(Dated) "Stratford, September 27.
"To Miss Martha Corbin—Dear Miss. I gladly embrace this oppertunity of writing to you to put you in mind there is such a being as mySelfe. I did not think you two would have slited me so. Your little cosen matilda was made a cristan the 25th of September. The godmothers was mrs washington miss becy Tayloe Miss Nancy Lawson Stod proxse for Miss Nelly Lee and I for Mrs Fauquer, godfathers was col. Taloe Mr Robert Carter mrs washington Col Frank Lee, the Esq: mr washington and your ant Lee Dessers there Love to you I am your very humble servant Elizabeth Jackson."
It is easy to understand why Miss Jackson should have dignified all the Lees who employed her with large capitals, but why she should thus have honored Miss Nancy Lawson above "mrs. washington" we shall never know in this world, only, as everybody knows, no married lady—even Mrs. John Augustine Washington, our Mary's daughter-in-law—could possibly be as important as that most worshipped of all creatures, a Virginia young lady.
As to the race-horses, we cannot begin to reckon their increased importance. Janus and Yorick are among the immortals! So also should be General Washington's horses,—Ajax, Blueskin, Valiant, and the royal Arabian Magnolia. Nor should Silver-eye be forgotten, nor the lordly Shakespeare, for whose service a groom was appropriated to sleep near him at night in a specially built recess, that his Lordship's faintest neigh might find response.
The men who settled the Northern Neck of Virginia were cavaliers from "Merry England," with an inherited love of horse-racing, and, indeed, all sporting. There was not a Roundhead among them! They liked cards and dancing. Nobody could make them believe that the devil hunted with the hounds and ran with the race-horses.
The early Virginia historians wrote at length about the pedigrees and qualities of horses and the skill of their riders. The old court records have many quaint entries of disputes about "faire starts," and citizens' depositions were taken to settle them; for instance, "Richard Blande, aged 21 yeares Deposeth that in the Race run between John Brodnax and Capt. William Soane now in tryall, the horse belonging to Henry Randolph on w'ch Capt. Soane layed, came after the Start first between the Poles agreed on for their comeing in," etc. William Randolph's task was more difficult. He "Deposeth in ye race between Wm. Epes and Mr. Stephen Cocke," that the latter "endeavoured to gett the other's path, but he did not gett it at two or three jumps nor many more, upon w'ch he josselled on Mr. Epes' path all most part of ye Race."
People took all these things very seriously, and they formed the subjects of conversation until the time came for horse and rider to distinguish themselves in a sterner field.
The horses bred in Virginia were small, fleet, and enduring, varying little from the early English racers,—the immediate descendants of the Arabian horses. There was a fine race-course at Fredericksburg, and Mary Washington's relatives and friends appear in the contests—her sister-in-law's husband, Roger Gregory, always among the foremost. He ran a famous mare, Dimple; Mr. Spotswood, Fearnaught,—a name reasonably to be expected from John Spotswood's horse. Then there were Fashion, Eclipse, Selima, Ariel, Why Not? (why, indeed?), and many more. Purses from ten to two hundred guineas or pounds were the prizes; also "Saddles, Bridles, Cups and Soop Ladles."
Lewis Willis, General Washington's first cousin, worked his farm principally with blooded plough-horses. The dams of Maid of the Oaks and Betsy Blue were plough-horses. Maid of the Oaks—the most splendid creature ever seen—sold for £15,000 to pay, alas! a security debt. For this astonishing statement I have as authority Lewis Willis's son, Byrd Willis,—father of the Princess Murat and brother of the Jack Willis so loved by everybody and by none more than General Washington himself. These were splendid, jovial fellows, full of anecdote and inexhaustible humor. Colonel Byrd Willis left a diary of the good times of his day.
But, alas for all the good times, the little cloud no bigger than a man's hand in 1766 was now darkening the Northern sky. The Gazette, that had chronicled so many merry days, gave its columns to a warning note (July 21, 1774) from "a Virginian," recommending that Fredericksburg suspend its races and contribute purses to the people of Boston; and, indeed, there was no more record of a race before the Revolution.