JUSTIN MORGAN 91 



" He was the most remarkable horse that had been imported in 

 his day; and I doubt whether his superior has ever been brought over 

 at any time since. The biographers of the Justin Morgan should 

 give as full an account as possible of the DeLancey Wildair. When 

 President Jefferson went to the capitol to be inaugurated, and threw 

 the bridle reins over the post, he rode, as his granddaughter says, 

 'his magnificent Wildair'. That name was taken from the principal 

 character in a play popular in London about the year 1750. 



"Col. DeLancey was a very active loyalist, commanding a regi- 

 ment of that character, and as such was especially obnoxious to 

 patriot Americans He was taken prisoner in 1777 and confined in 

 the Hartford jail. From his prison window he might doubtless have 

 seen in the streets of that city specimens of his superb colts. Neither 

 party then supposed that he would ever be accounted as one of the 

 greatest of New England's benefactors. He was of a French family, 

 now and always eminent in this country and abroad. A nephew of 

 his was an aide of the Duke of Wellington and was killed at Water- 

 loo*. Col. DeLancey himself died in exile, but he left behind him 

 his incomparable stock. It might well be said of him, as of Homer's 

 Diomedes, ' he was a lover of horses'". 



In the enclosure, clipped from the "American Cultivator", Judge 

 McCurdy says : "Some years ago I learned that my grandfather, 

 John McCurdy, a wealthy and public-spirited man, living in the place 

 which I have inherited, owned and advertised for public use a horse 

 of the famous Wildair blood, and that the notice of him was con- 

 tained in a colonial newspaper. I inquired of my father if he knew 

 anything on the subject. He said that, although he was a boy at the 

 time, yet the horse himself, as well as his stock, was so remarkable 

 that he remembered much about him, and he showed the freshness 

 of his recollection by relating a curious and amusing anecdote. Ac- 

 cording to that story, the horse must have been kept there until the 

 year 1777. How much longer I do not know; he does not appear 

 in my grandfather's inventory in 1784. In reply to my question, 

 what became of the horse? my father said he could tell nothing ex- 

 cept that he was sold to a man living in East Haddam, Connecticut, 



* This was Col. Sir William DeLancey, who married the beautiful daughter of Sir James Hall 

 in April, 1815, and received his mortal wound on the eighteenth of June following. He was a 

 friend of Sir Walter Scott, who commemorated him in a couplet in his poem " The Field of 

 Waterloo " : 



Thou saw'st in seas of gore expire 



Redoubted Picton's soul of fire 



Saw'st in the mingled carnage lie 



All that ot Ponsonby could die 



DeLancev changed Love's bridal-wreath 



For laurels from the hand of Death " 



