One of the most important events in the early horse history of this country was the landing from England in 1788 of the Thoroughbred stallion Messenger, a gray horse that had had some success on the turf in the old world, but was scarcely what might be called great as a race-horse. He was brought over here to be the sire of runners, and he was, to an extent, as both his sons and daughters were good performers. His greatest place in the Thoroughbred records is due to the fact that he was the sire of Miller’s Damsel, the dam of American Eclipse, the horse that upheld the honor of the North in the great contest when Sir Henry represented the South. But before Messenger’s death it had been recognized that when he was bred with the mares of the American basic stock, the produce had a disposition and a capacity to trot faster than was then at all usual. Naturally, therefore, he was used to further this end as much as to sire runners, though there was nothing like a trotting turf in those days, the contests being on the roads under saddle and for considerable distances.

Messenger’s sire was Mambrino, by Engineer; Engineer was by Sampson, and Sampson by Blaze; Blaze by Flying Childers (pronounced by Major Upton in his “Newmarket and Arabia,” “the best horse to be found in the stud book”); and Flying Childers by the Darley Arabian. This is pretty good breeding, as any one will say who is familiar with the early English records as kept by the Messrs. Weatherby. But even Messenger’s title to be a Thoroughbred has been bitterly disputed by the controversialists of recent time, this controversy having been precipitated and intensified when, in the effort to get faster trotters, it was proposed to put in more Thoroughbred blood. The leader of the opposition to more Thoroughbred blood was an able and ingenious writer who has never had his equal in manufacturing pedigrees to suit his own theories, and at the same time please the interests of those who hired him to bolster up the merits of the stock they were breeding to sell. He maintained that the dam of Sampson, the grandsire of Messenger, was a pacing mare, and hence Messenger’s capacity to transmit the trot to his progeny. He further affirmed that the trot and the pace were the same gait; but of this I will speak later when I get to the Standard Bred Trotters. Now, as a matter of fact, the Godolphin progenitor of Messenger through the female line was a Barb, and Barbs are apt to pace, though if Thoroughbreds pace I have yet to see one.

So many fictions have grown up about Messenger that he seems more like a hero of romance than a flea-bitten gray horse of not very fine finish, and worth, according to the records of sales, in the neighborhood of $4500. Indeed, the record of his landing is so obscure that I have not been able to determine whether it was in New York or Philadelphia. But he was in the stud for nineteen years and left many sons and daughters. He was kept in various places—near Philadelphia, on Long Island, in Orange County, New York, and in New Jersey. But in each neighborhood he made an impression on the horses that came after him, an influence which seems to have been both good and enduring.

Trotting and pacing racing in America had been popular even before Messenger’s coming, and long before his get and their get appeared on the road. But the matches were neighborhood affairs and attracted only local attention. There was absolutely no effort at organization and the construction of trotting tracks until many years later. What racing there was was in the hands and under the control of gentlemen; how much interest they took in these trotting and pacing matches I do not know. But not much I fancy, for caste in America was stronger and more separating than it is now, when, if we put the “mighty rich” in a class by themselves there is very little at all. It was not until between 1820 and 1830 that horses were trotted on tracks, and then there was little, if any, of this mile heat business to see really how fast a horse could go for a short distance. What the people of that elder day seemed to be most interested in was how far a horse could trot at a good rate of speed. I will not tire my readers with a recital of the fictions of the contests on the roads of Long Island and Harlem, but begin with the race of Lady Kate under the saddle against time. Her task was to go fifteen miles in an hour. This she did and easily. Nor does it seem much of a task when we consider that a few years later Andrew Jackson was doing mile after mile in much less than three minutes. This horse, by the way, was so superior to the trotters of the time that his owner could make few matches with him. His speed and endurance frightened the others off, and there was little, if any, rivalry. We find it recorded, however, that Paul Pry, in 1833, beat time in an effort to go sixteen miles to the hour, and Hiram Woodruff, then a boy, expressed the opinion that this horse could then have gone twenty miles in the hour. This same old driver tells of a horse which he thought was one of the most superior he ever knew, Top Gallant, by Messenger. This fellow, in his twenty-second year, went four four-mile heats in time very fast for that day. A little later appeared Dutchman, who, in a race of three-mile heats against Rattler, went the distance in 7.45½, 7.50, 8.02 and 8.24, Dutchman won the first and fourth heat, Rattler won the second heat, while the third was a dead heat. Here we see the first heat was trotted at the rate of 2.35, which was surely very fast going, considering the distance, the vehicles used and the shoeing. But such journeys are now considered too far.

Lady Suffolk, an inbred Messenger, was spoken of for a while as the Queen of Trotters, and she was a remarkably good one both in breeding and in performance. She was sired by Engineer II, by Engineer, a son of imported Messenger; her dam was by Don Quixote, son of Messenger. So it will be seen that she was closely inbred to Messenger and had as much of the Thoroughbred blood as any trotting horse of remarkable performance. She was a gray, and was foaled in 1833 on Long Island. She began trotting when she was five years old, and had a remarkably successful career. She trotted 138 races, winning eighty-eight times and receiving forfeit three times. When she was twelve years old, at Beacon Course, Hoboken, she trotted the second heat of a five-heat race in 2.29½, which was the first time 2.30 had been passed, and was, of course, the record. In 1849 she made a saddle record of 2.26. She was bred to Black Hawk in Vermont, but the colt was prematurely born, and she left no descendants. Although this record was reduced in 1849 to 2.28 by Pelham, a converted pacer, another second was knocked off in 1853 by Highland Maid, also a converted pacer, there was nothing in the way of trotters to take the great place of Lady Suffolk until Flora Temple, the queen of them all, came along about 1850, and proceeded to beat all that attempted to rival her for speed and courage.

When I was a boy, Flora Temple was considered almost as great as Lexington. In Kentucky at that time, her wonderful performances, her speed and her courage were considered all the more remarkable from the fact that no one knew how she was bred, and inferred that she had no breeding that was good. This was not a fair inference. Her appearance, her gameness, her fighting qualities, together with her nervousness, all indicated that she was a high-bred animal. To say what that breeding was is another matter. So a pedigree was fixed up for her. On the plate published by Currier and Ives when she was at the very zenith of her fame, her pedigree was set down as follows: “Sired by one-eyed Kentucky Hunter, by Kentucky Hunter; dam Madam Temple by a spotted Arabian horse.” I have no doubt that this pedigree is as arrant nonsense as was ever put in print, and was simply made up to put on the advertisements of the races in which she was entered. I doubt, even, whether there was any serious effort to trace her pedigree when she was a filly, for it was not until she was five years old that she attracted the attention of a horseman and he bought her for $175, and sold her quickly for $350. Previous to that she had been used in a livery stable, though I recall a tradition that she had been used in a milk cart.

Colonel Battell, who spares no pains when he goes after a pedigree, investigated that of Flora Temple, and says it is as follows: “Foaled May, 1845; bred by Samuel Welch, Sangerfield, New York; got by Loomis’s Bogus, son of Lame Bogus, by Ellis’s Bogus, son of imported Tom Bogus; dam Madam Temple, about 850 pounds, bay, foaled 1840, bred by Elijah Peck, Waterville, New York, sold when four months old to William Johnson, of whom she was purchased, 1843, by Samuel Welch, got by a spotted stallion (owned by Horace Terry, who brought him from Long Island or Dutchess County, New York) said to be by a full-blooded Arabian stallion kept on Long Island; second dam described by John I. Peck, son of Elijah Peck, as bay with black points, bob tail, low set and heavy, very smart and would weigh from 1050 to 1175 pounds, foaled about 1834, purchased by Mr. Peck of a Mr. Randall, Paris, New York. Sold when weaning with her dam to Archie Hughes, Sangerfield, who sold her for $13 to Nathan Tracy of Hamilton, New York, who kept her two and one-half years, and sold to William H. Condon, Smyrna, New York, who sold to Kelley & Richardson, livery-stable keepers, Richardson, New York. Mr. Richardson took her with a drove of cattle to Washington Hollow, New York, and sold her for $175 to Jno. Vielee, who took her to New York and sold her to George E. Perrin, for $550, who sold her September, 1850, to G. A. Vogel, for $600. A correspondent of the Spirit of the Times, writing from Waterville, Oneida County, New York, February, 1860, says: “Madam Temple, the dam of Flora, was foaled the property of Elijah Peck, Waterville, Oneida County, New York, in the spring of 1840: her dam was a small but fleet bay mare. Madam Temple was sired by a spotted Arabian stallion brought from Dutchess County, and owned by Horace Terry. Mr. Peck disposed of Madam Temple when four months old for a mere trifle to William Johnson of the same place.... Terry’s spotted Arabian was a remarkably strong, restless, fast-trotting horse, said to have been sired by a full-blooded Arabian stallion on Long Island. He was a great favorite in this section, and his stock for general use possesses probably more excellent qualities than that of any other horse known in this vicinity. They were uniformly strong, with rare speed and bottom. The general high reputation in which his stock was held may be judged from the fact that George W. Crowningshield, of Boston, owned a pacing gray mare of his get, so fast and enduring that he sold her for $1500. That was considered very high in those days. Madam Temple has always been regarded as a remarkable roadster. Mr. Hughes sold her in 1846 to G. B. Cleveland, Waterville, who soon parted with her to N. W. Moss of the same place, but now of Osage, Iowa. By him she was kept as a horse of all work for several years, from whom she was purchased by James M. Tower in the spring of 1854, and he subsequently sold to H. L. Barker, of Clinton, Oneida County, New York, in January, 1855, who now owns her. Flora was her first colt. Her second a horse colt, was foaled in the spring of 1855, and was bought by J. W. Taylor, of East Bloomfield, for R. A. Alexander, of Woodford County, for $500. This colt was sired by H. L. Barker’s Edwin Forrest (a Kentucky colt), now owned by S. Downing, Lexington, Kentucky.”

So we can take our choice of pedigrees. If Flora Temple had been born a few years later the Hambletonian advocates would surely have claimed her. It has always been a wonder to me that they did not, after all, assert that she was of collateral blood. When her new owner brought this most remarkable mare to New York, he had not the most remote idea that he held one of the wonders of the world. He believed that she was a pretty good pony, and could strike a good clip on the road. She was only 14.2 hands high and had a mere stump of a tail. Besides, she was nervous, and before she “found herself” had a rather choppy action. When she had learned the trick, however, her action was smooth and clock-like, and she glided along with almost unapproachable grace. Moreover, when she broke she lost scarcely nothing, as she did not have to be pulled back almost to a standstill, but caught her trotting stride from what was very like a run.

There are other books in which the record of Flora Temple can be found in all of its proud and brilliant details. She beat everything of her day, beginning with the Waite Pony on the Bloomingdale road in 1850, until Ethan Allen, Princess, George M. Patchen and all the good ones had to take her dust. She was not used under the saddle, but always to sulky or wagon. Hiram Woodruff, her first real trainer, says she was a great weight puller and was not in the least bothered by a 350 pound wagon, but went along with it as merrily as though she were in a racing sulky. Her first defeat was in 1853 by Black Douglas, a son of Henry Clay; but a few months later she had her revenge and beat the Clay stallion with apparent ease. In 1856 she took the trotting record away from Highland Maid by covering a mile in 2.24½. The record remained with her for eleven years; she reduced it in 1859 to 2.19¾, and so she was the first to trot better than 2.20, as Lady Suffolk was the first to go below 2.30. In 1859 the little bay stump-tail mare was at the very zenith of her fame, though Hiram Woodruff was of opinion that the next year she might have surpassed this. The next year the Civil War broke out and she, not being in good form, was retired to the breeding farm of Aristides Welch, near Philadelphia.

During the two or three last years of her public life, Flora Temple had nothing to beat, so she was sent all over the country “hippodroming” with Princess and George M. Patchen, variously. On the farm she dropped a few colts. Two were by sons of Hambletonian, and one by imported Leamington. They have not done much to perpetuate her prowess. My own idea is that in selecting mates for her the great cardinal principle of breeding: “like begets like,” was utterly disregarded. The blood of a Hambletonian was probably too cold to mate with hers, though we do not know what hers was, and Leamington’s conformation was too great a contrast. Though she has left no descendants that do her particular honor, she has left by her performances imperishable fame as the greatest trotter of her day, and her day lasted for more than a dozen years.

There was a lull in trotting during the Civil War, just as there was in racing, but after the war the trotting tracks became even more popular than the running courses—not the most fashionable, but the most popular. Fashion has never forsaken the running horse, and probably never will; but in the main, the trotting races have been patronized and managed by men of a slightly different social status. To be sure, there are notable exceptions, exceptions so notable, indeed, that they ought to be sufficient to lift the ban from the trotting world; but they have never been able to do it. And even during the ten years after the Civil War, when trotting was immensely popular, it was considered slightly a reproach to be interested in the sport. It was during this period that Dexter took the trotting primacy away from Flora Temple, and the tribe of Hambletonian came into such prominence that the legislators who framed trotting-match rules, established a register and made laws fixing a standard entitling a stallion or a mare to a place in these sacred books. And so the “Standard Bred Trotter” came into being, and his has been a long day—his advocates and admirers say a great day.