COLONIAL HORSE HISTORY NEW YORK. 125 



received a tremendous impetus, not only in this colony but in 

 others. Ten or twelve years before this a very few rich men in 

 Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina commenced importing 

 English running-bred horses with great success, and Mr. James 

 De Lancey and other rich men of this colony were only a year or 

 two behind them. This fancy grew and spread until a great many 

 breeders and planters of the richer class had imported stock of 

 their own, while their less wealthy neighbors were well supplied 

 with half-breds. -These half-breds were, for a short time, classed 

 by themselves and purses were offered and run for, restricted to 

 this class. After experimenting with animals bred in this way it 

 was found that not a few of them were able to hold their own in 

 any company. Mr. Morris' mare Strumpet was only half-bred, 

 but she was able to beat many of the imported animals, as well 

 as the full-breds that started against her. From this it would 

 appear that breeding for speed for a hundred years had produced 

 results in this country as well as in England. These experiments 

 led many owners of old-fashioned stock to try it, and right there 

 is where thousands and thousands of our best old American pedi- 

 grees end. The decade from 1750 to 1760 witnessed a complete 

 transformation from the old methods to the new, from the old blood 

 to the new, and more than all from the old managers to the new. 

 During the next decade, from 1760 to 1770, the new blood came 

 out in great strength, and the saturnalia of horse racing grew 

 more and more furious. Purses of a hundred dollars, as in the 

 olden time, sprang up to ten times that sum, and matches were 

 made for sums that were fabulous in that day. One match, be- 

 tween Mr. Delaney of Maryland and Mr. De Lancey of New 

 York, specified the consideration on each side as a half bushel 

 of silver Mexican dollars, and the Marylander had the satisfaction 

 of carrying home a bushel of silver dollars. The great struggle, 

 in New York, for supremacy on the turf was between the De 

 Lancey family and the Morris family. These two families had 

 been bitter political rivals for years, and when they met on the 

 turf it was for ' 'blood." The De Lanceys were Tories and the 

 Morrises were Whigs, and this intensified the feeling that had so 

 long existed between them. When the Continental Congress 

 adopted that remarkable resolution, advising the people to ab- 

 stain from horse racing, cock fighting, gambling and some other 

 more slight offenses, on the grounds of "economy," in view of 

 the approaching conflict with the mother country, the effect was 



