126 Making the American Thoroughbred 



The chief industry at "The Forks" was the breeding 

 and training of race horses. At that period there was 

 close affiliation, due to settlement, kinship and commercial 

 interests, between the people of North Alabama and 

 Middle Tennessee. Huntsville and Florence were in the 

 Tennessee Conference until after 1840 and were just as 

 closely identified with the Tennessee turf and breeding 

 industry. Reports of races show that for the next twenty 

 years after moving to Alabama, Jackson had entries at 

 nearly all the best meetings in Middle Tennessee, which 

 fact made his presence or that of a representative 

 necessary in Tennessee for a great part of the time. He 

 was a sort of non-resident Tennessean. 



Thomas Kirkman' s four sons, James, Thomas, Hugh 

 and John, actively engaged in the breeding business. 

 Hugh and John lived in Nashville; James in Louisiana 

 and Thomas in Alabama. Thomas and James were asso- 

 ciated with James Jackson in the management of his breed- 

 ing interests. Jackson, and Hugh, Thomas, and James 

 Kirkman, in 1837, owned, severally, about twenty brood 

 mares, kept at "The Forks-of-the-Cypress" ; ten were im- 

 ported and one, Pigeon by Pacolet (Pigeon's dam, imported, 

 by Waxy), was bred by Benjamin McCuIIoch of Ruther- 

 ford County, Tennessee. Among the mares returned as 

 James Kirkman's property was Eliza, by Rubens. 



Jackson's fame as a breeder is based mostly on the 

 success of Leviathan and Glencoe in the stud. 



riage took place at the Hermitage, and when "Old Hickory" called 

 on Mrs. Ellen Kirkman to effect a reconciliation he was persuaded to 

 get out at the point of a loaded pistol in the hands of Mrs. Kirkman. 

 This was not Gen. Jackson's first experience in helping a friend 

 to out-general obdurate parents. When he was a United States 

 Senator, or about that time, he helped Samuel Donelson steal Polly 

 Smith from a second story window of "Rock Castle" in Sumner 

 County. 



