'The American Thoroughbred 85 



This track was built as a private enterprise on the part of Leonard W. Jerome, a 

 wealthy stock broker of New York, and leased to the American Jockey Club, of 

 which that many-sided man,, the elder August Belmont, was president ; and Dr. John 

 B. Irving, of South Carolina, was secretary, but retired at the end of two seasons in 

 favor of Major Charles Dickinson, under whom I served as a copying clerk in the 

 legislature of 1855, at Sacramento, he being the Secretary of the- Senate. 



If ever a man was fit to take up a decadent sport and place it upon a permanent 

 and secure footing, that man was the elder August Belmont ; and an acquaintance of 

 twelve years with his son, August, enables me to pronounce him "a chip of the old 

 block." If you wanted a leader in society, he was one, a strong believer in the money 

 power but, for all that, a sturdy stickler for the aristocracy of intellect. Did you 

 want a statesman who was not a chronic-office-seeker? Read Mr. Belmont's speech 

 of 1848 before the Peace Conference at the Hague. A financier, did you say? Re- 

 member that he came to New York, about one step above a confidential clerk in 1834 

 and died in 1889 worth twenty-four millions, all honestly-earned money with no 

 dirt sticking to it; and that our present foreign exchange system, in banking, is due 

 more to his splendid business ability than to that of any other dozen men in America, 

 living or dead. And as for the turf, he was the great High Priest. It is given to 

 but few men to shine in as many walks of life as he did. The reason of this is that, 

 under a very abrupt manner (at times), and a choleric temper superinduced by a 

 bullet wound in a duel in his earlier life, he hid a strongly sympathetic nature and a 

 helping hand at all times for "the under; dog in the fight/' As a more gifted writer 

 than myself said of him at the time of his death, "he was so intensely versatile that 

 nothing human was alien to the broad guage of his nature." Another friend of mine 

 said of him, "Belmont is a born Spartan, brave as a bull-dog and generous as the 

 town pump." Is it any wonder that, under the leadership and tutelage of such a man, 

 the American Jockey Club placed racing in these United States of ours on an equal 

 plane with the great sport in England and France The hour found the man. 



On the dissolution of Jerome Park and its subdivision into residence property, 

 the sweepstake races were taken over and continued at Morris Park in 1892. Morris 

 Park will soon share the fate of Jerome Park and the scene will shift to the new 

 Belmont Park, which will cost two millions before it takes in a single dollar at its 

 gates. It is the work of the old Master Spirit's son, of course, but the few veterans 

 who, like myself, "lag superfluous on the stage" of life, will recall the sturdy little 

 old man with the fur-lined overcoat and the heavy cane, as they hear "the name to 

 be conjured with." Mr. Belmont imported the stallions, Glenelg and The 111 Used, 

 both great sires, whose daughters have been amongst our best producers ; thoroughbred 

 mares, mostly from the Rothschild and Blenkiron paddocks in England; and so many 

 in number that I have no space in which to enumerate them but am compelled to 

 refer the reader to the pages of the American Stud Book. 



With racing fairly established at Jerome Park, there soon sprung up a rival racing 

 plant at Pimlico, in Maryland, the leader in which was the late Colonel Odin Bowie. 

 As permanent fixtures at that track I may mention the Bowie Stakes, at four miles, 

 won by that great horse, imported Glenelg, in 1869, beating Niagara, own sister to 

 the mighty Preakness, hero of the dead heat at Saratoga the fastest race in America 

 up to that time, 1875, and the walk-over winner of the Brighton Cup in England in 

 the year that followed. Two other fixed events of that course were the Dixie and 

 Breckinridge Stakes, run four days apart, both at two miles but conditioned that the 

 winner of the Dixie should carry 5 Ibs. penalty in the Breckinridge. If my memory 

 is not surely at fault, the only horse to win both these events was the bay filly 

 Vandalite, by Vandal (who saved the male line of Glencoe from extinction) out of 

 Vesperlight by Childe Harold, son of Sovereign. Vandalite died the property of Mr. 

 James B. Haggin, at Sacramento, California, in 1898. The decadence of racing at 



