TROTTING FAMILIES. 33 



money, and are able to go at a speed far greater than 

 our best Norfolk trotters can manage." 



I have now indicated the two most important trot- 

 ting- families descended from Messenger, and there are 

 others but little inferior. Vermont had the Harris 

 Hambletonian, a grandson of Messenger, out of a gray 

 •• English mare." fie was a gray himself, and so were 

 most of his descendants. This horse was the sire of 

 Sontag, who once beat Flora Temple in a match race, 

 and grandsire of the Morse horse, among whose de- 

 scendants was Lulu, with a record of 2.14^, and Gov- 

 ernor Sprague, a trotting stallion of high reputation. 



Maine had Winthrop Messenger and the Bush Mes- 

 senger. The Bush Messengers were almost invariably 

 chestnuts. Fanny Pullen, dam of Trustee, 1 the first 

 horse to trot twenty miles within an hour, was a Bush 

 Messenger. 



Still another Messenger strain, and one of more 

 "quality" than the rest, is that of the Champions. 

 In the first quarter of this century, one Mr. John 

 Tredwell of Long Island had a pair of extraordinarily 

 fast and enduring road mares, called Amazonia and 

 Sophronisba, the former being of Messenger descent, 

 and the latter a granddaughter of imported Baronet. 2 

 In 1823 both of these mares produced foals by Mam- 

 brino, son of Messenger. Amazonia's foal was Abdal- 

 lah, sire, as we have seen, of the famous Rysdyck's 

 Hambletonian, and Sophronisba's foal was Almack, 

 sire of Grinnell's Champion, 3 first of the name, and 



1 His sire was imported Trustee, a thoroughbred. 



2 By Vertumnus out of Penultima. Barouet, a bay horse, was 

 noted for his beauty. 



3 The dam of Grinnell's Champion was by Engineer, and his 

 gran dam by the famous American Eclipse. 



3 



