AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE. 507 



road purposes, in all probability his progeny would have been 

 trained to gallop instead of trot. 



About this time, the country roads growing better and road 

 wagons being made lighter, trotting came into fashion, and the 

 wonderful trotting speed of this family was discovered. He 

 "builded better than he knew" who brought the grand old 

 gray into this country, and it is estimated that his importation 

 has added at least one hundred millious of dollars to the wealth 

 of the country. A very large proportion of the horses now on 

 the trotting turf contain the blood of old Messenger in their 

 veins, and the celebrated Hambletonian, the most fashionable 

 stallion of recent times, boasted of four separate strains of this blood. 

 Other stallions have had an influence in producing the trotting 

 horse. The mixture of the blood of the famous Diomed, the winner 

 of the first Derby ever run in England, with that of Messenger, 

 produced the wonderful Dexter, while the names of the imported 

 Bellfounder, Trustee, Duroc, American Eclipse, and his famous 

 competitor in the great four-mile race. Sir Henry, are to be found 

 in many of the pedigrees of the flyers now on the turf. The noted 

 Canadian horses, old pacer Pilot, Surrey, St. Lawrence and Koyal 

 George, and the imported Arabians, Grand Bashaw and Zilcaadi, 

 have also had considerable influence on the trotting -stock. And 

 thus the English thoroughbred, the courser of the desert, the 

 Barb, the Norman French stock of Canada, the Morgan horse 

 from Vermont, and even the Indian pony of the far western 

 prairies, have contributed qualities the best and noblest in each 

 to produce the noble animal we admire. But all combined might 

 not have succeeded in producing the American trotting horse had 

 not Messenger the great been imported. 



The records of the rise of the trotting turf in this country are 

 few and meagre j the earliest notices of any trotting matches being 

 found in the American Farmer, edited by the Hon. John S. 

 Skinner, published in 1819. 



The first sporting paper published in America was a monthly 

 magazine, called the American Turf Register, also edited by Mr. 

 Skinner, published in Baltimore, September 1, 1829. This journal 

 was almost entirely devoted to the thoroughbred running horse and 

 racing ; and, during the first two or three years of its existence, 

 trotting was scarcely mentioned in its pages. 



Porter's Spirit of the Times, of December 20, 1856, states: 

 " The first time ever a horse trotted in public for a stake was in 

 1818, and that was a match against time for $1000. The match 

 was proposed at a jockey club dinner, where trotting had come 

 under discussion, and the bet was that no horse could be produced 

 that could trot a mile in 3 minutes. It was accepted by Major 



