CHAPTEE XXX. 



INVESTIGATION" OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. (Continued.) 



How Belle of Wabash got her pedigree Specimen of pedigree making in 

 that day and locality Search for the dam of Thomas Jefferson True 

 origin and history of Belle of Wabash Facts about the old-time gelding 

 Prince The truth about Waxy, the grandaui of Sunol Remarkable at- 

 tempts to make a pedigree out of nothing How "Jim" Eoff worked a 

 "tenderfoot" Pedigree of American Eclipse Pedigree of Boston Tom 

 Bowling and Aaron Pennington Chenery's Gray Eagle Pedigree of 

 George Wilkes in doubt. 



AT Louisville, Kentucky, October, 1860, a ten-mile race was 

 trotted which excited a good deal of local interest and commento 

 The contestants in this race were entered as follows: 



"Captain Magowan, by imp. Sovereign, dam by American Eclipse." 



"Gipsy Queen, by Wagner, dam by imp. Glencoe." 



"Belle of Wabash (Indiana Belle), by Bassinger, dam by imp. William." 



The names of the parties making the entries are given in the 

 entries of the first and second, and the Louisville Journal of the 

 week before remarks that "J. J. Alexander will represent his 

 State honorably with the Belle of Indiana/' Captain Magowan 

 held the lead from start to finish, and at the end of the eighth 

 mile, some say the seventh, Belle of Wabash was drawn. It will 

 be observed that, so far as given, each one of these animals was 

 furnished with a first-class race-horse pedigree; for it was then 

 held as firmly as any religious tenet that no horse could go that 

 distance at any gait unless he was strictly thoroughbred, and, in 

 Kentucky, if he did not have such a pedigree they gave him one 

 on the spot. At that time they never bothered their heads hunt- 

 ing up the breeder of an animal to learn how it was bred. They 

 simply wanted to see the performance and then make the pedi- 

 gree to suit it. These three pedigrees were all bogus in all their 

 elements, and I knew so little of the ways of the horse world, at 

 that time, that I accepted and recorded them as genuine. 



