128 THE GOLDSMITHS. 



ported Consternation and one Clay mare, while his 

 first stallion was a son of Consternation, his dam being 

 by a son or grandson of Messenger. Of American Star 

 Alden Goldsmith said : 



"He was a natural born trotter, and one whose gait 

 would bear the most extreme forcing, and when 

 twenty-six years of age, harnessed to a wagon, on the 

 fair grounds at Goshen, he won the annual trophy 

 offered for the best stallion, speed considered, from 

 the six-year-old son of Hambletonian — Alexander's 

 Abdallah — to sulky in a contest of heats. He also, in 

 a long and desperate contest on the same grounds van- 

 quished Harry Clay." 



At Chester, a few miles away, Hambletoniairs 

 star was beginning to appear above the horizon, 

 and when Robert Fillingham, subsequently known 

 as George Wilkes, and the "Alley colt," named 

 Dexter, when started showed that Rysdyk's horse 

 was going to sire speed, Alden Goldsmith made 

 an effort to find a son of Hambletonian that filled his 

 eye as an individual and a trotter. He finally selected 

 an eight-year-old bay horse owned by Richard 

 Underhill, of Brooklyn, N. Y., and then known as 

 Hambletonian, Jr. Edwin Thorne joined with him 

 in the purchase, and when William M. Rysdyk, the 

 owner of Hambletonian, objected to the name, hinting 

 at the time that by retaining it they showed a dispo- 

 sition to borrow some of the thunder of the 'Hero of 

 Chester,' prompted by the spirit of the times, it being 

 on the eve of the Civil War, they changed it to Volun- 

 teer. Reserve and Woburn, both sons of Hamble- 

 tonian, were also added to his stud. 



