INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 413 



which evolved a rule by which I could determine the difference be 

 tween the degrees of honesty among horsemen. One man, when 

 a fiction in a pedigree was pointed out, would go to work and 

 carefully investigate it; while another would hang and higgle 

 about it and finally investigate, not to find the truth, but to find 

 how many old rummies, swipes and negroes he could get to- 

 gether, who would support his claim and swear to it for a half- 

 dollar each. The first man investigates to find the truth wher- 

 ever it may lead; while the second man investigates merely, not 

 to find the truth, but to find some kind of evidence to sustain 

 the untruth. In the everyday affairs of life these two men may 

 stand on the same plane, but, at heart, the one is honest and the 

 other a rogue. 



When Mr. Charles Backman founded the great Stonyford 

 breeding farm in Orange County, New York, he was an excellent 

 horseman, in a general sense, although he did not pretend to 

 know much about pedigrees. About 1869 he placed all his pedi- 

 grees in my hands with the request that I would give them a 

 careful examination, strike out everything that was wrong and 

 note everything that was doubtful or uncertain, that it might be 

 investigated and the truth fully determined, no difference where 

 it might lead. Many investigations followed which were con- 

 ducted by his secretary, Mr. Shipman, either by mail or 

 by personal visitation so many, indeed, that Mr. Shipman 

 became quite an expert in this kind of difficult work. As 

 an illustration of the methods pursued, one instance will 

 serve to show -how it was done, and more than this, it is a 

 very interesting history in itself. In the first volume of the 

 Eegister I had entered Green Mountain Maid, the dam of the 

 famous Electioneer and all that family, as "by Harry Clay, dam 

 said to be by Lexington." This was the form in which Mr. 

 Backman had received the pedigree, except that it was stated 

 positively and without any "said to be" that the dam was by 

 Lexington, the great running horse. After a time I called Mr. 

 Backman's attention to this "said to be" and suggested that if 

 the mare was really a daughter of Lexington she could certainly 

 be traced and established. The next day, Mr. Shipman started 

 to Western New York and to Ohio. On his trip he found the 

 mare had been known in Western New York as the "Angelica 

 Mare" and afterward as "Shanghai Mary," that she was a trot- 

 ter, well known locally, and that she had trotted a race and won 



