maria Russell by Rattler, Mary Bell by Sea Gull, and Swiss Boy by imported Swiss. Captain Russell sold his half of Swiss Boy to Mr. Taylor, son-in-law of Ben Luckett, for $750. Maria Russell was owned and run as a partnership mare by Holton and Russell, but was trained by Major Ben Luckett.”

Then follows a lot of stuff, without any relevancy whatever, going to show that Ben Luckett trained her at three years old, but had no connection whatever with the family, all of which is known to everybody, and then he again asserts that “in the division of the partnership property, Maria Russell fell to Captain Russell.” The next dash that Mr. Brodhead makes is for a negro seventy-five years old, who had been in the Russell family from his birth, named Jesse Dillon. Jesse was no exception to his race, or indeed to many of the white race, for whenever any information is wanted from them they are always ready to give it, as they expect at least one half-dollar, and if they tell the story “right up to what is wanted” they expect two. Jesse was sharp enough to discover just what his interviewers were after, and he was ready to supply “the long-felt want.” Jesse was able to tell just how the mare got her eye knocked out and just how he took her to Blackburn’s and had her bred to Boston. In all this, including the loss of the eye and the trip to Blackburn’s, Jesse may have had in his mind Captain Russell’s one-eyed mare, Mary Churchill, while his interviewers were thinking about Maria Russell. It is no uncommon thing for white people as well as black, at seventy-five, to get names of forty or fifty years past confused.

This is all of Mr. Brodhead’s case so far as what he presents has any relevancy to the point at issue, namely, the identity and ownership of the mare Maria Russell. The pedigree was not made at Woodburn; Mr. Alexander in this case as in many others was simply the victim of the sharper. The only shadow of evidence that has been presented that the pedigree might be true is the evidence of a superannuated negro, Jesse Dillon. For the Woodburn side of the case the reader is referred to Wallace’s Monthly for June, 1883, page 366. In replying to this case I will try to summarize the different considerations as briefly as possible.

First. The case is opened with the assumption that Colonel Shepherd presented the mare Miss Shepherd, by Stockholder, to Captain J. W. Russell and Captain J. A. Holton. We might laugh at this by asking which half he gave to Russell and which half to Holton? This is merely constructing a theory by which the ownership of Russell might be maintained. It is safe to say the mare was given to Holton and to Holton alone, and here is the proof of it. There is a silver cup, now in possession of Mr. Bowen, grandson of J. A. Holton, with this inscription: “J. A. Holton, awarded by Franklyn Agricultural Society, 1836, for filly Maria Russell.” Where is Captain J. W. Russell’s ownership at that date?

Second. When S. D. Bruce was compiling his Stud Book, Captain John W. Russell had his thoroughbred stock entered there. There were several brood mares with their produce under them, but where were Maria Russell and her daughter Sally Russell? They appear as the property of Ben Luckett, when everybody knows he had nothing to do with them. As Captain Russell did not have them entered when he was entering his other stock, I must take it as prima facie evidence that he did not own them at that time.

Third. It is now in imperishable evidence that John W. Russell did not own Maria Russell in 1836, and that he did not own her at the time Bruce was compiling his Stud Book, and now the question is, was there ever a time when he did own her? To answer this question we must turn to Llewellyn Holton, the only man then living who knew and had a right to know all about the history of this mare. His statement is as follows:

“FORKS OF ELKHORN. May 24, 1883.

“This is to certify that my father, Captain John A. Holton, was, for a number of years, interested with Captain John W. Russell in a number of thoroughbreds, and they raced them in partnership. When they dissolved and divided the stock, I am positively certain that my father retained all the descendants of the Stockholder mare—among them Maria Russell, and all her produce—and I know to my certain knowledge that Captain Russell never owned or had in his possession the mare Maria Russell, or any of her produce; and I further know to my certain knowledge that said mare, Maria Russell, had two good eyes from the time of her foaling until the day of her death. If my father bred a mare to Boston in 1848, I incline to the opinion that it was a bay mare called Limber, for the reason that she, Limber, was very uncertain, having missed several seasons. There is one point, however, that I feel very certain upon, and that is that neither my father nor Captain Russell, during their racing or breeding career, ever owned a Boston filly. As Boston was the most famous horse of his time, it is not at all possible that there could have been a Boston colt or filly on my father’s farm and I not knowing of the fact. I was born in the old homestead the 15th of November, 1820, and have resided either there or adjoining all my life; therefore I had constant opportunity to know all about my father’s stock of horses.

L. HOLTON.

“I hereby attest that the above is my father’s signature.—J. A. HOLTON, son of Llewellyn Holton.”

Fourth. With the foregoing clear and decisive statement before us, it is not necessary to determine whether the partnership between Holton and Russell embraced the joint ownership of the racing stock or whether the running colts of the two farms were brought together from year to year, and as a matter of economy and profit, trained and raced as one stable. This latter view of the question seems to be made plain. In his interview with Mr. Holton my commissioner reported as follows: “The horses were always trained by Captain Holton at his private track at the Forks of Elkhorn. That he, Llewellyn Holton, always went after the colts that were on the Russell farm when the training season commenced, and at the close of the racing campaign of the year he always took those back that came from the Russell stock, while those from Captain Holton’s stock were kept on the home farm. When the partnership between Captain Holton and Captain Russell was dissolved, Mr. Llewellyn Holton is positively certain that Captain Russell retained his own stock and Captain Holton his own, the latter consisting of the produce of the Stockholder mare, among them Maria Russell, and all her produce. And he is still more positively certain that neither the mare, Maria Russell, nor any of her produce was ever in the hands of Captain Russell.” At the close of each season the owners, respectively, took their own stock home till the next spring, and after a series of years each owner took his own stock home, and that was the end of the arrangement.

Fifth. In the summer of 1883 I met Mr. John W. Russell, son of Captain Russell, at the house of Mr. R. S. Veech, near Louisville, Kentucky, and we had some conversation on the question of the pedigree of Sally Russell, which had then been in hot controversy for some months. The subject was not a pleasant one to him and he either parried or negatived the few questions I asked. A year or two after this I met him at the Galt House in Louisville, and we had a very pleasant conversation. The controversy about Sally Russell had then subsided, and I asked him if he remembered his father’s thoroughbred mare Mary Churchill. “Oh, yes,” he said, “she was the first horse I ever rode, and my folks were very much afraid I would fall off and get hurt.” I then asked him if Mary Churchill was blind of one eye, and he answered he “could not remember.” My next question was, whether he recollected anything about Maria Russell, and his reply was: “Nothing that is definite.” Then followed the inquiry, “whether there were any traditions in the household going to show that his father ever owned Maria Russell,” and he replied: “There are no traditions that are reliable.” These replies were a most grateful surprise to me, and if I have not given the precise words used I certainly have given the precise meaning.

Sixth. Llewellyn Holton was sixty-three years old in 1883 and he was afflicted with physical paralysis, but his mind seems to have been perfectly sound and memory good for a man of his age. Before he had the slightest intimation that a pedigree was being investigated that might call him into controversy, he was asked about Maria Russell by one of the most prominent and distinguished of all the breeders of Kentucky, and that breeder wrote me as follows:

“I have seen Mr. L. Holton, the son of Captain John A. Holton, of this county, and he says his father bred and owned Maria Russell; that she was by Rattler, and out of a mare by Stockholder, and was foaled 1834. He says he thinks a man by the name of William Duvall can give some information about these mares. I will see him to-morrow, and write you.”

As this information about Maria Russell was elicited from Mr. Holton on the spur of the moment, and as he gave her pedigree correctly, and not only this, but gave the year in which she was foaled correctly, his memory, at least so far as this mare is concerned seems to have been remarkably good.

Seventh. My correspondent wrote a few days later: “I have just learned from William Duvall, who trained for Captain J. A. Holton in 1842, that he remembers the mare Maria Russell, and he thinks she was by Seagull, and out of Limber, by Whipster; he also remembers a mare owned by Holton that was by Rattler, but cannot remember any more about her.” This confirms Mr. Holton’s recollections in a very striking and satisfactory manner. As a trainer Mr. Duvall did not handle the brood mares, but only their produce. He recalled a Seagull mare and a Rattler mare, that Captain Holton owned, but he attached the name “Maria Russell” to the wrong one. This kind of impromptu inaccuracy is almost always an element of strength, for it goes to prove that the witness has not been “coached.” He remembered there was a mare by Rattler in the field, and as there was no other Rattler mare owned by either Holton or Russell, the identity of Maria Russell is clearly established as the property of Captain Holton in 1842.

Eighth. With the high indorsement of Mr. Llewellyn Holton as a man of truth and honor, given on page 421 of this chapter; and with the evidence before me of his clear and unclouded memory in giving correctly not only the pedigrees but the year in which Maria Russell was foaled, and all this before there was any pressure or suspicion on his part as to where his disclosure might lead, I cannot, as an honest man, fail to believe that he told the truth. Thus, after leaving out all the minor evidences, we have the three major points fully and clearly established, namely, (1) the inscription on the silver cup that Captain Holton owned her in 1836; (2) the evidence of William Duvall that he owned her in 1842; and (3) the statement of Llewellyn Holton that he owned her always and that she died his.

Ninth. At the Woodburn sale of 1863 and 1868 there were certainly at least two hundred experienced horsemen and breeders present who were able to discriminate concerning a mare represented to be thirteen years old when she looked ten years more; or concerning a mare represented to be eighteen years old when she looked as if she were twenty-eight. Hence, no man was willing to bid five dollars on her. This I take it, was the personal judgment of every man who thought anything about it, and when she died a few weeks after the last sale, nobody could doubt that she died of old age, and nobody could doubt that Mr. Alexander represented her to the public just as she had been represented to him, both in age and breeding, by the rogue who victimized him.

The mare Sally Russell, the grandam of Maud S., had been sold to Mr. Alexander by the foreman of Captain Russell’s farm, and it does not appear that he represented her as having been bred by Captain Russell. Indeed, it was not claimed at Woodburn that Captain Russell bred her until a representative of that establishment called at my office to examine the service books of Boston and there found that “John Russell’s one-eyed mare” had been bred in 1849. If a fraud, therefore, was established the Russell family must bear the odium. Hence all evidence from that source must be considered in the light of the fact that every member of the family is deeply interested. But notwithstanding the efforts of the Russell family to preserve the father’s name from obloquy, and notwithstanding the trip in search of some superannuated darkey who could remember anything and everything in consideration of the pour-boire that would be forthcoming, there stood that terrible statement of Llewellyn Holton that could not be met by evidence. The whole matter was against him, and Mr. Brodhead was not happy. He knew he could not prove him wrong, and the only course left open was to get him to take back certain things that he had said on the ground that his memory had failed and that the fight was between “Old Kaintuck” and outside parties who had no business to interfere with Kentucky affairs. On an appointed day, therefore, all who were supposed to have any influence with Mr. Holton, in the whole countryside, met Mr. Brodhead, and they came down on “the poor old paralytic” hammer and tongs. They asked him what he remembered about all the horses, each in his turn, in the whole neighborhood, whether he had ever heard of them before or not. This was kept up a long time, but they could not prevail on him to take back a single specific statement he had made. He had said Captain Russell had never owned Maria Russell or any of her produce, and he would not take it back. He had said Maria Russell had two good eyes when she died, and he would not take it back. At last when the poor old invalid was worn out they sprung the patriotic dodge of “Kentucky against the world” upon him and this had some effect, but not enough to save the anxious “bulldozers” from a feeling of great depression. At last Mr. Brodhead seized a pen and indited a letter for him to sign, addressed to me, with the request that I would publish it. I am not able to say how many attempts were made to get such a letter as he would be willing to sign, but several different drafts were made, and sick and worried, and in order to get rid of his tormentors, he signed, and the letter came to me, and I published it as follows:

“FORKS OF ELKHORN, June 12, 1883.

“Mr. J. H. WALLACE.

“DEAR SIR: In answer to your letter to my son, of May 21, 1883, there are three points suggested. First, in regard to her produce (Maria Russell’s). I have no recollection any further. I have no data from which I could find out concerning them. Second, I have no remembrance of her death nor the manner of it. Now, in regard to the statement I made to Mr. John K. Stringfield. I think he has made it too strong, for I told him my statement was from memory only, and that I could not nor would not swear to it. Since that time I have had sufficient proof to overbalance my memory, and circumstances called to mind that have convinced me I was in error. I simply stated what I believed to be true at that time. I have no interest in the matter whatever—only want to be understood. I trust that you will oblige me by publishing the above letter.

Yours truly,

“L. HOLTON.”

It must have been a most pitiful sight to see six or eight able-bodied men, headed by the stalwart Brodhead, acting as chief inquisitor, circling round the reclining form of a poor old invalid, trying to convince him that he had no memory and that he was a liar, prodding him with questions about horses that he never had heard of, and when he failed to tell them, torturing him with remarks that if he couldn’t answer that question how could he know so well about Maria Russell? But with all their tortures they couldn’t force him to say his father did not own Maria Russell all her life and that she did not die with two good eyes. It was simply a little Spanish Inquisition on the waters of the Elkhorn from which came the cry, “Recant, Recant,” dinged into the ears of the helpless paralytic. Still, helpless as he was against so many, he obeyed his conscience and maintained his integrity, notwithstanding all the satanic arts of Torquemada. When all else had failed the war-cry was shouted in his ear: “New York is trying to destroy the breeding interests of Kentucky, and all true Kentuckians must stand by each other or we all go under.” The old man brightened up and said: “I’m a Kentuckian, but you mustn’t try to make me a self-convicted liar.” The piece of patchwork given above, in the shape of a letter, was then shaped up by his tormentors, for the old man was not able to write a line, and dispatched to the office of Wallace’s Monthly, where it was printed just as it was received. Each one of the tormentors made a copy of it, and no one of them was satisfied with it; even the inquisitor-general said it fell far short of what they wanted, but that by industriously speaking of it as a recantation, the public would soon come to treat it as a recantation.

When, after years of fruitless effort, Mr. Brodhead, manager at Woodburn Farm, got control of registration, he made an early move to have the cloud removed from the pedigree of the stallion Lord Russell, and brought the matter before the neocracy of his own creation, of which he was himself the head and brains, and the action thereon was published in Wallace’s Monthly for February, 1893. The presentation is imposing in length and abounds in many things that have no possible bearing on the question at issue. Unfortunately I have no means of determining the extent to which the crime of the interpolation or excision has been made manifest except in two of the exhibits which I will give. In Exhibit 1 (Holton’s letter above) the following words are interpolated: “and in justice to all I correct my statement.” These words are not very important to the meaning, but they are very important as indicating the accuracy, and hence reliability, of a witness. In the same exhibit Mr. Brodhead says: “I insist that you will oblige me,” etc., while the original uses the word “trust” instead of “insist.” Again, Mr. Brodhead has his letter dated June 11, 1893, instead of June 12, 1883, as it is in the original. The variation of the dates here seems to have had a purpose, whatever it may have been. This letter must have been a great trouble, for I have seen three or four copies of it, so called, and no two of them alike.

I was duly notified that the question of Sally Russell’s pedigree would be brought up at that meeting, and requested to be there to sustain my view of that question. The court and the jury were made up of Brodhead’s creatures, and organized simply to register his edicts. The wise man said, “Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird.” The bird looked on, from a safe distance, and saw the fowler impaled in his own snare, by his own act, and his true character revealed to the world. It is very difficult to understand just why it should have been deemed necessary to cut out the very pith and heart of Mr. Holton’s letter, when he knew that it would make no difference with his court whether there was any evidence at all. Under the law of retribution, a man’s character may be determined by his own acts.

HOLTON’S TRUE STATEMENT.

“FORKS OF ELKHORN, May 24, 1883.

“This is to certify that my father, Captain John A. Holton, was for a number of years interested with Captain John Russell in a number of thoroughbreds, and they raced them in partnership. When they dissolved and divided the stock, I am positively certain that my father retained all the descendants of the Stockholder mare—among them Maria Russell and all of her produce AND I KNOW TO MY CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE THAT CAPTAIN RUSSELL NEVER OWNED OR HAD IN HIS POSSESSION THE MARE MARIA RUSSELL, OR ANY OF HER PRODUCE. And I further know to my certain knowledge that said mare, Maria Russell, had two good eyes from the time of her foaling until the day of her death. If my father bred a mare to Boston in 1848, I incline to the opinion that it was a bay mare we owned called Limber, for the reason that she, Limber, was very uncertain, having missed several seasons. There is one point, however, that I feel very certain upon, and that is, that neither my father nor Captain Russell, during their racing or breeding career, ever owned a Boston filly. As Boston was the most famous horse of his time, it is not at all possible that there could have been a Boston colt or filly on my father’s farm and I not knowing of the fact. I was born in the old homestead the 15th of November, 1820, and have resided either there or adjoining all my life; therefore I had constant opportunity to know all about my father’s stock of horses.

L. HOLTON.

“I hereby attest that the above is my father’s signature.—J. A. HOLTON, son of Llewellyn Holton.”

BRODHEAD’S REPRESENTATION OF IT.

“FORKS, ELKHORN, May 24, 1883.

“This is to certify that my father, Captain John A. Holton, was for a number of years interested with Captain John Russell in a number of thoroughbreds, and they raced them in partnership. When they dissolved, and divided the stock, I am positively certain that my father retained all the descendants of the Stockholder mare, among them Maria Russell and all her produce, and I know to my certain knowledge that said Maria Russell had two good eyes from the time of her foaling until the day of her death. If my father bred a mare to Boston in 1848, I incline to the opinion that it was a bay mare he owned called Limber, for the reason that she, Limber, was very uncertain, having missed several seasons. There is one point, however, that I feel very certain upon, and that is that neither my father nor Captain Russell during their racing or breeding career ever owned a Boston filly. As Boston was the most famous horse of his time, it is not at all possible that there could have been a Boston colt or filly on my father’s farm and I not knowing of the fact. I was born in the old homestead the 15th of November, 1820, and have resided either there or adjoining all my life; therefore I had constant opportunity to know all about my father’s stock of horses.

L. HOLTON.

“I hereby attest that the above is my father’s signature.—J. A. HOLTON, son of L. Holton.”

The deadly parallel columns tell the whole story. The central and most important fact in Mr. Holton’s statement has been deliberately and carefully cut out by Mr. Brodhead, and the evidence that he did so cannot be wiped out either by money or by the torture of invalids. The testimony of cold type remains forever. Has Mr. Brodhead, it is asked, professed to have given the whole of Mr. Holton’s statement, and suppressed a vital part of it? He has given every word and letter of the statement, from the date line to the signature, except the one sentence that is the life and soul of the whole statement, and that sentence I have printed above in capital letters, so that it may be easily distinguished and compared. For years I have known that Mr. Brodhead possessed most remarkable visual powers. When he wanted to see a thing he could see it through a stone wall and without any assistance from the “X-rays,” and when he didn’t want to see a thing he couldn’t see it even when held up to his very nose under an arc light. The deception practiced here might justly be designated by a harder name, for it was deliberately planned and carried out in order to gain an end by suppressing the truth. Why did he not free himself from his marvelous powers of vision, and looking out of the natural eyes of his mind, see the imminent danger of a terrible exposure? In keeping back part of the truth with the pretension that he had given it all, how could he avoid recalling the fate of Annanias and Sapphira for keeping back part of the price with the pretension that they had given it all?

As an exercise in ethical athletics I will submit the following abstract question to the debating clubs, especially in Kentucky, viz., “Is the man who suppresses the truth in order to sustain a fraudulent pedigree any more worthy of belief than the man who made the pedigree and sold the horse upon it?”

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