OF KENTUCKY A ___ - 5 -
""““ A. The horse fair Annet rade upon
€mi-_ . 4 _' ` He amblet like the wind;
WOT, _ _ Wi' siller he was shod before,
Sri- 'Wi’ gleaming gowd behind ....
and
1 QS Compared with the Thoroughbred of today, either breed was smaller and less
thg speedy, but notable for sureness of foot and the staying power known to horse-
and men as "bottom." . _
During the seventeenth.century marked attention was given to improving the
and breed; and in 1689 Captain_ Byerly, an officer of the English army in Ireland,
Ugly rode at the Battle of the Boyne a Turk stallion, which afterward, as Byerly's
Zhgd Turk, stood in England as the first in point of time of the three great stallions
did back to which all present-day registered Thoroughbreds, both in England and in
tha America, trace their lineage. In 1709 the Darley Arabian, second in time of arri-
ling val in England of the three progenitors of the Thoroughbred, was imported by a
brother of Mr. Darley of Oldbey Park, midway between York and Malton. In 1728 the
third of the great trio, the Godolphin Barb, either an Arabian or a Barb, was
lngg found, according to tradition, on a water cart in the city of Paris. The finder
VOQU was a Mr. Coke of Norfolk, who presented him to R.`Williams who in turn gave him
and to the Earl of Godolphin. uHe was a brown bay, large for the time, standing fif-
has teen hands. He stood at service until his death in 1755. »
gig; The blood of these three sires, mingled with the best blood of native Eng-
gat lish stock, is notable for the fact that after two centuries it still survives,
Na; while of the 174 sires mentioned in the first General Stud Book, published in
1781, the blood lines_of all the rest have been broken. -The Thoroughbred of to-
day in all pedigrees traces back in the direct male line to one or more of the
. three. . l
lent The intermingled blood of these founding sires appears in _the three great _
his families_founded by Eclipse, foaled in 1764, a great-grandson of the Darley Arab-
Lckv ian and of The Godolphin, by Herod, great-great—grandson of the Byerly Turk and
len; closely related on the side of his dam to the_Uarley Arabian. Watchem, grandson
_ry_ of The Godolphin and descended on his dam’s side from the Byerly Turk, completes
and the seccnd_trio of great‘sires. To one or possibly to all of these the blood of
ytgn every American Thoroughbred traces. _
i§?d The most famous sire of the three was Eclipse, never beaten in a race, and
and winner of twenty-six races and matches. He won eleven King's Plates. In twenty-
aus 4 three years at stud he sired 544 race winners. His earnings amounted, in present-
MIG . day American money, to approximately $750,000. 4 .
THE ENGLISH HORSE IN AMERICA l
The first English horses imported into America came to New_England in 1629.
and Later in the same century, Rhode Island became a horse-breeding center from which
ing the stock, English of the period prior to the infusion of Eastern blood, spread
SCS first to Long Island where a race track was built in 1665, and later (c.l690), to
rk. all the other English Colonies along the.At1antic coast.
Eg? The first horses imported to Virginia, shortly after Jamestown was settled
CU- met an ignominious_fate. They were eaten. A_ later importation fared little
p` better, In 1659 the_Privy Council approved an order permitting "Thomas Stegg and
TO- Jeremy Blackman to furnish Virginia with horses, mares, and such. like beasts of
carriage, and to export from thence the like number of neat cattle..." In 1646 a
I