302 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



loftily carried, a long and graceful neck, a body stout but finely 

 molded, and all set off by a handsome mane and tail. His feet and 

 legs were of superb quality, and despite his great age they were, 

 it is said, without fault or blemish to the last. His temper and 

 disposition were good, though he was very high-spirited, and in 

 harness he was especially attractive. As a four-year-old Volun- 

 teer was sold to Mr. E. C. Underbill, of Brooklyn, after he had 

 won a premium at the Orange County fair. In April, 1861, 

 Mr. Underbill sent him to Tim T. Jackson, of Jamaica, Long 

 Island, and in Wallace^ s Monthly for December, 1880, Mr. Jackson 

 gave his experiences with Volunteer, making among others this 

 specific statement: 



" I bad him at Union Course one day, and met Mr. Alfred M. Tredwell 

 there, and I got him to hold that watch on him. Had him in quite a heavy 

 single-seated wagon, weighing probably one hundred and twenty-five or one 

 hundred and thirty pounds. On the first trial he trotted in 2:38. I said to 

 Mr. Tredwell that he could beat that, and he trotted the next mile in 2:31^." 



He had previously been trained by William Whelan, at 

 Union Course. It was June 26, 1862, while he was in Jackson's 

 hands, that Alden Goldsmith, in partnership with Edwin 

 Thome, purchased this horse, then called Hambletonian Jr., 

 and he soon afterward became the sole property of Mr. Gold- 

 smith. Mr. Kysdyk greatly resented his having been called 

 Hambletonian Jr., and early regarded him as a possible rival 

 of Hambletonian, and there was war from the start between 

 the adherents of sire and son. The Civil War was just then at 

 its height, and the patriotic and military spirit rampant, and Mr. 

 Goldsmith aptly named his horse Volunteer. Mr. H. T. Helm, 

 who wrote a very detailed history of Volunteer twenty years ago, 

 credits him with having trotted in 2:36 to wagon at the Goshen 

 Fair in the fall of 1862, beating Winfield, Grey Confidence and 

 others. At Hartford, Connecticut, in August, 1867, he beat 

 George M. Patchen Jr., in a single dash in 2:37. He was, like 

 nearly all the other great sires, a developed trotter. 



It is said that his early stud opportunities were so limited that 

 at ten years old he had but eighteen living foals. The first of 

 his get entered the 2:30 list in 1871, but from that time on his 

 list rapidly grew, and the great campaigners Gloster, Alley, 

 Driver, Bodine, Huntress, the great three-miler, and finally St. 

 Julien, 2:lli, then the fastest trotter in the world, so spread the 



