THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 379 



was greatly surprised to find she had been described as "a pacing 

 mare." He goes on to say: "In our visit the same fall to Dur- 

 ham, Dover, Portsmouth and Greenland to learn more of her, we 

 found a number that knew her when owned in Durham, and they 

 said she was then known as the 'Old Narragansett Mare/ They 

 said that Benjamin Kelly, deceased, brought the mare into Dur- 

 ham, that he had a son John L. living in Manchester, New 

 Hampshire, and that he would know more about her, etc." 

 After learning that Mr. John L. Kelly was a very intelligent and 

 responsible man, having been city marshal and mayor of Man- 

 chester, and known as "Honest John," he wrote him and received 

 the following reply: 



" In answer to your inquiries about the dam of Black Hawk, I will give you 

 my best recollections, aided somewhat by a dairy which I kept at that time. I 

 returned to Durham from a sea voyage in the fall of 1830. In the following 

 spring I went to Boston wif i my father with a lot of horses. We stopped 

 overnight at Brown's Hotel, at Haverbill, Mass., where we met a teamster 

 from Portsmouth, N. H., with a team of four horses. In the hind span was a 

 large gray horse and a dark bay mare. Among father's horses was one which 

 was & good match for the gray horse. The man noticed it and told father that 

 the mare was too fast for the horse, was worth two of him for speed and bot- 

 tom, yet he would trade with father for his gray horse. After a good deal of 

 talk, with the aid of Mr. Brown, the trade was made and. we drove the mare 

 in the carriage to Boston, leading the others. We found her to be a splendid 

 roadster, and as she was not in good condition to sell, we took her back to Dur- 

 ham. At this time she was chafed and bruised up very badly with the heavy 

 hames, yet in a few months she came out of it, with no traces of it, except a. 

 few white spots on her back and breast. The teamster said she was a Narra- 

 gansett mare. She would weigh 1.000 pounds. Father kept her as one of his 

 stable horses. She was found to have great speed as a trotter, and father was 

 always bragging about her. One day, late in the season, Israel Esty, of Dover, 

 drove up to Durham with a trotter, and bantered father for a trot, mile heats 

 on Madbury Plains, between Durham and Dover. I had great faith in the 

 mare and pleaded with father to accept his offer, and he did, and fifty dollars 

 was staked on the race. John Speed was father's hostler, at the time, and he 

 commenced getting the mare ready for the race. He had only three weeks to 

 do it in. At the time specified, a large collection of people from Dover and 

 Durham collected to witness the race. Dr. Reuben Steele was one of the 

 judges. The Esty horse won the first heat, the Kelly mare won the next two, 

 distancing the horse in the last one. In the spring of 1832 John Bellows came 

 to Durham with the old Sherman Morgan, and I persuaded father to have the 

 mare bred to him. He did, as I saw the horse cover her. I was 21 in 1832; 

 went to sea again that fall. My recollection of the dam of Black Hawk is she 

 was a very fine pointed dark mare, with a nostril so large, when excited, that 

 one could put his fist into it. JOHN L. KELLY. 



"Manchester. N. H., August 25, 1876." 



