Tom Bowling and Aaron Pennington.—The first of these horses was by Lexington, the second was by Tipperary, son of Ringgold, and they were both out of Lucy Fowler, by imported Albion, grandam-by imported Leviathan, great-grandam by Top Gallant, great-great-grandam Eli Odom’s saddle mare, which means, in that country, she was a pacer. Tom Bowling was probably the best race horse of his year, and Pennington may be classed as mediocre, but as the latter is credited with some pacers or trotters that have come within the 2:30 list, his pedigree becomes of interest on this account. I will, therefore, give the facts in some detail, which go to show the truth about what the pedigree contains and what it does not contain.

In 1869 the late William R. Elliston, of Nashville, Tennessee, furnished me the following facts, which he obtained personally from Mr. Eli Odom. It was very fortunate that Mr. Elliston obtained these facts when he did, for Mr. Odom was advanced in years and died not long afterward. He was a brother-in-law of the once very famous breeder and race horse man, Colonel Elliott, of Tennessee, and in early life had charge of his establishment and knew more about Colonel Elliott’s stock than he did himself. He lived to old age, highly respected by all who knew him, and was a man of truth. He kept for his own use a pacing saddle mare whose blood he knew nothing about, and he bred her to Top Gallant, son of Gallatin, and the produce was a filly. This filly he bred to imported Leviathan, and in due time there came another filly which he bred to imported Albion, and the next filly was Lucy Fowler. This filly passed through the hands of a Mr. Fowler and perhaps one or two others, and at last became the property of Price McGrath, of Lexington, Kentucky, and was the dam of Tom Bowling, Aaron Pennington and others. Starting in with the pacing mare, Mr. Odom bred all that followed until we reach Lucy Fowler, and there we find she had seven parts of running blood and one part of pacing blood. While an animal bred in this way is certainly not “thoroughbred,” nobody can deny that he is “running-bred,” for there are hundreds of instances on record where animals of even shorter pedigrees than Tom Bowling have been noted race horses. But there is another fact connected with this family that is very interesting. When the running qualities of Pennington were exhausted, McGrath presented him to a kinsman of his, somewhere in Western Missouri. After awhile I began to hear of an occasional trotter from this horse and I wrote his owner (whose name I cannot now recall), and he replied that “he went all the saddle gaits and was a pacer.” Here was a tidbit that I thought well worth looking after, and I wrote the owner again for specific information of the character of his pace and whether it was a clean and pronounced side action, but for some reason or other I never was able to get a reply to my questions. There can be no mistake about his going the “saddle gaits,” but whether this was the result of training or whether he took to them naturally as inherited from Mr. Odom’s old pacing mare, is a point about which I have never been fully satisfied.

Grey Eagle (Chenery’s).—When Mr. Winthrop W. Chenery, of Boston, bought this horse, about 1866, he got with him the following pedigree.

“Got by Grey Eagle; dam by imp. Trustee; g. d. by Columbus; g. g. d. by Stockholder; g. g. g. d. by Pacolet. Bred in Kentucky, and passed through many vicissitudes, both as a runner and a trotter, beating his competitors at both gaits; owned for a time in Ohio, now the property of Winthrop W. Chenery & Co., Boston.”

This was a correct type of the pedigrees of that time, lacking date, location, breeder and all other things necessary to trace and determine its value. The horse had certainly trotted in 2:31, and he had trotted two miles to wagon in 5:09½, and to this evidence of his trotting ability it was claimed that he had run and won many races at all distances. This was such a combination of abilities as I never had heard of before, and in attempting to solve the riddle I became deeply interested. The search then instituted has been kept up ever since, and I must say that after all these years I know absolutely nothing about the breeding of this horse. His first known owner was a petty gambler and general outlaw in the neighborhood of Portsmouth, Ohio, and the story he told will be found in Wallace’s Monthly, Vol. I., p. 53, and Vol. VII., p. 597, besides other references. The search has been so barren that I have not even the shadow of a theory as to what his blood may have been. He got two or three trotters and one or two pacers, I think, and here we have to leave him as the most completely unknown horse in all my experience.

George Wilkes.—It is a grievous misfortune that the pedigree of this great progenitor should be in doubt. The misfortune is not in the fact that his descendants lose the supposed Clay cross in his dam, for that was not of very great value, but in the fact that we should not know just what belongs in its place. In December, 1877, I had the good fortune to meet with Mr. Harry Felter and Mr. William L. Simmons at a breeders’ banquet, and it was not long until we were in conversation about the blood of the dam of George Wilkes. I knew that the breeding of that horse had never been established, but I was greatly surprised that these two gentlemen—one the breeder and the other the owner of Wilkes—had never made any effort to trace and establish so important a fact. Mr. Felter stated that he had bought the mare from Mr. W. A. Delevan, and that Mr. Delevan had bought her from Mr. Joseph S. Lewis, of Geneva, New York. Thereupon I wrote to Mr. Lewis and the following is his response:

“Some twenty-six years since I bought a brown mare from a gentleman by the name of James Gilbert, then living in the town of Phelps, in this county, for a friend, and very soon after sold her to W. A. Delevan, of New York. She was then about five years old, a fine roadster, and could speed in about 3:30. He took her to New York, and after driving her some time sold her to my esteemed friend, Harry Felter. I think she passed into the hands of his father, and met with an accident. She was put to breeding, and had a colt by Rysdyk’s Hambletonian, that grew up to be the famous George Wilkes. For the benefit of many persons in New York I lost no time in looking about to learn the pedigree of the mare and of the horse that got her. On seeing Gilbert I learned that he got the mare of an old man who is now dead, by the name of Josiah Philips, of Bristol, in this county. I lost no time in sending a man, who lived with us at the time, by the name of John S. Dey, to Bristol, to get all the facts in the mare’s pedigree that he could get hold of. He learned through Philips that the father of this mare was the old Wadsworth Henry Clay, owned for many years by General Wadsworth, of Genesee. There is no mistake about this, as I have since learned from his neighbors that she was a Clay colt. Philips further stated that the mother of the mare was got by a horse called Highlander, a good horse, and owned in that section of country. I have no doubt about this, as there was such a horse in that section about that time. When I go to Buffalo, where Gilbert now lives, I may be able to get at more facts in regard to your inquiry, and if I can get hold of anything that will give more light on the subject before I am down in New York, I will drop into your office to see you.

Very truly yours, etc.

“J. S. Lewis.”

The receipt of this letter, so straightforward and clean-cut in its statements, developed a mystery that was incomprehensible to me. Dates, names, places, circumstances, all stand out as evidences of the truth of the representations, and also as evidences that Mr. Lewis had fully investigated the matter, and given the results of his investigations to his friends in this city; still, those friends had never heard the facts, or had entirely forgotten them. As there was a strong prejudice against Clay blood in certain quarters, it occurred to me that possibly that cross had been left in abeyance so long that it really had been forgotten. This did not clear up the mystery, however, and I determined to have the whole matter investigated from a different starting point. I submitted the matter to Mr. John P. Ray, a very capable and very honest man, and he kindly and without reward undertook the investigation. The Philips family lived in the vicinity of Bristol, and the first of the family met by Mr. Ray was Mr. E. V. Philips, nephew and adopted son of Joshua Philips (not Josiah, as Mr. Lewis had it), and he enumerated several head of Clays that had been owned by his uncle Joshua, among them a mare that was bred by Mr. Clark Philips, bought of him when a yearling by E. V. Philips, sold as a four-year-old to his uncle Joshua, and by him the next year to “some man from the eastern part of the country.” He next met Mr. Clark Philips, who fully confirmed E. V. Philips about the Clay filly already referred to and said she was got when old Henry Clay was owned by Kent and Bailey of Bristol, and that her dam was “Old Telegraph” by Highlander, etc. In his original report to me of his investigation Mr. Ray uses the following language: