BLACK HAWK 171 



page 191): " Single miles he made at different times in 2 : 42 ", and such 

 is his record in the Year Book. Early in 1847 the owners of Black 

 Hawk, at the instance of Solomon W. Jewett, then a prominent 

 breeder of Weybridge, Vermont, published a challenge to match 

 Black Hawk against any entire horse in America, at the New York 

 State fair the following autumn, on the following points : " First, 

 perfectness of symmetry ; second, ease and elegance of action ; third, 

 best and most perfectly broken to harness ; fourth, fastest trotting 

 to single harness". The challenge was not accepted, but led to a 

 trotting contest, at the fair last mentioned, between Black Hawk and 

 the gray Morse Horse (son of European and sire of Alexander's 

 Norman), which Black Hawk won, although in stud condition at the 

 close of a very large season. This was his last regular race. 



Many sons of Black Hawk were sold at large prices. Wherever 

 they went they were appreciated, and from them sprung families of 

 surpassing elegance and the highest excellence for the general pur- 

 poses of business and social life. 



The superiority of the family of Black Hawk as roadsters has, 

 to a large extent, prevented their use upon the trotting turf. Never- 

 theless from the ranks of the swift and stylish roadsters sprung from 

 Black Hawk have been eliminated so many fast and enduring trot- 

 ters that his fame as a progenitor of road horses scarcely surpasses 

 his reputation as the founder of a trotting family. 



Mr. J. H. Sanders, in the" Breeder's Gazette", in April, 1 891, said: 



"The investigation into the pedigrees of the trotting horses of 

 America, which we have been required to make in the preparation of 

 the Breeder's Trotting Stud Book, has led us to put a higher estimate 

 upon the blood of Black Hawk than has generally been accord- 

 ed to him by writers upon the trotting horse. Indeed, speaking 

 only from a general impression of the results, we are inclined to the 

 opinion that the name of but one horse, Rysdyk's Hambletonian, 

 will be found more frequently in the pedigrees of standard-bred 

 trotters. 



"We run against this Black Hawk family in so many un- 

 expected places in combination with other trotting strains, and find 

 so many trotters scattered all over the country in whose veins no 

 other recognized trotting blood is known to exist, that we are com- 

 pelled to recognize him as a stallion of marked prepotency as a sire, 

 and one in whose descendants the capacity and the disposition to trot 

 fast exist to a very remarkable degree". 



The stud books of Black Hawk show the number of mares bred 

 to him after he came to Bridport, Vermont, as follows : 



