HAMBLETONIAN'S SONS AND GRANDSONS. 289 



sons are pacers, and frequently pacers of extreme speed, includ- 

 ing such as Joe Patchen, 2:03, and Rubenstein, 2:05, while John 

 E. Gentry, 2:00|, Online, 2:04, and Frank Agan, 2:03, are by grand- 

 sons of Wilkes. Like his sire, George Wilkes got many sons 

 greater than himself and after all that is the true test of great- 

 ness in a progenitor. 



ELECTIONEER has for some years led, far and away, all sires 

 of trotters in the numbers of performers to his credit in both 

 the 2:20 list and 2:30 list, and is generally conceded to have had 

 no equal as a producer of early speed that is, of colts and fillies 

 that trotted fast at tender ages. In many respects this was the 

 most remarkable horse of any age, for besides being phenomenally 

 prolific in transmitting speed at the trot, and in getting early 

 trotters, he possessed in a higher degree than any sire that has 

 yet lived the ability to control running blood in the dam, and to 

 impress his own instinct and action upon his progeny out of any 

 and all kinds of mares. In speaking on his pet hobby of produc- 

 ing trotters from thoroughbred running mares, Governor Stan- 

 ford once said to me: "None of my stallions but Electioneer can 

 do it;" and of all the hundreds of stallions that have been mated 

 with thoroughbred mares in the hope of getting a trotter of ex- 

 treme speed, Electioneer alone was able to do it. Palo Alto, 

 2:08^, is so far faster than any other trotting horse out of a thor- 

 oughbred dam the one solitary instance on record of a half-bred 

 trotter of extreme speed that he is significant in one way, and 

 one only, and that is as an evidence of the phenomenal pre- 

 potency of the blood of his sire in controlling instinct and action. 



Electioneer was a dark bay horse, foaled May 2, 1868, bred by 

 Charles Backman, at his Stonyford Stud, Orange County, New 

 York. He was got by Hambletonian, out of Green Mountain 

 Maid, by Harry Clay, 2:29, grandam the fast trotting mare 

 Shanghai Mary, pedigree not established, but in all probability a 

 daughter of Iron's Cadmus, the sire of the famous old pacer and 

 brood mare Pocahontas, 2:17. (In Chapter XXIX., on the 

 investigation of pedigrees, the history of Shanghai Mary is fully 

 given.) Green Mountain Maid, the dam of Electioneer, has been 

 called by Mr. Backman, and with justice/ 'the great mother of trot- 

 ters." In all she bore sixteen foals, fourteen of which were by 

 the not remarkable horse Messenger Duroc. Electioneer was 

 her second foal and the only one by Hambletonian. Of the other 

 fifteen, nine have records of 2:30 and better, another has a record 



