Nothing is now known of the gelding by Abdallah. The filly of 1849 by Abdallah, called Seely Abdallah, was owned by Mr. Charles Backman, and he had her produce for two or three generations.
The black colt by Long Island Black Hawk of 1851 was sold to Ebenezer Seely, and kept as a stallion. This Mr. Seely died in Chemung County, and the horse died there in the spring of 1859. The filly of 1853 by Hambletonian was one of a pair of Hambletonian fillies bought and taken to Iowa by Mr. Green in 1855. They developed a very fine rate of speed.
CHAPTER XXII.
HAMBLETONIAN’S SONS AND GRANDSONS.
Different opinions as to relative merits of Hambletonian’s greater sons—George Wilkes, his history and pedigree—His performing descendants—History and description of Electioneer—His family—Alexander’s Abdallah and his two greatest sons, Almont and Belmont—Dictator—Harold—Happy Medium and his dam—Jay Gould—Strathmore—Egbert—Aberdeen—Masterlode—Sweepstakes—Governor Sprague, grandson of Hambletonian.
There is hardly a prominent sire by Hambletonian that has not been claimed by his admirers to have been the “greatest son” of the most renowned of trotting progenitors, and if a poll of the horsemen of the country could be taken to-day as to what horse was the greatest son of Hambletonian, probably a dozen names would be found to have thousands of supporters each. As with all questions that are largely matters of opinion, and that cannot be decided absolutely by figures, the relative rank of horses as progenitors must always remain open to disputation according as thinkers approach the subject from different points of view and of interest. I shall not enter into any discussion as to the relative merits of the great sons of Hambletonian with a purpose to reach any deduction as to which was or is the greatest; but shall refer the reader to the table given in the preceding chapter, and content myself with briefly giving the history of the more renowned sires of the Hambletonian line, with such statistics as may be necessary to gauge their rank as progenitors.
GEORGE WILKES.
A Great Son of Hambletonian.