Belmont, besides having the advantage of excellent individuality was also a trotter of no mean speed. He was driven a mile over the working track at Woodburn in 2:28½, and was, therefore, a quite well-developed trotter. He never appeared in public, and has, therefore, no public history. The most successful of his sons has been Nutwood, whose dam was Miss Russell, the dam of Maud S. This horse was himself a fast trotter in his day, taking a record of 2:18¾, and rose to great popularity and success in the stud. Daughters of Belmont, being nearly all out of producing mares, are greatly and justly esteemed as brood mares. Belmont died at Woodburn November 15, 1889. Belmont got fifty-eight standard performers, sixty-three of his sons sired four hundred and eighty-nine standard performers, and forty-eight of his daughters produced seventy-one standard performers. The rank of his best sons is shown on the preceding page; all having ten or more in the list of standard performers being included in the table.
Volunteer stands pre-eminent among trotting sires as the one horse against not one of whose get the epithet “quitter” was, as far as I am aware, ever hurled. He did not get speed with remarkable uniformity, nor did his progeny develop speed early or rapidly. They required persistent training, but when speed was developed in a Volunteer you had with it every other quality of a resolute, enduring race horse. They were hardy, rugged, good-limbed horses, and uniformly possessed stamina and resolution in the highest degree. Volunteer had the advantage of being owned by Alden Goldsmith, an ambitious and experienced horseman, and the father of two of the most successful trainers of our day. The Volunteers had, therefore, every advantage that training could give, and his rise to fame was largely due to Mr. Goldsmith’s constantly developing and racing his progeny.
In 1853 Mr. Joseph Hetzel, Florida, Orange County, New York, bred the bay mare Lady Patriot to Hambletonian, 10, and Volunteer was foaled May 1, 1854. This mare, Lady Patriot, was by a horse called Young Patriot, and out of Mr. Lewis Hulse’s trotting mare, and that is all that is known of her pedigree. Her sire’s pedigree is wholly unknown. She produced a numerous family, among them being Sentinel, 2:29¾, and Green’s Hambletonian, brothers of Volunteer, and of some rank as sires, and Marksman, by Thorndale, that is also in the table of sires, while her daughter Heroine, sister to Volunteer, produced Shawmut, 2:26.
Volunteer was a bay horse, with a little white around the left hind coronet, fifteen hands three inches at the wither, and sixteen hands measured at the coupling. He has been considered by many good judges to have been the handsomest of all the sons of Hambletonian. He was a horse of superb form and of great elegance of carriage. With sufficient of muscle and substance, he was built on graceful, finished lines, with a beautiful head loftily carried, a long and graceful neck, a body stout but finely molded, and all set off by a handsome mane and tail. His feet and legs were of superb quality, and despite his great age they were, it is said, without fault or blemish to the last. His temper and disposition were good, though he was very high-spirited, and in harness he was especially attractive. As a four-year-old Volunteer was sold to Mr. R. C. Underhill, of Brooklyn, after he had won a premium at the Orange County fair. In April, 1861, Mr. Underhill sent him to Tim T. Jackson, of Jamaica, Long Island, and in Wallace’s Monthly for December, 1880, Mr. Jackson gave his experiences with Volunteer, making among others this specific statement:
“I had him at Union Course one day, and met Mr. Alfred M. Tredwell there, and I got him to hold that watch on him. Had him in quite a heavy single-seated wagon, weighing probably one hundred and twenty-five or one hundred and thirty pounds. On the first trial he trotted in 2:33. I said to Mr. Tredwell that he could beat that, and he trotted the next mile in 2:31¼.”
He had previously been trained by William Whelan, at Union Course. It was June 26, 1862, while he was in Jackson’s hands, that Alden Goldsmith, in partnership with Edwin Thorne, purchased this horse, then called Hambletonian Jr., and he soon afterward became the sole property of Mr. Goldsmith. Mr. Rysdyk greatly resented his having been called Hambletonian Jr., and early regarded him as a possible rival of Hambletonian, and there was war from the start between the adherents of sire and son. The Civil War was just then at its height, and the patriotic and military spirit rampant, and Mr. Goldsmith aptly named his horse Volunteer. Mr. H. T. Helm, who wrote a very detailed history of Volunteer twenty years ago, credits him with having trotted in 2:36 to wagon at the Goshen Fair in the fall of 1862, beating Winfield, Grey Confidence and others. At Hartford, Connecticut, in August, 1867, he beat George M. Patchen Jr., in a single dash in 2:37. He was, like nearly all the other great sires, a developed trotter.
It is said that his early stud opportunities were so limited that at ten years old he had but eighteen living foals. The first of his get entered the 2:30 list in 1871, but from that time on his list rapidly grew, and the great campaigners Gloster, Alley, Driver, Bodine, Huntress, the great three-miler, and finally St. Julien, 2:11¼, then the fastest trotter in the world, so spread the fame of Volunteer that when his sire died in 1876 he was regarded as the greatest living sire of trotters. In 1882 Mr. R. S. Veech, probably the most intelligent breeder in all Kentucky, while on a visit to New York, telegraphed Mr. Goldsmith to know whether it was worth while for him to visit Walnut Grove, with a view to buying Volunteer, and Mr. Goldsmith’s answer reveals the regard in which he held his horse. The pith of his admirably written letter was in this paragraph:
“While there is no person that would be more welcome at the farm than yourself, if the only object of your visit would be the purchase of Volunteer, then your trip would not be a profitable or successful one, as no breeder in Kentucky has money enough to buy him.... I have as high a regard for money as the most of men for the uses it may subserve, but there are certain things which money cannot buy, as the Teacher of old taught Simon the Samaritan.”
And so Volunteer remained at Walnut Grove, and “lagged superfluous on the stage” long after his owner had passed away, and died December 13, 1888, at the extraordinary age of thirty-four years, seven months and twelve days.
Volunteer sired thirty-four standard performers, and forty of his sons and forty-eight of his daughters produced an aggregate of two hundred and twenty-one standard performers. The most successful of his sons is the Michigan sire, Louis Napoleon, that was out of the Harry Clay mare, Hattie Wood, dam also of Victor Bismarck and Gazelle, 2:21. Louis Napoleon has twenty-seven in the standard list, and fourteen of his sons and twenty-two of his daughters are producers, his best son being Jerome Eddy, 2:16½, sire of Fanny Wilcox, 2:10¼, and twenty-seven other standard performers.