He raised many celebrated racers for himself and others, and so judicious was his system that, at the age of two, they had almost the maturity of three-year-olds. His last thoroughbred was a chestnut filly, foaled in 1859, by Lexington, dam Sally Roper (the dam of Berry), which was entered in a stake for three-year-olds, $500 entrance, two mile heats, to come off over the Albion course, near Gallatin, in the fall of 1862. This filly was, of course, a great favorite with Uncle Berry. She never associated with any quadruped after she was weaned, her master being her only companion. At two years old she was large and muscular and very promising, and in the summer of 1861 I urged Uncle Berry to send her to the race course (where I had Fannie McAlister, dam of Muggins, and several other animals in training), that she might be gentled and broken to ride. His reply was: “I have been thinking of your kind offer—I know she ought to be broke, but, poor thing! she don’t know anything; she has never been anywhere, and has never even been mounted. I am afraid she will tear herself all to pieces.” But he finally consented for my colored trainer, Jack Richlieu, to take her to the track. On meeting Mrs. Williams a few days afterwards, I inquired for Uncle Berry. Her reply was: “He is well enough as to health, but he is mighty lonesome since the filly went away.”
But of all the horses he ever owned, Walk-in-the-Water was his especial favorite. In the language of Burns, he “lo’ed him like a vera brither.” He was a large chestnut gelding, foaled in 1813, by Sir Archie, dam by Gondola, a thoroughbred son of Mark Anthony, and these two were the only pure crosses in his pedigree, yet he was distinguished on the turf until fifteen years old, more especially in races of three and four mile heats.
I was present when Walk, at nineteen years of age, ran his last race, of four mile heats, over the Nashville course, against Polly Powell.
Uncle Berry, several years before, had presented him to Thomas Foxall, with a positive agreement that he would neither train nor run him again; having a two-year-old in training, Mr. Foxall took up the old horse merely to gallop in company with him, a few weeks before the Nashville meeting.
It became well known that the mare would start for the four mile purse, and she was so great a favorite that no one would enter against her.
The proprietor, to prevent a “walkover,” induced Foxall to allow him to announce Walk-in-the-Water, whose name would be sure to draw a crowd. There was a large attendance, and the game old horse made a wonderful race, considering his age, running a heat and evidently losing in consequence of his want of condition. When the horses were brought out I missed Uncle Berry, and went in search of him. I found him in the grove alone, sitting on a log and looking very sad. “Are you not going up to see old Walk run?” I inquired. “No, I would as soon see a fight between my grandfather and a boy of twenty,” he replied.
In the year 1827, when Walk was fourteen years old, Uncle Berry took him and several colts that were entered in stakes to Natchez, Miss., traveling by land through the terrible swamps of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. The colts had made very satisfactory trial runs in Tennessee, but suffered so severely from the journey that they either paid forfeits or lost their stakes, so that Walk-in-the-Water was the only hope for winning expenses. He was entered in the four mile race of the Jockey Club, and his only competitor was the b. gelding Archie Blucher, fifteen years old, a horse of great fame as a “four miler” in Mississippi.
On the evening before the race the Jockey Club met and changed the rule, reducing the weight on all horses of fifteen years or upward to one hundred pounds, leaving all others their full weight, or one hundred and twenty-four pounds, three pounds less for mares and geldings.
This extraordinary proceeding would not have been tolerated by the gentlemen who, at a later day, composed that Club, but Uncle Berry protested in vain against the injustice done him. He, however, concluded to run Walk, giving his half brother twenty-one pounds advantage in weight. Walk had the speed of Blucher, and when the drum tapped, took the track, with Blucher at his side, and these two game Archies ran locked through the heat, Walk winning by half a length. The second heat was a repetition of the first, and never was a more tremendous struggle witnessed on a race course—a blanket would have covered the horses from the tap of the drum to the close of the race.
Any man who has watched a favorite horse winning a race, out of the fire and blue blazes at that, can appreciate Uncle Berry’s feelings during that terrible struggle. The horses swung into the quarter stretch, the eighth and last mile, and Uncle Berry, seeing the sorrel face of his old favorite ahead, cried out at the top of his voice, “Come home, Walk, come home! Your master wants money, and that badly.” After the race he expressed his opinion of the Club in no measured terms. Though habitually polite and respectful, particularly toward the authorities of a Jockey Club, he was a man of undaunted courage and ready to resist oppression, irrespective of consequences, but his friends interposed and persuaded him to let the matter pass.