The Tribe of Hambletonian 145 



2.30 or better, but prior to 1861 a 240 horse 

 was regarded as standing high above the average. 

 The Charles Kent Mare was a bay of 15.3 hands, 

 foaled in 1834, with powerful stifles, and as a 

 four-year-old trotted a mile under saddle in 2.41. 

 She was by Bellfounder, a Norfolk trotter of 

 15 hands, imported from England to Boston, 

 Massachusetts, in 1822, by James Boot. Im- 

 ported Bellfounder was foaled in 181 5, and the 

 blood of his sire, Bellfounder, is at the founda- 

 tion of the hackney breed. One Eye, a determined 

 brown mare of 15.1, by Bishop's Hamble- 

 tonian (son of Messenger), out of Silvertail, a 

 hardy brown mare by Messenger, w^as the dam 

 of the Charles Kent Mare, who found a happy 

 nick in Abdallah. 



Rysdyk's Hambletonian 



The fruit of this union was a bay colt, foaled 

 May 5, 1849, ^t Sugar Loaf, near Chester, 

 Orange County, New York. This colt, when 

 five weeks old, was purchased from the breeder, 

 Jonas Seely, by a plain farmer with a lean pocket- 

 book. The price named for mare and colt was 

 $125, and the farmer, William M. Rysdyk, sat 

 on the top rail of a fence and pondered for some 



