516 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



due to the trotting blood she obtained from New York. She had 

 plenty of pacing blood that was good, of its kind, but it was so 

 uncertain and sporadic that it did not commend itself to the 

 breeders of that section as a source of trotting speed. From an 

 early period in the history of the State the habits and fancies of 

 the people, in the richer portions, had been "horsey," from their 

 knowledge and familiarity with running races for many years, 

 and thus when the demand came for trotters they struck out 

 vigorously to meet that demand. When Mr. K. A. Alexander 

 organized the great Woodburn Farm he established a department 

 of trotters, which was among the very first of any magnitude in 

 the State. As he had been reared abroad he knew nothing about 

 American pedigrees, and in making his purchases of breeding 

 stock he was victimized by every sharper who came along with a 

 brood mare to sell. He was a man of honest purpose and excel- 

 lent natural judgment which told him to buy such breeding 

 animals as could trot themselves or had produced trotters, and if 

 he had been content to stop with what little he knew of their 

 breeding he would have been all right; but, meantime, the pro- 

 fessional pedigree-maker the successor to the famous Patrick 

 Nesbitt Edgar came along and tricked them out in an excel- 

 lent quality of pinchbeck pedigrees containing plenty of running 

 blood that had never trotted nor produced a trotter. When the 

 first Mr. Alexander died he was succeeded in the proprietorship 

 of the great estate by his brother, a very worthy gentleman who 

 made it a law to the establishment that none of his horses should 

 ever start in a race. His fancy and knowledge were all in the 

 line of cattle, and he seemed to neither know nor care anything 

 about horses. Soon after this change in the ownership of the 

 estate a new manager was placed in charge, and it was soon 

 manifest that however absurd and untruthful the pedigrees of 

 breeding stock might be, they must not be questioned nor cor- 

 rected by any authority whatever. This doctrine of infallibility 

 as applied to Woodburn pedigrees was wholly incompatible with 

 what I conceived to be my duty to the breeding public. I had 

 accepted the Woodburn pedigrees, at the start, as trustworthy, 

 on the grounds of the eminence and high character of the first 

 Mr. Alexander, and it was far more than a surprise to me when 

 I discovered something of the extent to which the pedigrees of 

 the whole establishment had been honeycombed with the dis- 

 honesty of "sharpers" and "pedigree-makers." These fictions. 



