THE WATCHUNG 



of the first horse show in Plainfield, by the Riding and Driving Club, which 

 was an unqualified success. Hunters and other high-class horses came into 

 immediate favor, and many people were brought together who, before that 

 time, had hardly realized that they were horse-lovers. 



Two years later, the Hunt was incorporated, and has steadily grown, 

 until now it is a flourishing organization of over one hundred members, and 

 has leased a property just outside the city limits, where the Club has forty 

 acres of ground, a large, comfortable house, ample stabling for thirty horses, 

 and a good half-mile track. It is also their intention to lay out, in the future, 

 a steeplechase course on the property, which will be a natural one, all the 

 obstacles being post-and-rail fences, ditches, and stone walls; and it is pro- 

 posed to hold hereafter their annual spring and fall race meetings over this 

 course. A schooling-ground for green hunters v\all also be laid out. 



To return to the history of the Hunt ; the Master writes as follows : 



" When the Club was first started, we had only a few couples of small 

 American hounds. Later, a draft of English hounds was bought, but they 

 proved a disappointment, as they did not seem to hunt with keenness and 

 snap, and gave very httle music. These hounds were of an infenor quality, 

 which undoubtedly accounts for their being so unsatisfactory." In the spring 

 of 1 906 the Watchung imported from the pack of Aubrey Wallace, Esq., 

 of Brisbane Castle, Millstreet, County Cork, Ire., a draft of black and tan 

 Kerry Beagles, averaging about twenty-three inches in height. These hounds, 

 known in Ireland as the " Millstreet " pack, are maintained and owned en- 

 tirely by the Master, Mr. Wallace, who hunts both hares and foxes over a 

 great part of the Duhallow country, having secured permission from its M. 

 F. H. for that purpose. These Kerry Beagles have been maintained by 

 Mr. Wallace's family since early in the seventeenth century. 



This draft gave general satisfaction to the Watchung members, being ex- 

 tremely keen and showing the good manners and discipline of the English 

 hound. The Club had these hounds until the summer of 1907, when it 

 was decided, for the best interests of the Hunt, to remove the Club and 

 kennels from Colonia, N. J., to Plainfield, N. J. The pack remained in 

 Colonia with Mr. Charles D. Freeman (who was Master to the time of the 



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