MESSENGER'S DESCENDANTS. 259 



A pedigree tracing to an "Abdallah mare" has always enhanced 

 the value of a family. 



ALMACK. Mr. John Tredwell bred his famous team of driving 

 mares, Amazonia and Sophonisba, to Mambrino in the spring of 

 1822, and the next year they each produced a bay horse colt that 

 he named Abdallah and Almack. Sophonisba, the dam of 

 Almack, was a superior mare, but she was not fast enough for her 

 mate. Almack, however, was a good horse and left some trot- 

 ters. I have no particular description of him at hand and noth- 

 ing can now be given of his history further than that some of his 

 daughters produced well and that he seems to have been kept all 

 his life on Long Island. His dam Sophonisba was got by a grand- 

 son of imported Baronet, as represented, but this is so indefinite 

 as to be unsatisfactory and suspicious. As none of the Baronets 

 could ever trot, even "a little bit/' it is evident that whatever 

 trotting inheritance Almaek possessed came to him from his 

 sire. Aside from a number of his descendants that were recog- 

 nized trotters of merit there was one in particular that established 

 Almack as a progenitor of a great family of trotters. A son of 

 his bred by George Raynor, of Huntington, Long Island, in 1842, 

 and known as the "Ray nor Colt," out of Spirit by Engineer II., 

 sire of Lady Suffolk, was led behind a sulky at a fair at Hunting- 

 ton, when he was eighteen months old, and he went so fast and 

 showed such a magnificent way of doing it, that he was named 

 *' Champion" by William T. Porter, editor of the Spirit of the 

 Times. At three years old he was driven a full mile in 3:05 and 

 this was a "world's record" for colts of that age at that time. In 

 1846 he was purchased by William R. Grinnell for two thousand 

 six hundred dollars and taken to Cayuga County, where he 

 founded a great tribe of trotters that is now known everywhere 

 as the "Champion Family." A fuller account of this horse will 

 i)e found at another place in this volume. 



MAMBRIXO PAYMASTER (widely known in later years as Blind 

 Paymaster). This was a large, strong-boned, dark-bay horse, 

 sixteen hands and an inch high. When young he was somewhat 

 light and leggy, but with age he spread out and became a horse 

 of substance. He was bred by Azariah Arnold, of the town of 

 Washington, in Dutch ess County, New York. There is some 

 uncertainty about the year this horse was foaled, but it was some- 

 where between 1822 and 1826. He was got by Mambrino, son of 

 Messenger, and his dam was represented to be by imported Pay- 



