HAMBLETOXIAN AND HIS FAMILY. 281 



thirty years. He was a strictly conscientious and truthful man, 

 :and died in the glorious hope of a devoted Christian. His first 

 yisit to New York, in 1806, the wonders he saw there, and es- 

 pecially the total eclipse that occurred while he was there, and 

 how he watched it from the Bull's Head tavern, through a piece 

 of smoked glass, and the ride home the next day behind his 

 father on Silvertail, and how he ran down many a hill to rest 

 himself, and how tired he was when they reached home, are inci- 

 dents that were all detailed to me with the interest and vigor of 

 yesterday. 



When One Eye was about fifteen years old the elder Jonas gave 

 her or sold her to his son-in-law, Josiah Jackson, and in due 

 time he bred her to imported Bellfounder and she produced the 

 Charles Kent mare. Mr. Rysdyk thought the elder Jonas gave 

 this mare to his son Charles and that Charles sold her to Mr. 

 Jackson, which is not material. After the Kent mare had been 

 battered about in New York for some years and finally crippled, 

 Charles Kent, a butcher, bought her and bred her to Webber's 

 Tom Thumb, a Canadian horse that was quite a trotter. On 

 one occasion when Jonas II. and Mr. Pray were down in the city, 

 Kent wanted to sell the mare, and Mr. Pray urged Jonas very 

 strongly .to buy her and take her home for a brood mare. He 

 concluded to do so if she were not too badly crippled, and they 

 together went over on to the island to see her, when she came 

 again into the Seely family. In 1848 he bred her to Abdallah, 

 in 1849 she produced a bay colt, and in the autumn of that year 

 he sold her with her colt to William M. Rysdyk, who had been 

 employed on his farm for the year, for one hundred and twenty- 

 five dollars, and this colt proved to be the great Hambletonian. 



As it is now conceded, not only in this country, but through- 

 out the world, that Hambletonian, as a trotting progenitor, is far 

 .and away the greatest horse that has ever been produced, a care- 

 ful and true analysis of the blood elements entering into his in- 

 heritance is a most interesting and instructive lesson for all 

 breeders. First we have the direct cross from Messenger himself 

 in Silvertail; second, we have the cross from a son of Messenger 

 on a daughter of Messenger in One Eye, making her equal to a 

 daughter of Messenger in blood; third, we have the out- 

 cross from Bellfounder, that was a total failure as a trotting pro- 

 genitor, on this double granddaughter of Messenger, and the re- 

 sult is a trotter in the Kent, mare and practically the only trotter 



