The Driving Clubs of Greater Boston 



H3 



he declared that he would never take her 

 out again. John Shepard then repurchased 



the mare, and not a trotter in Boston that 

 Winter was capable of taking her measure 

 the length of the boulevard. 



Among the regular boarders at Sawyer's 

 were the late Col. Henry S. Russell, owner 

 of the famous Home Farm in Milton, where 

 were kept for years the celebrated stallions, 

 Smuggler. 2:151-4; Fearnaught, Jr., 2:26, 

 etc. (Col. Russell was later Fire Commissioner 

 of Boston), Hon. George von L. Meyer, Secre- 

 tary of the Navy ; Eben S. Draper, former 

 Governor of the State, and the late Gover- 

 nor Wolcott. 



Commodore George Perkins, the father 

 of Mrs. Larz Anderson, while he had his 

 own private stable in Newbury Street, quite 

 frequently dropped in at Sawyer's to chat 

 horse with his cronies. All old-timers can 

 remember well the Winter he had the boss of 

 the snowpath in the trotting mare, Thetis, 

 2:161-4. This was in 1894, and the season 

 before the daughter of Mambrino Wilkes, 

 2 :28 3-4, had proved in her races that she 

 was much better than a 2:10 trotter. 



There was Major Henry L. Higginson, one 

 of the patrons, who was founder of the Sym- 

 phony Orchestra, and he usually kept several 

 trotters, among the number being Parana, 

 2:191-4. George B. Inches boarded during 

 the Winter months at Sawyer's, the stallion 

 Pedlar, 2:181-4, and other trotters. S. B. 

 Dana had Arab, 2:15, previously owned by 

 John Shepard. George F. Fabyan had Jean 

 Valjean, 2:14, with which John Cheney won 

 many creditable races. Dr. F. P. Sprague 

 had First Love and Almira, w T hose respective 

 records were 2:22 1-2 and 2:24 1-4. He often 

 drove them in an extension-top carryall of 

 a pattern of 100 years ago. 



Then there were Edward P. Whitney, 

 partner of J. Pierpont Morgan, who always 

 had a fine trotter; F. H. Prince, son of 

 Mayor Prince, who had a string of thorough- 

 bred racers, among them King Tom and 

 Sherrod, but for his own riding had a fast 

 trotter; John Wright, who now lives in 

 France and has a racing stable there, kept 

 a number of racing ponies there, such as are 

 now known as polo ponies. 



The passing of the old home for trotters 

 emphasizes the decadence of road driving 

 from what it was up to ten years or so ago, 

 for at Sawyer's is said to have been boarded a 

 greater number of high-class trotters from 

 ten to thirty years ago than any other stable 

 in Boston, and it was said to have been good 

 at one time for an income of $30,000 a year. 



The stable was built about 58 years ago by 

 Ebenezer Johnson, a mason, and John Mann, 



a Washington Street ribbon dealer at that 

 time, two extensive speculators in real estate. 

 Its first lessee was Stephen Thuolt, who was 

 a famous Boston riding instructor from 

 1856 to 1866. Col. Thuolt was a Hungarian 

 revolutionist of 1848, who fought under 

 Kossuth, and, like the latter, was obliged to 

 fly for his life to foreign lands after Russia 

 intervened and put down the rebellion in 

 Hungary. Thuolt first went to England, 

 where he was reduced to the condition of a 

 common day laborer and transported stones 

 in a wheelbarrow to build a sea wall. 



Soon after his arrival in Boston he 

 aroused the interest of some of the richest 

 and most influential families, who induced 

 him to establish a riding school for the in- 

 struction of their sons and daughters. John 

 Nash, who had the care of Col. Thuolt's 

 horses from the time the riding school was 

 started, 58 years ago, and later peaformed 

 the same function for Major Henry L. Hig- 

 ginson, is still living in the West End district 

 of Boston. 



Thuolt was a tall and handsome man, and 

 during his early years here was a protege of 

 members of the Lowell family, while among 

 his other particular friends were the Forbes, 

 Bigelows and Hoopers. These men of social, 

 political and diplomatic influence obtained a 

 pardon for him from the Austrian Govern- 

 ment, and Thuolt was allowed to return to 

 his home after eighteen years of exile. 



Alsom Garcelon, for a generation the best- 

 known stable keeper in Boston, and at one 

 time proprietor of fourteen or fifteen such 

 establishments, succeeded Col. Thuolt in 

 1869, purchasing the property and building a 

 three-story addition with stalls for one hun- 

 dred horses. Garcelon came to Boston about 

 eighty years ago from Lewiston, Me., and 

 was a near relative of the late Governor 

 Garcelon of Maine, and a descendant of a 

 Huguenot refugee, contemporary with the 

 Faneuils. His first stable was in Franklin 

 Street, his second in Bedford Street. He 

 furnished the horses and carriages for the 

 Prince of Wales, afterward King Edward 

 VII, when he visited Boston in i860, al- 

 though the handsome trotting horse, Black 

 Prince, ridden by the Prince at the military 

 parade on the Common, and later the model 

 for Thomas Ball when he made the eques- 

 trian statue of George Washington for the 

 Public Garden, came from the stable of the 

 Hon. Timothy Bigelow Lawrence, only a 

 few doors away from Garcelon's, on Chest- 

 nut Street. Garcelon made a great deal of 

 money, but losing it in real estate, had very 

 little when he died, in 1881. 



His son-in-law, John A. Sawyer, succeed- 



