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

by John Hankins Wallace

MESSENGER.

To cover mares this season at Alexander Clay’s, at the sign of the Black Horse, in Market Street, Philadelphia, at the very low price of three guineas each mare, and one dollar to the groom.

Messenger was bred by John Pratt, Esq., of Newmarket, who certifies the following pedigree. The grey horse Messenger was bred by me and sold to the Prince of Wales; he was got by Mambrino (who covered at twenty-five guineas a leap). His dam by Turf, his grandam by Regulus; this Regulus mare was sister to Figerant and was the dam of Leviathan. John Pratt.

The performance of Messenger has been so very great that there need only be a reference to the racing calendar of the years 1783, 1784 and 1785.

Any mare missing this season shall be served the next gratis, provided they continue the same properties, on paying the groom’s fees.

This is a literal copy of the first printed announcement of Messenger in this country, and there are two very striking features connected with it, namely, its bad grammar and the absence of the name of the importer and owner. The former we may attribute to the times, but to the latter I have been disposed to attach no trifling significance. It is a fact that till this day we have no direct information as to who imported this horse. The name “Benger” was developed indirectly as the man, but not till years after the horse was dead, and probably the importer too, did I learn from an advertisement of a son of his that stood in Jersey that the importer’s name was “Thomas Benger.” In 1791 and for two years afterward he was advertised to stand at “Mount Benger, two miles from Bristol, Pennsylvania.” When I visited Bristol for the purpose of identifying “Mount Benger,” which I supposed was the country seat of the owner of Messenger, I was greatly surprised to find that none of the “oldest inhabitants” had ever heard of such a place, and when I was informed that there was no locality within half a dozen miles of Bristol where the ground rose to a hundred feet above the level of the Delaware River, the name “Mount Benger” assumed the character of an absurdity as well as a myth. From a very intelligent man of middle age, who had learned the blacksmith trade with his grandfather, I learned that he had often heard his grandfather speak of Messenger, and as having put the last set of shoes on him when he was taken away to New York the fall the yellow fever was so bad in Philadelphia. The tradition was still preserved in the family that Messenger reared up in crossing the river in a boat, and struck his groom on the head with one of those shoes, from the effects of which he died. As our informant was able to name two other horses, Governor and Babel, brought over by Mr. Benger, we were ready to accept his tradition that he lived at a point known in old times as “China Retreat,” two miles below Bristol on the Delaware. This point has been known later as “White Hall.”

After all traditions were exhausted, without yielding anything tangible or satisfactory, we turned with great confidence to the records of the county of Bucks, in which Mr. “Benger” had lived for a number of years. After a diligent and protracted search, embracing a number of years before and after his known residence in the county, we were not able to discover that any person by the name of “Benger” had ever owned a foot of real estate in the county or had been in any way publicly connected with its affairs or its administration. We had search made in Philadelphia with the same fruitless results. There is a faint tradition that Thomas Benger, if that was his name, was a fox-hunting Irish baronet, and if this was so, it is probable he returned to the old country about the time he sold Messenger in 1793. However this may be, the owner is forgotten, but his horse will live forever.

Among the many eulogies and word-paintings of Messenger, by writers who knew the horse personally, we select the following from the pen of the late David W. Jones, of Long Island, as the most striking and picturesque. He says:

“Having scanned in my boyhood the magnificent form and bearing of this noble old horse, and for more than half a century having drawn reins over his descendants, I have for a length of time felt it incumbent to furnish such facts and impressions, as, when considered with those of others, will give the younger portion of the present generation, as well as posterity, a fair knowledge of the general characteristics of the noblest Roman of them all. The first time I ever saw old Messenger my father sent me to the farm of Townsend Cock, Esq., of the County of Queens, L. I., where the horse was then standing, to receive his services. On my arrival at his harem, I found the groom, whom I knew, and he at once placed me with the mare a short distance from the stable, by the side of a barrier erected for security. Having at home heard frequent and long discussions in relation to the wonder I was now to behold, you may suppose I was all eyes. Presently the stalwart groom, James Lingham, with, at the extreme end of the bridle rein, all the blood of all the Howards, turned the angle of the stable and came in full view. The moment the old horse caught sight of the paragon of beauty I had brought to his embrace, he threw himself into an attitude, with the grandeur of which no other animal can compare, and at the same moment opened his mouth, and distending his nostrils, raised his exultant voice to such a pitch as gave unmistakable evidence of the capacity of his lungs and the size of his windpipe. Indeed, if his nostrils were as much larger than ordinary as my boyish vision pictured them, I can almost suppose that Mr. McMann with his little bay mare (Flora Temple), and sulky, could drive in at one, down the windpipe, turn under his immensely long arching loin and out at the other.... At that early day I was only impressed by those extraordinary developments; but in after years as I sit behind his offspring, they invariably remind me of what was then to my youthful judgment less apparent—the extraordinary strength of his loin, the length and beautiful molding of the buttock, the faultless shape of the crupper bone, giving an elegant set to his fine flowing tail, as well as the remarkable swell of his stifle, altogether forming a most perfect and powerful hind quarter.”