418 THE HOBSE OF AMERICA. 



pedigree. A full showing of this pedigree will be found in the 

 "Trotting Register," Vol. III. 



Bay Chief was a bay son of Mambrino Chief, with a bald face, 

 and was often called Bald Chief. He was the sensational trotter 

 of the whole Mambrino Chief family, and I believe it is true that 

 when four years old he showed a half-mile on Mr. Alexander's 

 track in 1:08 and repeated in 1:08^. In the catalogue he is 

 given as foaled in 1859, got by Mambrino Chief, dam by Keokuk, 

 son of imported Truffle; grandam a thoroughbred mare by Stam- 

 boul Arabian. As this was found in Mr. Alexander's catalogue 

 I took it for granted it must be true, but I never had heard of a 

 running horse called Keokuk before, and I kept hunting for ever 

 so many years without finding hide nor hair of him, until 1885, 

 when the whole mystery was developed. Mr. Richard Johnson, 

 of Scott County, Kentucky, had business interests in Keokuk, 

 Iowa, in the early fifties, probably locating land warrants, and he 

 bought a pair of mares in Keokuk to travel over the prairies, and 

 when he was through with his work ha brought the team home 

 with him to Scott County. He knew nothing whatever of the 

 breeding of those mares, but they were a good pair of drivers 

 and one of them was quite a smart roadster that he called "Old 

 Keokuk." He bred this mare, Keokuk, in 1858 to Mambrino 

 Chief, and in 1859 she produced the colt called Bay Chief. In 

 1862 he was bred to some sixteen or eighteen mares, and the fall 

 of that year Mr. Alexander bought the colt at public auction, 

 paying one thousand dollars for him. He was taken to Wood- 

 burn, put in training and never covered any more mares. In the 

 spring of 1865 he was killed in a raid of Southern troops upon 

 the horse stock at Woodburn, (For further particulars of this 

 little sketch the reader is referred to Wallace's Monthly for 1885, 

 page 285.) To fix up a pedigree for the maternal side of this 

 colt was no easy matter, but Mr. Alexander's "pedigree maker" 

 proved himself fully equal to the occasion. There was the nasty 

 name Keokuk fastened to the old mare, and it would stick as 

 tight as wax to the end of her days, coming from a region where 

 there was no drop of running blood; so he made a "thorough- 

 bred" horse, right on the spot, and gave him the name of Keokuk, 

 which would account for the name of the mare, and pronounced 

 him a son of imported Truffle. To supply a "thoroughbred" 

 grandam was comparatively easy, for Mr. Johnson had long been 

 a resident of Scott County, and the horse Stamboul had been kept 



