GEORGE WILKES. 293 



As Bellfounder was distinguished by his adherence to the bay and 

 brown, so the Clays and their crosses show a strong partiality for 

 the black, and the brown as bordering on the black, and for more or 

 less white in the faces and on the les's. These latter colorings will be 

 shown in their appropriate chapter, to have followed the family from 

 their earliest progenitors; and it may also be observed that, as between 

 the two families of the Bellfounders and the Clays when crossed, in this 

 matter of the relative strength of the element of color the supremacy 

 must be said generally to rest with the Clays. There are more black 

 and dark brown Hambletonians of that cross than there are bays in 

 the Clay family; and while Hambletonian himself was sometimes 

 successful in controlling the color of his sons from Clay mares, those 

 sons very often produce black colts and these with white faces and 

 legs — showing the ultimate supremacy of the Clay blood in the matter 

 of color. 



GEORGE WILKES. 



This is one of the most distinguished sons of Hambletonian. He is 

 a brown horse, and was foaled in 1856. He was bred by Col. Felter, 

 of Greenwood Lake, Orange county, N. Y., and was first called 

 Robert Fillingham. Until he had attained the age of nearly twenty- 

 two years, his owners and others interested in the matter, appear to 

 have taken about the same degree of interest in the blood and pedi- 

 gree of his dam as was shown by the owners and friends of Abdallah 

 during his lifetime. She was a mare called Dolly Spanker, and noted 

 for her own good qualities — a road mare of great superiority. How 

 valuable is the lesson taught by the fact that the dam of almost every 

 great stallion and performer was a superior road mare! She was a 

 fine roadster, and when five years old could speed in about 3:30. She 

 appears to have been bred by Mr. Clark Philips, in the vicinity of 

 Bristol, not far from Geneva, N. Y. She was by Henry Clay, son of 

 Andrew Jackson, and the progenitor of the family of horses known as 

 the Clays. Her dam was a mare called Old Telegraph, by a horse 

 called the Baker Highlander, but it does not clearly appeai* what his 

 blood was. The accounts agree that the dam and grandam of Dolly 

 Spanker were both good mares, and of great capacity as roadsters. 

 This mare died in foaling, and her colt, the subject of this sketch, 

 was brought up by hand on a diet of cow's milk and Jamaica rum 

 sweetened with loaf sugar, according to the statement given to the 

 public. This may in part account for the lack of size in Wilkes; he is 

 only fifteen hands in height, but very fine and blood-like in every 



