INVESTIGATION OF DISPUTED PEDIGREES. 437 



tery to honest folks, who are able to look at things as they are; 

 but it is not difficult to understand the phenomenon when we 

 analyze the reasons for it. First, the owner is anxious to hold 

 on to all he can possibly claim in the way of aristocratic descent 

 with the hope that it may help his sales; and second, there are 

 always a few "featherheads " with golden pockets ready to buy 

 that kind of stuff, because they have never gone far enough in 

 horse history to be able to kick themselves loose from the swad- 

 dling clothes of their infantile prejudices. 



PRINCE. The chestnut gelding Prince was one of the great 

 trotters in the early "fifties." He was pitted against Hero, the 

 pacing son of Harris' Hambletonian, Lantern and others. As 

 usual at that time he was given a thoroughbred pedigree, which 

 I was then led to accept, without really knowing anything about 

 his origin. He was represented to have been bred in Kentucky, 

 and owned by R. Ten Broeck of that State. Then would natu- 

 rally follow a thoroughbred pedigree coming from that State, and 

 nobody doubted it for a long time. He was represented to be by 

 Woodpecker, son of Bertrand; dam by imported Sarpedon; 

 grandam said to be thoroughbred. When he started in his ten- 

 mile race against Hero, William T. Porter said he was by Wood- 

 pecker, and out of that grew the pedigree above. In the old 

 Spirit of the Times, of October 11, 1856, there is a short com- 

 munication signed "Hiram," in which is the only circumstantial 

 account of the origin of Prince that I have ever seen. It is im- 

 plied by the writer that he was bred by a Mr. Dey, of Chautauqua. 

 County, New York, for he says he was got by "an old chestnut 

 horse called Duroc, from Long Island," and came of the Dey 

 Mare. It seems that Dey sold the colt to a young man named 

 Worden, and he was first known as "the Worden colt." He was 

 then sold to Manley Griswold, and from Griswold to Daniel Van- 

 vliet, who sold him in Buffalo to Bennett & Jones (or Thomas), 

 for one thousand dollars, and they sold him to William Whelan, 

 of Long Island, for fifteen hundred dollars. "Hiram" carries 

 the history of the horse no further, as he had then placed 

 him in the hands of the great artists of the trotting world. 

 Of his sire, "Old Duroc," he says he was taken from Long Island 

 to Villenova, in Chautauqua County, by a merchant of that 

 place, named George Hopkins, and after getting about twenty 

 colts he died. Among these twenty we find Prince and another 

 afterward known as the Walker Horse, which achieved a high local 



