THE HOKSE OF AMERICA. 



it was possible and as it had been indorsed sixty years ago by 

 Cadwallader R. Golden and published before that by Mr. Dearin, I 

 am disposed to accept it as reliable. 



He was sixteen hands high, a light grey, becoming white with 

 age. He was excellent in form and probably the most handsome 

 and attractive of all the sons of Messenger. The first public 

 notice we have of him, he was advertised at the stable of his 

 breeder, six miles south of Poughkeepsie, in 1813. Soon after 

 this he became the property of Philo C. Bush, and this was the 

 first horse, he says, that he ever owned. This Mr. Bush was a 

 noted "character" in his day. From early manhood, through 

 good and evil report, and until he died a very old man in poverty 

 and want, he was a habitue of the race track. He knew all about 

 race horses and their breeding, and he could prattle pedigrees 

 from morning till night. Added to this knowledge which his 

 life pursuits had placed in his possession, he was endowed with a 

 most vivid imagination which was brought into the most active 

 play whenever he found it necessary. To maintain his "reputa- 

 tion" it seemed to be a necessity that he should be able to extend 

 all pedigrees laid before him and give the remote crosses, whether 

 he knew anything about them or not. He was the author of the 

 running pedigree given to the dam of Major Winfield Edward 

 Everett, son of Hambletonian and on it money was won in a 

 bet. An investigation of just two minutes disclosed the facts 

 that by established and known dates the whole thing was utterly 

 impossible. He was literally a very "racy" raconteur, but his 

 reminiscences soon became tedious, notwithstanding their bril- 

 liancy, and it was always important to have a call to some busi- 

 ness that cut off further entertainment from his repertoire. 



Mr. Bush says he paid one thousand seven hundred and forty 

 dollars and a silver watch for this horse, and with him he got an 

 elegant suit of clothing that had belonged to imported Express. 

 It is said that he never ran but one race and that was at Pine 

 Plains, in which he distanced all his competitors in the first heat. 

 In 1816 Mr. Bush kept him at Kinderhook; 1817 at Kinderhook 

 and Schodack; 1818 at Kinderhook and Albany; 1819-20 at 

 Utica. In the autumn of 1820 he was sold to Dr. Millington, of 

 Crooked Lake, Herkimer County, and he was kept there 1821- 

 22. He was then sold to Edward Reynolds, of East Bloomfield, 

 where he was kept three or four years, after which he made one 

 or more seasons at Le Roy, and he died at East Bloomfield in 



