“At the time Romaine bought the mare he and I were trading in stock together, boarding at the same house and sleeping in the same bed. I mention, this only that you may understand that I know what I am writing about.
“I am truly sorry that I cannot give you the true pedigree of the mare, but it cannot be done. There is no man here or anywhere else that can tell you anything more than I have stated herein.
“You will no doubt think that there is considerable of superfluous matter in this letter, but I do not see how I could tell you what I wanted to in fewer words.
“Everything stated herein is truth, and, if necessary, I am willing to make affidavit to the same at any time.
Very truly yours,
“Henry C. Brown.”
Mr. Romaine’s representation amounted to nothing definite or satisfactory about the pedigree of Belle of Wabash, because he failed to give the name and location of her breeder, but Mr. Brown’s letter clears this all up on the grounds that Mr. Romaine really did not know the breeder’s name. Whatever her sire and whatever her dam, we may feel sure they were not trotting-bred, although she was a trotter. We are left, therefore, to conclude that, as in a thousand other cases, this mare was a pacing-bred trotter. The one point that is vital is settled by Mr. Brown, as he was with Mr. Romaine when he bought the mare and knew all about the transaction. He cannot remember the breeder’s name, but he locates him as “living a mile and a half north of Brazil,” and that it is now all cut up into residence and mining lots. This seems to fix the location of the breeder beyond all doubt. This old man seems to have been a pioneer in a very poor county and still a comparative wilderness when this transaction took place. At that time the coal fields had not been touched, and it is wholly beyond belief that he took his unknown old mare out of his own county, across the adjoining county of Parke and into Vermilion County, wherever in it Mr. Weisiger lived, to have her bred to his part-bred stallion Bassinger. And then when he came to sell the foal at three years old for $85, when horses were high, can we believe he would do so without ever mentioning how the filly was bred? The chain of ownership is complete, as she passed from her unnamed breeder to Mr. Romaine, from him to Mr. Alexander, in whose hands she did her trotting, and then to Mr. Williams, and there is no place for the Louisville humbug pedigree to come in. She got her bogus pedigree at the same time and in the same way that Magowan and Gipsy Queen got theirs, and there was not a single shadow of truth in any one of them. The tenacity with which some people hold on to a “thoroughbred” origin for their trotters when the evidence is all against them has long been a mystery to honest folks, who are able to look at things as they are; but it is not difficult to understand the phenomenon when we analyze the reasons for it. First, the owner is anxious to hold on to all he can possibly claim in the way of aristocratic descent with the hope that it may help his sales; and second, there are always a few “featherheads” with golden pockets ready to buy that kind of stuff, because they have never gone far enough in horse history to be able to kick themselves loose from the swaddling clothes of their infantile prejudices.
Prince.—The chestnut gelding Prince was one of the great trotters in the early “fifties.” He was pitted against Hero, the pacing son of Harris’ Hambletonian, Lantern and others. As usual at that time he was given a thoroughbred pedigree, which I was then led to accept, without really knowing anything about his origin. He was represented to have been bred in Kentucky, and owned by R. Ten Broeck of that State. Then would naturally follow a thoroughbred pedigree coming from that State, and nobody doubted it for a long time. He was represented to be by Woodpecker, son of Bertrand; dam by imported Sarpedon; grandam said to be thoroughbred. When he started in his ten-mile race against Hero, William T. Porter said he was by Woodpecker, and out of that grew the pedigree above. In the old Spirit of the Times, of October 11, 1856, there is a short communication signed “Hiram,” in which is the only circumstantial account of the origin of Prince that I have ever seen. It is implied by the writer that he was bred by a Mr. Dey, of Chautauqua. County, New York, for he says he was got by “an old chestnut horse called Duroc, from Long Island,” and came of the Dey Mare. It seems that Dey sold the colt to a young man named Worden, and he was first known as “the Worden colt.” He was then sold to Manley Griswold, and from Griswold to Daniel Vanvliet, who sold him in Buffalo to Bennett & Jones (or Thomas), for one thousand dollars, and they sold him to William Whelan, of Long Island, for fifteen hundred dollars. “Hiram” carries the history of the horse no further, as he had then placed him in the hands of the great artists of the trotting world. Of his sire, “Old Duroc,” he says he was taken from Long Island to Villenova, in Chautauqua County, by a merchant of that place, named George Hopkins, and after getting about twenty colts he died. Among these twenty we find Prince and another afterward known as the Walker Horse, which achieved a high local reputation as a sire of trotters and I have frequently met with his cross in the pedigrees of good animals. This showing is not absolutely complete, but it is infinitely better than any other that has over been given to the public.
Waxy, the grandam of Sunol. When the two-year-old filly Sunol in 1888 came out and trotted a mile in 2:18, it fairly took one’s breath away, and the first question on every tongue was, “How is she bred?” She was represented to be by Electioneer, out of Waxana by General Benton, and she out of Waxy by Lexington, and “thoroughbred.” When asked who bred her and how it was known that Waxy was by Lexington, the answer came back that the breeder was not known—that she had been taken across the plains by a man who died on the way. The search then commenced for the breeder of Waxy and the identification of her dam. As the search progressed there were some very curious things developed. When it started in the spring it was a yearling stallion colt, and when it reached California, in the fall, it was a two-year-old filly. More than this, it was shown by indubitable proofs, such as they were, that she had two dams, and then shown that she had no dam at all. With such a Kentucky muddle on hand there was an excellent opportunity for a controversy that might possibly become somewhat heated. This controversy is famous in the history of the exposures of untruthful pedigrees, and I will give a brief outline of it, with some specimens of the evidence adduced to sustain it.