BLACK HAWK 165 



He had only three weeks to do it in. At the time specified, a large 

 collection of people from Dover and Durham collected to see the 

 race. Dr. Reuben Steele of Durham was one of the judges. The 

 Estey horse won the first heat, the Kelly mare the next two, dis- 

 tancing the horse the last time. In the spring of 1832 John Bellows 

 came to Durham with the old Sherman Morgan and I persuaded 

 father to have the mare stinted to him, which he did. I saw the horse 

 cover her. I was twenty-one in 1832. I went to sea again that fall. 

 My recollection of the dam of Black Hawk is, she was a very fine 

 pointed mare. When she was excited her nostril was so large one 

 could put his fist in it. JOHN L. KELLY". 



George D. Bisbee of Buckfield, Maine, writes to the " Middlebury 

 Register", July 5th, 1888, as follows: 



" Robert Burns, who bred and owned Burns' Trotting Childers, 

 is now a very old man, and all the way to get any information from 

 him is to go and see him. He was a leading political man and 

 bred many horses; he was well acquainted with Hill, who owned 

 Black Hawk, and took his mare there in person ; also to Maynard's. 

 Burns claims to know all about the dam. Burns says Black 

 Hawk's dam came from Frederickton, New Brunswick ; that her sire 

 and dam were imported by Judge Saunders of Frederickton, and 

 were the Wildair breed ; that Judge Saunders sold Black Hawk's 

 dam to a traveling dentist when three years old, who took her to 

 Providence, Rhode Island, after which Burns says she became the 

 property of one Jacques of Charlestown, Massachusetts, who bred her 

 to old Sherman Morgan. Burns says Judge Saunders' son gave him 

 the above, and I give it to you for what it is worth. Burns also tells 

 me that the owner of the dam of Maynard's Trotting Childers assured 

 him she was of the purest Morgan blood and very fast, called Queen 

 of the Neck, and could trot in the twenties. The 'American 

 Cultivator' mentioned this mare last spring; and I think they called 

 her Lady Forrest. Burns is a very reliable and intelligent man and if 

 I can be of any assistance to you in seeing him I will do all I can 

 in that direction". 



It will be perceived that in his letter Mr. Kelly calls the mare 

 bay, in which he was certainly mistaken ; for every other witness, 

 any one of whom was in as good position to know as Mr. Kelly, 

 or better, says she was black. Again it is Mr. Kelly that, writ- 

 ing forty-five years after the event, says : " The teamster said 

 she was a Narragansett mare". But none of the other witnesses 

 mentioned above makes any such suggestion, and their description of 



