Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1889-10-18
AxTELl, 2:l4.

A good many Northeastern Iowa peo-
ple who are able to recall events of
twenty years ago will remember how
certain Mr.. Babbage established an ex-
tensive farm in Butler County shortly
after the close of the war and undertook,
in a more or less systematic manner, to
breed trotting-horses. His venture PROV
ed not much of a success, and after a
few years had gone by without bringing
encouragement in the shape of Dexter
or a Lady Thorn it was abandoned and
the breeding-stock disposed of at pub
lie sale. Among the brood-mares which
had made up the Babbage harem were a
number of old road-mares purchased in
Chicago and taken to Iowa when the
farm was first established. Nothing
was ever learned of their breeding; In
fact it is not known that any effort was
made to trace their history back to the
breeder and there ascertain their pedi-
grees. One of these mares afterward be-
came the property of Nicholas Denton,
Manchester, Iowa, who also owned the
trotting-bred stallion Mambrino Royal,
a son of Mambrino Chief. Denton, it
seems, bred this Babbage road-mare to
his horse and the produce was chest
nut tilly, foaled about 1870, that he
named Bird Mitchell, and afterward
sold to Messrs. II. l.. & F. ID. Stout,
Dubuque, Iowa. In 1879 the Messrs.
Stout bred Bird Mitchell to their stall
lion Mambrino Boy, 2:26t, son of Nam
brine Patchen, and in the spring of the
following year she foaled big brown
filly. Lou, as this FLY was called, grew
to maturity without giving evidence of
any particular merit as a trotter. About
the best she could do was to pull a
buggy at 100 gait; but she had the en-
durance of all her family and could keep
up the clip for long distance. Her ap-
pearance was pleasing, and aside from
suspicious bunch on one of her hooks,
she was decidedly we'll formed at all
points, her middle-piece being notice
ably deep and round. When Lou was
five years of age, Henry Kelly, the su-
perintendent Of the Stout Farm at ALI
son, Iowa, took her to Independence
with some other horses, and while there
sold her to a young produce dealer of
that city, Charles w. Williams, for just
SIS, it is said. Her new owner had
bought Lou for breeding purposes, and
in the fall of that year, 1884, she was
shipped to II. L. Dousman's Artesian
Farm, Prairie Du Chen, Wis, and bred
to the young stallion Erelong, by Bel
mont, but failed to get with foal. The
next spring Williams, having in the
meantime rightly concluded that Wilkes
blood was the coming fancy and that a
Kentucky-bred colt would sell for more
than one of the same quality bred in the
North, sent Lou to Lexington, KY, in
charge of John Hussey, and had her
mated with the Ash Grove stallion
William L., full brother to the Cali
fornia wonder, Guy Wilkes, 2:154, who
was just then coming forward as the
fastest of all the entire sons of George
Wilkes. The mare remained in Ken
lucky during that winter, but in the
early spring of 1886 she was taken back
to Independence, Iowa, where, along
about May l, she gave birth to bay
horse colt by William l.. The youngster
looked anything but future world
beater. He was right enough in every
way until you came to his hooks. But
at that all-important point he was wo-
fully deficient. The joint was angular
and curby-not curbed-and the cannon
bone was light and cut-in just below
One leg, the left, was worse than the
other, but both were faulty enough to
arrest the attention of even the merest
tyro. And what made the matter more
serious was that the little fellow came