Grand Bashaw, the horse that gave this family its name, was imported from Tripoli by Richard B. Jones, who was the American consul at that port. Mr. Morgan was associated with him, and they imported at the same time two other Barbs, Grand Sultan and Saladin. Grand Bashaw was kept in Lower Merion, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, several years; Grand Sultan was kept in New Salem, New Jersey, for a time, and Saladin was taken to North Carolina and afterward died in Georgia. From these three horses nothing has been left to the horse history of the country but one single attenuated line. Grand Bashaw was a black horse, fourteen hands and an inch high, with a star and a snip on his nose. He was kept all his life in the vicinity of Philadelphia, and died at Newtown, Pennsylvania, 1845.
Young Bashaw was a grey horse, about fifteen and one-quarter hands high, and is the only descendant of Grand Bashaw through which we can trace to that horse. He was foaled 1822 and was bred by Thomas Logan, of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. His dam was Pearl, by Bond’s First Consul, a famous running horse, his grandam Fancy, by imported Messenger, and his great-grandam by imported Rockingham. This is the pedigree under which he was advertised, but it has never been authenticated in any of its crosses. Judging by the horse himself and his progeny there can hardly be a doubt that there was a Messenger cross in it, but just where cannot be determined.
He made his first season in Salem, New Jersey, 1826. He was then four years old and by no means handsome or attractive in his form. His head, ear and neck were his worst features; but in addition to these defects he was flat on the ribs and habitually carried his tail to one side. His limbs and feet were as good as ever were made, but his great redeeming quality was his trotting gait. When in Salem he was only a rough, partly developed, four-year-old colt, but he showed then a step and a rate of speed so remarkable as to induce a few to breed to him, notwithstanding his ungainly appearance. He did not cover more than a dozen mares that season, and all-told he got eight foals. Out of these eight, seven proved to be superior trotters for that day. Andrew Jackson was the best, but there was another that could go below 2:40. The common remark was, wherever he touched a mare of Messenger blood, there was sure to come a trotter. This was the general rule, but the best hit he ever made, probably, was when he covered Joseph Hancock’s black pacing mare and got Andrew Jackson.
In looking over his blood elements we can see nothing in his pedigree to justify these trotting qualities except the grandam, Fancy, by Messenger. First Consul was a great race horse, but neither he nor his descendants ever evinced a disposition to trot. The horse Rockingham was contemporaneous with Messenger and a constant rival while Messenger was about Philadelphia. He was not wholly running-bred, as he was by Towser, afterward called Counsellor, and out of a hunting mare. As a stock horse he was esteemed as only second to Messenger on the Delaware, where he stood many years.
The fame of Young Bashaw did not cease nor die out after the exploits of Andrew Jackson, Black Bashaw, Charlotte Temple, Washington and others from his own loins. The Clays, the Long Island Black Hawks and the Patchens have kept spreading it wider and wider until of late years we find that only the one great Hambletonian family has overshadowed them all. Young Bashaw, after eleven years in the stud along the Delaware River, above and below Philadelphia, died at Morrisville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, June, 1837.
Andrew Jackson was the most noted son of Young Bashaw. He was a black horse, fifteen and a half hands high, with three white feet and a strip of white in his face. He was very well formed in every point and was strong, compact, short-legged and handsome. He was foaled 1827, and was bred by Joseph Hancock, of Salem, New Jersey. His dam was a strong, compact black mare that both trotted and paced, and was noted for her speed at the latter gait. This mare was brought in a drove from Ohio, in the spring of 1820 and on the twenty-first of June of that year she was sold to Mr. Hancock, of Salem, New Jersey, for one hundred dollars. He kept her a little over six years, and in the spring of 1826 bred her to Young Bashaw, and in the fall of that year sold her to Powell Carpenter; and soon after he sold her to Daniel Jeffreys, a brickmaker on the Germantown road, near Philadelphia. She was then in foal by Young Bashaw, and the next spring she dropped the colt that became famous as Andrew Jackson.
The incidents connected with the history of this mare are here given, perhaps in unnecessary detail, but as Andrew Jackson was very extensively advertised under a fraudulent pedigree from about 1834 till the time of his death, and as I had at one time accepted it as true, it is better that it should be made very plain, especially as I had been severely criticised for changing it. The correction made, as above, was founded on information received from two separate and distinct sources and both thoroughly reliable. The fraudulent pedigree of this mare represented her as “by Whynot, son of imported Messenger, and her dam by Messenger” himself. This was just such a pedigree as so great a horse should have had, but there was no truth in it. The attack was led by quite a large breeder in one of the prairie States, who had a number of animals remotely descended from Andrew Jackson. He did not even pretend to know anything at all about the truth of the matter, but simply urged most vehemently that the pedigree should be restored because it was old. The fact of the matter was the man wanted the old lie instead of the new truth maintained because it would help to sell his stock, which was the very object for which the lie was originally invented.
Daniel Jeffreys was very much addicted to trotting horses, and when he bought the black mare that was then carrying Andrew Jackson he kept her for his own driving and named her “Charcoal Sal.” She was no doubt among the fastest of the road horses, but there is no record of her ever being in a race. How much Jeffreys drove Charcoal Sal that autumn cannot now be determined; probably too much for the physical, but not too much, for the mental, organization of the foal she was carrying.
About the break of day, one morning in the following April, somebody was passing Jeffreys’ brickyard (my recollection is, it was George Woodruff himself), and he heard a splashing in the water accumulated in one of the clay pits, and Charcoal Sal circling round in great distress. She had dropped her foal, and in its weak efforts to get on its feet, it had rolled into the pit. It was at once pulled out and the family aroused, and no time was lost in rubbing it dry and wrapping it in warm blankets. Some of the mare’s milk was poured into it from time to time, and toward noon it was so much revived and strengthened as to manifest a disposition to get on its feet. This was due, principally, to the womanly care and good nursing of Mrs. Jeffreys. But, when helped up, he appeared to have strength enough everywhere but in his pastern joints, and there he had no strength at all. In this condition the colt remained a day or two, a most pitiable and most helpless object, standing on its pasterns instead of its feet. One morning at the breakfast-table Mr. Jeffreys said he would give any of the boys a dollar if he would put that colt out of misery and bury it out of his sight. Mrs. Jeffreys, whose womanly feelings and sympathies were all enlisted, replied to her husband’s remark that “the boy who would kill that colt never could eat another mouthful at that table.” What a grand exhibition of true womanly instincts! Day by day her unremitting care was rewarded by seeing a little more strength gathering in the weak places, and at last her kind, motherly heart was gladdened by seeing him skip and play, a strong beautiful colt.
Mr. Jeffreys kept the colt till he was some five or six years old! and then sold him to John Weaver, whose residence was about half a mile from the old Hunting Park Course. He remained the property of Mr. Weaver till he died, September 19, 1843. In his stud services he was kept on both sides of the Delaware, in the region of Philadelphia, and made one season, perhaps two, on Long Island. As a trotter he stood as the first of all stallions of his day.