The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

In looking over this list there are several points suggested for remark and they all have a bearing, more or less direct, on the question at issue. The list seems to have been prepared, if prepared by Mr. Swigert, very hurriedly and without sufficient regard to completeness or accuracy. He started off, possibly to make a careful list, as he gave the color of the two-year-old mares at the head and then dropped all purpose of completeness and gave no colors nor descriptions to those that followed. He gives No. 21 as a filly when it was a colt, and so appears in the inventory, was sold as a colt with pedigree at San Jose, January, 1865, and again, with the same pedigree, at The Willows, February, 1866. Under ordinary conditions the statement of the breeder should be conclusive against all others, but in this case the evident hurry and absence of descriptions have destroyed the value of the whole list, in great degree, as evidence that could be accepted with safety. We must, therefore, look for something in the way of evidence more deliberative and descriptive in its preparation, and this we find in the joint work of Mr. Swigert and Mr. Welch, as embodied in the inventory. When the descriptions of the animals were taken, both men were equally interested in accuracy and completeness, both were present, and probably the animals were before them. Hence my infinitely greater confidence in the deliberative work of the two, as found in the inventory.

The one point about which all this hubbub has been raised is the so-called “Lexington filly,” that appears as the sixth in the above list. She has no number attached to her name, and this means that she was not in the inventory, and it means more than this; for it is, in a manner, the dying testimony of an honest man that he took no Lexington filly to California, and fortunately this testimony has been preserved. The methods introduced to prove that Welch did take her are the methods of the imbecile. Let us admit, for the moment, that Swigert had a Lexington filly and that she was in a contract with Welch to be taken to California; does that prove that Welch took her, when he says he did not? There are hundreds and hundreds of people every year who buy steamship tickets to go to Europe who fail to go. The records of Mr. Swigert’s ticket office show that the ticket was bought, but they fail to show that the purchaser went aboard the ship. You must go to Purser Welch and get a list of passengers actually on board in order to determine who did and who did not go. Accidents, sickness and death are all factors in the movements, of horses just as they are in the movements of human beings. It is the observation of a long lifetime that horsemen are never so near their best as fools as when they attempt to establish a fraudulent pedigree by evidence that utterly fails to cover the case. They claim to have found a ticket that would carry Waxy to California, and whether genuine or counterfeit they rely wholly on this ticket as evidence that she went. The master of the vessel affirms she was not aboard his vessel, and in support of this he shows a complete list and description of the passengers numbered from one to twenty-six inclusive. This is the whole thing in a nutshell. The proof is clear and conclusive that Mr. Welch did not take any daughter of Lexington to California. Now, will the prominent and active supporters of Waxy’s pedigree, as a daughter of Lexington, come forward and in a manly way answer this question of five words? “Who took Waxy to California?” If Welch, prove it. If anybody else, prove it. We may be able to catch a few gulls with chaff, the first attempt, but we can’t repeat it. If the question can be answered, it is well, and if not, honest people will form their own conclusions that it is not sustained and is no more worthy of belief than the “Grey Eagle mare” form of the same pedigree, which is now universally conceded to be a fiction.

American Eclipse.—It is not my purpose to frighten people by overthrowing landmarks that have stood for years, but it is my purpose to tell the truth and expose falsehood in pedigrees wherever I meet it. As a satisfaction and guide to breeders in the future it is important to know just how the early stock were bred, although they may have belonged to past generations. A breeder never can know too much of the lines in which he is operating. This great horse was a good chestnut, with a star and left hind foot white. He was stout, with heavy limbs, and somewhat coarse, and not of the best quality, but possibly better than the average of the Durocs. He was a fraction of an inch below fifteen two. He was foaled 1814, got by Duroc, son of imported Diomed; dam Miller’s Damsel, by imported Messenger; grandam a mare by Pot8os, imported by Mr. Constable along with the horse Baronet, in 1795. This is just as far as we can go with any certainty, and this leaves the greatest race horse of his day far short of being thoroughbred. When Mr. Constable bought the Pot8os mare in England he got no certificate of pedigree, but he was told there she was out of a mare by Gimcrack. Mr. Cadwallader R. Colden was the best-informed man of his day on the history, blood, and performances of the blood-horse, was a very intimate and warm friend of Mr. Constable, and he did everything that could be done to straighten out and extend this pedigree, but he utterly failed. He thought it probable that the mare was thoroughbred, but he believed the Gimcrack cross was a fiction. Some eighteen or twenty years ago, when in London, Mr. Tattersall suggested to me that if Lord Grosvenor bred a filly by Pot8os in 1792 that was thoroughbred, there could hardly be a doubt that she was entered in some of the stakes for three-year-olds. Then and there we searched the old records, but nothing could be found to support the supposed pedigree. It was not till 1832 that any special effort was made to establish the pedigree through the press, and in January of that year the famous Patrick Nesbit Edgar, of North Carolina, wrote as follows to Mr. Skinner, editor of the American Turf Register:

“The authority I had for sending the remote pedigree of American Eclipse for publication was that it was furnished me lately by a gentleman in England, who put himself to uncommon pains to procure it. He resides near Bath, in that country. All the authority requisite I have at this time in my possession. The Pot8os mare was got by Pot8os; her dam, foaled in 1778, by Gimcrack, out of Snap-Dragon, sister to Angelica by Snap. (See English Stud Book.)”

Mr. Edgar wrote more on the same subject, after he was pressed to it by Mr. Colden, but he failed to produce any evidence whatever that he was telling the truth. According to his representations his correspondence on the subject had been very extensive, and he complained that he had paid out forty shillings in postage.

It will be observed how cleverly Mr. Edgar conceals the sources of his information while he pretends to give them, and that has been the favorite “dodge” of all rascally “pedigree makers” from that day till the present. Mr. Constable always insisted that the mare was bred by Lord Grosvenor, and that she was by Pot8os, but he did not insist that she was out of a mare by Gimcrack. As Lord Grosvenor was one of the most prominent of all breeders of race horses in his day, and as he evidently kept the records of his stud with more care than most of his contemporaries, we might reasonably expect to find some trace of this mare if she was thoroughbred. After a careful and diligent search of all the records of that period, it is found that Lord Grosvenor never bred a Gimcrack filly to Pot8os. This disposes of Mr. Edgar’s humbug story, and when we state the pedigree of American Eclipse we can simply say he was got by Duroc; dam Miller’s Damsel by Messenger, and grandam the imported Pot8os mare, and there we must stop.

For years past I have observed that the less a man knows about horse history and horse achievements, the more importance he attaches to the word “thoroughbred;” and of all the millions and millions of lies that have been told about pedigrees nine-tenths have been concocted and circulated for the one purpose of enhancing the supposed value of the animal by claiming “thoroughbred” blood. The “instinct” to lie about pedigrees, so common among certain classes of horsemen, seems to be “the sum of inherited habits” that has come down from generation to generation. If you ask one of these mendacious gentlemen whether American Eclipse was a thoroughbred he will answer, with a strong marked expression of contempt and pity for your ignorance on his countenance, “Certainly he was thoroughbred.” If you then ask him about his pedigree he will answer, “I don’t know anything about his pedigree.” Then you venture to ask how he knows he was thoroughbred if he does not know anything about his pedigree, and he will squelch you completely by saying, “No horse not thoroughbred could ever have done what American Eclipse did.” Here we get at the real basis of the universal mendacity on this subject. The preacher wrote a great book called “The Perfect Horse” in which he maintained that the Morgan Horse was thoroughbred. The lawyer wrote another great book on “The American Roadster” in which he maintained that Dexter was a thoroughbred. With two gentlemen of intelligence and education writing such miserable stuff, what are we to expect from the masses?

Now here is the horse American Eclipse, the greatest horse of his day in his racing achievements, that in his blood is very far from being “thoroughbred,” under any rule that has ever been suggested or devised. Now, with this taint on his escutcheon, it follows that no one of his descendants for at least five generations can be classed as thoroughbred. As a progenitor, Eclipse cannot be considered a great horse, either in his immediate or more remote descendants. Medoc was about his best, and he was better than his sire. Another son, called Monmouth Eclipse, was grandly bred on the side of his dam, was sold, it was said, for fifteen thousand dollars for stock purposes, and proved a most lamentable failure, never having got a colt that was worth fifteen dollars as a race horse. The great fame of American Eclipse, therefore, rested upon what were then designated as “his mighty achievements upon the turf.” A reasonably complete history of this horse may be found in Wallace’s Monthly for March, 1877, p. 160. His great race against Henry, in which he represented the North as against the South, was doubtless the most memorable turf event that ever took place on this continent, and a very brilliant description of it will be found at the reference given above. This race of four-mile heats took place on the Union Course, Long Island, May, 1823, for twenty thousand dollars a side, and it was, in effect, Eclipse against the world. Eclipse, fit or not fit, must start, while his opponents had several prepared to start against him and all they had to determine was to select the fastest and best of the whole party. At the last hour Henry was chosen as the champion of the South, and he won the first heat by about a length in 7:37½. A change was made in the rider of Eclipse and he won the second heat by about two lengths in 7:49. In the third heat the instructions to the rider of Henry were not to hurry the gait, but to trail to near the finish and then pull out and win in a rush. The rider of Eclipse understood the tactics of the enemy and he hurried the pace every step of the way, in order to tire out his younger opponent. When near the finish Henry made his dash and covered Eclipse’s quarter with his head, but he could get no further and abandoned the contest. Eclipse had been punished unmercifully from start to finish, and the time of the heat was 8:24. This shows an average rate of speed in the third heat of two minutes and six seconds to the mile, a rate which half a dozen trotters and a round dozen of pacers have beaten for a single mile. It shows also the cruelty, to say nothing of the absurdity, of heat racing at the distance of four miles. Still American Eclipse was the greatest running horse of his generation.

Boston was a chestnut horse, foaled 1833, and bred by Mr. John Wickham, the very eminent jurist, of Richmond, Virginia. He succeeded to the great fame of American Eclipse, and although about two generations, in a racing sense, after him there was no horse between them that was the equal of either of them. He was a terror to all competitors whether of the North or the South. But it is only my purpose here to put on record the real facts about his pedigree and to expose a glaring fraud that has been propagated concerning his breeding for many years. Mr. Wickham, the breeder of Boston, bought a mare by imported Alderman (1802 or 1803) from John Randolph, of Tuckahoe (not “Roanoke” as sometimes stated). This mare was out of a mare by imported Clockfast, and here, to sum it up and give Mr. Wickham’s exact language, as he wrote in 1827: “This mare, a dark bay, foaled about 1799, was got by Alderman, her dam by Clockfast, out of a mare said to be full-blooded, of the Wildair blood.” This Alderman mare he bred to Florizel, and she produced the race horse Tuckahoe, and a filly that was bred to Timoleon and produced Boston. Then Boston’s pedigree stands; Got by Timoleon; dam by Florizel; grandam by imported Alderman; great-grandam by imported Clockfast; great-great-grandam “said to be of the Wildair blood.” This is down to “hard pan,” and there is no authority in the wide world to add anything to it. If we admit the Wildair mare to be genuine and authentic we are still one degree short of the thoroughbred standard. The six additional crosses that have been added to this pedigree are entirely fictitious. They were copied from the advertisement of a stallion descended from this maternal line, that had neither indorsement nor name attached to it. This was seized upon by the late Benjamin Bruce, and boasted of as a “discovery” of the extension of Boston’s pedigree. After the appearance of this advertisement Mr. Wickham prepared and published a full list of his stock, with their pedigrees, from the first of his breeding operations, and when he reached the Wildair mare he stopped, just as I have stopped at that point. Here we have the two authorities—Mr. John Wickham, distinguished for his eminent character as a man and a jurist; or a nameless stallion advertisement without any shadow of truth or responsibility.

Timoleon, the sire of Boston, was one of the most distinguished sons of the great Sir Archy, his dam was by imported Saltram, and his grandam by Wildair, but beyond that the pedigree is a hopeless muddle, embracing some features that are absolutely impossible.