286 THE MORGAN HORSE 



simple transaction, any of these neighbors' boys were likely to have known 

 any facts to outweigh these truths and probabilities. 



" Of the actual breeding of Nancy Pope (the pedigree in question) I 

 know nothing. All I do know or surmise of its connections is as follows : 

 My eldest living brother, Larry Anderson, then, through my father's death, 

 * in loco parentis" 1 to me, in June, 1828, married Miss Ann Pope, the only 

 daughter of Mr. William Pope, who owned these mares. Sometime previ- 

 ously I had become intimate with his boys, though I had known the family 

 all my life. The families had been close friends since the period when 

 Louisville was St. Nelson. And, from the time of that marriage, as long as 

 his family occupied the farm, I was as much ' at home ' there as one of his 

 own children almost. Now, at the period of the wedding (certainly a 

 marked occasion and date to me) I well remember a gray filly there out of" 

 Nancy Taylor. She was two or three years old. She was a dark, but bluish 

 gray. I doubt if I am as good a judge of a horse as my friend and kinsman, 

 Edmund Pearce. Still, although I remember her as larger than her dam, I 

 could never consider her as ' coarse ', in the sense of a likeness to ' large 

 farm horses ', nor as being out of the proportions of thoroughbreds. I cer- 

 tainly did not and do not suppose her to have been thoroughbred. (In your 

 advertisement of Almont, she is 'said to be strictly thoroughbred'). I only 

 mean to say that I have seen a great many true thoroughbreds, especially in 

 England, which were both larger and coarser than this gray filly of 1828. 

 But, 'Mr. Pearce is positive in his assertion that about 1831 Mr. Pope bred 

 Nancy Taylor to a farm stallion, and the produce was a filly larger and 

 coarser than her dam, that afterwards was called Nancy Pope, and became 

 the dam of Pilot Jr'. Now, if there be no mistake here, the question is 

 settled without appeal. But is there no mistake ? I repeat that I am sure 

 that Mr. Pope had a gray filly out of Nancy Taylor, in 1828, which he pre- 

 sented to my brother Larry, and that he sent for a- while to pasture at Soldier's 

 Retreat, where I was living (the only son) with my mother. And, furthermore, 

 I cannot recollect any other gray filly out of Nancy Taylor or any other dam 

 on that place until it was rented out to Judge Mclnley of Alabama, and Mr. 

 Pope moved to Louisville. Does anyone remember a second ? What does 

 Robert Pope (the only remaining son of Mr. Pope, and of 1814, too) re- 

 member of there being tiuo gray fillies ? or Mr. Speed, Pearce, or Gray, (who, 

 by the by, was as often on the farm as E. P. My ;/<?//-recollection is, of 

 course, not conclusive. But I submit, is it not of a nature as weighty as Mr. 

 Pearce's recollection of the date (1831) when a neighbor sent a mare to a 

 common stallion an event which did not contain the slightest import or 

 interest for almost a quarter of a century. The case of Attorney General 

 Speed is an example of the //^-reliability of such testimony. He ' recollected' 

 the year 1824-5 as tne time when 'Mr. Pope presented Nancy Taylor to his 

 father'. It turns out to have been in 1833, or nine years later. (I have 

 reasons to doubt whether it was not still a year later, 1834). Now, this 

 affair of the ownership of Pet Mare, by Judge Speed, must have been one 

 of far more interest to one of his sons than that of the time when a neighbor 



