TROTTING FAMILIES, 338 
money, and are able to go at a speed far greater than 
our best Norfolk trotters can manage.” 
I have now indicated the two most important trot- 
ting families descended from Messenger, and there are 
others but little inferior. Vermont had the Harris 
Hambletonian, a grandson of Messenger, out of a gray 
«English mare.” He was a gray himself, and so were 
most of his descendants. This horse was the sire of 
Sontag, who once beat Flora Temple in a match race, 
and grandsire of the Morse horse, among whose de- 
scendants was Lulu, with a record of 2.144, and Gov- 
ernor Sprague, a trotting stallion of high reputation. 
Maine had Winthrop Messenger and the Bush Mes- 
senger. The Bush Messengers were almost invariably 
chestnuts. Fanny Pullen, dam of Trustee, the first 
horse to trot twenty miles within an hour, was a Bush 
Messenger. 
Still another Messenger strain, and one of more 
“quality” than the rest, is that of the Champions. 
In the first quarter of this century, one Mr. John 
Tredwell of Long Island had a pair of extraordinarily 
fast and enduring road mares, called Amazonia and 
Sophronisba, the former being of Messenger descent, 
and the latter a granddaughter of imported Baronet.” 
In 1823 both of these mares produced foals by Mam- 
brino, son of Messenger. Amazonia’s foal was Abdal- 
lah, sire, as we have seen, of the famous Rysdyck’s 
Hambletonian, and Sophronisba’s foal was Almack, 
sire of Grinnell’s Champion,® first of the name, and 
1 His sire was imported Trustee, a thoroughbred. 
2 By Vertumnus out of Penultima. Baronet, a bay horse, was 
noted for his beauty. 
3 The dam of Grinnell’s Champion was by Engineer, and his 
grandam by the famous American Eclipse. 
3 
