12 The American Thoroughbred 



opment of the Virginia horse were the best men 

 who had gone to form the early colony. It is a 

 peculiar but interesting fact that every man named 

 as a member of the original King's Council of the 

 colony of Jamestown is somewhere or other men- 

 tioned in the American Stud Book as having 

 owned a thoroughbred stallion or brood mare. 

 You may look at all the personalities which went 

 to the making of a new country in Virginia, and 

 you will not be able to find one whose name may 

 not be duplicated in the racing records of the 

 land. 



This is not to say that there were not importa- 

 tions of thoroughbreds to other parts of what is 

 now the United States. Lath and Wildair, both 

 horses that made great impress upon the stock of 

 their time, were imported into New York in 1 760 

 to 1768 by Mr. De Lancey. Fair Rachel and 

 the " Cub Mare," both yet famous in American 

 pedigrees, found their way to America by way of 

 the Battery. Yet these in time went to Virginia 

 to join their relatives who had come by that 

 route before them. 



The climate and soil of Virginia seem to have 

 given themselves so handsomely to the produc- 

 tion of a high type of race-horse that within a 



