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

by John Hankins Wallace

7th dam an imported, thoroughbred mare.

Now, what do we know about this pedigree that has been indorsed and published, just as here stated, by two stud-book makers? They do not pretend to know by whom he was bred, nor do they know in what part of Virginia he was owned, but they assume to know perfectly well each cross in his pedigree and that his seventh dam was an imported, thoroughbred mare. The dates of importations in parentheses in the foregoing have been placed there by myself for the sake of the exhibit. The horse Dotterel, the original of that name and by the same reputed sire, never left England, and it is probable this Dotterel is mythical. Now, let us analyze this pedigree by the aid of the searchlight of dates. Ranter, imported 1762, might have had a filly to his credit in 1763. This filly at two years old might have been bred to David and produced a filly in 1766. This filly at two years old might have been bred to Dotterel and produced a filly in 1769. This filly at two years old might have been bred to Aristotle and produced a filly in 1772. This filly, at two years old, might have bred to Evans’ Stirling (or Starling), and produced the colt Centaur in 1775—but he was foaled in 1767. Not once in a million times would this succession of possibilities occur, but if they did occur in this case the pedigree of Centaur still remains absolutely impossible, for four generations of horses cannot be crowded into five years. This exhibit fairly illustrates the character of Mr. Edgar’s work, and being right on the border line between the “native” race horse and the modern “thoroughbred” we see just how they compressed the breeding of eight generations into the space of fifteen or sixteen years. If we were to compare the English with the American methods of manufacturing pedigrees, it would be hard to determine which was the more shamefully dishonest. Mr. Edgar was fiercely dissatisfied with the indifference of horsemen to his enterprise, and with the lack of support which they rendered him. He went forward with his second volume and professed to have completed it, but announced that it should never be put in type until the horsemen of the country should assist and support him. In the event of their failing to do so he threatened to sink his manuscript twenty feet deep in the center of the Dismal Swamp, where no mortal would ever find it. The second volume never appeared, and it is to be hoped he carried out his threat.

For the second attempt at compiling a stud book of American Race Horses I must, myself, plead guilty. Some time in the “fifties” I came into possession of a number of volumes of the “old” Spirit of the Times, Skinner’s American Turf Register, three or four volumes of the “English Stud Book” and a large number of volumes of the English Sporting Magazine. As I was then dabbling slightly around the edges of “horse literature,” I found this little nucleus of a library very convenient, but very unsatisfactory in answering questions that came to me, and which an official position seemed to require that I should be able to answer. When asked for the pedigrees of other domestic animals I could take down the Herd Books of the different leading breeds and give precise information, but when asked about the pedigree of a horse, unless he was greatly distinguished as a racer, days of solid labor might be expended on the one question and then not discover the information sought. It was, perhaps, ten years after this time before I ever saw or heard of the misbegotten and foolish compilation of pedigrees made by Edgar. For some years this labor of compilation was prosecuted at odd hours, for my own personal use and satisfaction, and without the remotest purpose of ever publishing a stud book. As I plodded my way along, finding what I supposed to be a fact here and another there, and often conflicting, I found myself invariably accepting what was longest as a pedigree, as this feature seemed to be evidence not only of completeness, but of truthfulness at the same time. As my gleanings grew in volume my interest in what I was doing became more absorbing and intense, and when I had completed the search of every page and paragraph of my published sources of information, up to the close of the year 1839, I found I had enough matter for a large volume. About this time I came into possession of a copy of “Edgar’s Stud Book”—and I was greatly perplexed to know what to do with it. The copyright was dead and it contained a good many unimportant and utterly unknown things that I had not met with in all my gleanings. Under these circumstances and considering the fact that it abounded in the crudest uncertainties, to call them by no harsher name, I concluded to use his work in all cases where I did not have a pedigree from other sources, to cut off all imaginary extensions and to insert his name, in every case, as the source of information and responsibility. The work then went to press and the first volume of “Wallace’s American Stud Book” made its appearance in 1871. The time and labor expended on the first volume made me quite familiar with the leading performers of the several generations embraced therein, and the work on the second volume went forward with more ease and rapidity, and in 1871 I had completed the gleaning of all publications relating to the race horse, up to the close of 1870.

This second volume, being about the size of the first, was completed and put in due form for the compositor, but never was published. The reason why it was never published may not be without interest to the student of horse genealogy, and I will, in a few words, state that reason. Side by side with the progress of the second volume of the runners, I was carrying forward a careful investigation of the lineage of the early trotters and their progenitors. As there were no trotting records giving pedigrees, I was compelled to go back to the breeders as the only source of reliable information. When I obtained this from intelligent and reputable people I accepted the information and stood by it as the truth; and when I came to compare it with the representations of pedigree made in advertisements of some stallion scion of the family, the truth began to dawn upon me that advertisements, whether in newspapers or on crossroads blacksmith-shop doors, with scarcely an exception, were made up of statements that were utterly false and fictitious. They were made up for the single purpose of securing patronage, and generally traced in different directions to famous and well-known horses. The fictitious extensions of stallion advertisements have served as the basis for the fictitious extensions of families and tribes. When I came to compare the extensions of trotting pedigrees with running pedigrees, I could not discover that the one was any more or less reliable than the other. They rested on precisely the same basis of stallion pedigrees, and no difference whether they appeared in Mr. Skinner’s Turf Register or in a big poster, there was no censorship, and they were both in type—and whatever was in type was generally supposed to be worthy of belief. In one respect the pedigrees of running horses are more reliable than the early advertisements of trotting horses, particularly with those that raced, for they were required to give the sire and dam when they were entered in races, and a failure to comply with this rule was penalized. The sires, therefore, are generally right, but unfortunately the rule did not require the dam to be named and definitely specified, hence any one of a dozen unnamed mares by a given horse could be represented in after years as the dam of that particular horse. Here commenced the trouble in the unnamed and untraced mares that never have been nor ever can be identified. On a careful and sorrowful review of my work of many years I found that I had been working on a wrong basis from the start. Instead of discovering and arranging a great many valuable truths, as I supposed, I had devoted years to perpetuating thousands and thousands of fictions in these unknown, unnamed, and unidentified dams. This is the reason the second volume of “Wallace’s American Stud Book” never was published. The only benefit I ever derived from the work was in its educational aspects. The work made me familiar with the early running-horse history of this country and of England, and taught me what so many horsemen should learn—that a truth is always better than a lie. The more carefully and thoroughly I went into the origin, lineage and history of what we may call the modern race horse, the more evident it became to my mind that the great mass of the running horses of our own generation are carrying, in their pedigrees, the frauds and fictions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to say nothing of the innumerable deceptions and tricks of our own century. To accept and propagate these untruths is simply to, in a manner, indorse them, and an attempt to eliminate them would invoke the clamors of a continent. Hence, more than twenty years ago, I washed my hands of all responsibility for the pedigrees of English race horses, and turned my attention to establishing the lineage of the American trotter, on sure foundations, and building him up into a breed.

The third attempt at compiling the pedigrees of running-bred horses was made by Mr. Sanders D. Bruce, of New York, and as it followed Edgar and Wallace, it was made up chiefly of what he found in these works. The conscienceless fictions of Edgar were accepted without hesitation or remorse, and the central aim seemed to be to make every pedigree as long as possible, whether true or false. No fictitious stallion advertisement was ever too absurd to serve as a basis for the pedigrees of all his kindred. Mr. Bruce accepted everything and rejected nothing, and it is not probable he ever investigated a pedigree in his life. His rule of action seems to have been to please his customers, and to scrupulously avoid all public discussions of pedigrees. This was the politic course to pursue, for any attempt to defend the monstrosities it contained would have wiped it out of existence very quickly. Bruce’s Stud Book seems to have been supported by a few individuals, from the beginning, as a kind of eleemosynary institution, and it is not likely it will ever rise above that condition.

The substantial correctness of the generations extending back for a period of sixty or eighty years, and in some cases even a little further, is a very valuable contribution to our store of knowledge in this department of industry, but, unfortunately, the generations beyond those that may be classed as recent very largely rest upon foundations that are fictitious and fraudulent.

These fictions and frauds are so general and common in the remote extensions on the female side of the pedigree that when we find a string of ten or perhaps twenty dams and not one of them named, known or identified until we strike the twenty-first, and she described as “thoroughbred, imported mare,” we know that this is the work of the professional “pedigree maker,” and not more than once in a hundred times will we be mistaken. This is alike true of both English and American pedigrees of race horses. The modern crosses are comparatively honest, but the remote extensions, through the maternal lines, in both countries are chiefly the products of a venal imagination.

There are some foundation truths in the history and development of the English and American race horse—for they are both one in blood—to which I must briefly advert before dismissing this topic. In announcing the conclusions which I have reached, I am fully conscious that I will come in contact with preconceived opinions that have been very prevalent, if not universal, for at least two centuries.

1. There were race horses in England that had been racing and breeding for centuries before the first Saracenic horse was brought there, and it was not an uncommon thing for the native to beat the exotic, when he first arrived. There had been racing in America, by what we will call the native stock—but they were all English and Dutch—for about one hundred years before the first English race horse reached this country.

2. These horses had been selected with care and bred for centuries with more or less intelligence, with the single purpose of increasing their speed. During those centuries there were not so many writers on biology, heredity, etc., as we have now, but the old aphorism, “Like begets like”—a complete epitome of all science on this subject—was just as well known and as universally believed a thousand years ago as it is to-day. We may, therefore, safely conclude that at the close of the sixteenth century there were many native English horses, descended from lines and tribes that had been selected, raced and bred for generations, that were fully the equals of the best of the exotics, that were brought in about that time.