484 THE AMERICAN TROTTING HORSE. 



posed of the descendants of Mambrino Chief, a horse that was bred 

 in New York State and taken to Kentucky by James B. Clay, in 

 1854, where he died in 1861. His sire was Mambrino Paymaster, 

 by Mambrino, the best son of Messenger in the trotting line, and 

 his dam was a very superior mare of unknown blood. His fast de- 

 scendants are very numerous and very famous. The Mambrino 

 Chiefs are generally large and often coarse in appearance, but 

 rangey in style, with long neck and good carriage. They perpetuate 

 the trotting quality in their get, and are becoming numerous not- 

 withstanding the poor chance the head of the family had in the 

 stud. Mambrino Chief's stud career was very obscure while he 

 remained in New York, and it seems that he begot very few colts 

 there, and probably out of indifferent mares. He stood for service 

 in Kentucky but six or seven years, and as the rebellion began the 

 year he died, many of his get are supposed to have been taken into 

 the army and been destroyed or lost sight of. We have no record 

 of the number of his foals, as in the case of Hambletonian, and can, 

 therefore, make no comparison of the respective merits of these two 

 famous horses as sires upon that basis; but a general comparison of 

 results, with a fair allowance for difference of conditions, makes a 

 very strong case in favor of Mambrino Chief. 



Both the sons and daughters of this horse produce fast trotters, 

 and the mares are in particularly great demand as brood mares. 

 Some of the best trotters and several successful sires are out of 

 Mambrino Chief mares. The old horse transmitted his superior 

 quality down through the generations, his descendants crossing 

 successfully with all other families. 



Mambrino Chief was the sire of the famous Lady Thorn, that 

 beat Goldsmith Maid in every heat they trotted together, and that 

 is said to have trotted a mile, in private, in 2 m. 10 s. a short time 

 before she was ruinously injured by a fall. 



Another family, whose reputation is on the increase, is composed 

 of the descendants of Gen. Knox, a horse foaled in 1855, in Ver- 

 mont. At three years old he was taken to Maine, where the most 

 of the family are, and at seventeen years old he was bought by H. 

 N. Smith, of New York, for $20,000, who has kept him in the 

 stud at Fashion Stud Farm, Trenton, New Jersey, until now, 

 when he is twenty-four years old. Gen. Knox was by Vermont 

 Hero, a son of Sherman Black Hawk ; his dam by Searcher, a son 

 of Barney Henry. 



As a sire of trotters he ranks with Hambletonian and Mambrino 

 Chief. His get trot fast, and there are a great many fast ones in 

 proportion to the whole number. Gen. Knox has often been 

 claimed to be a Morgan, which is a curious error, as he has but 

 one line of descent from Justin Morgan, the founder of that family, 



