The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1911-09-01
CLARK'S news OF
HARNESS HORSE
Romance and Fiction a
Realty in Kentucky.
Illinois Fast Winning a Place at
the Head in Breeding Of High
Class Horses.
(By Palmer L. Clark

The Kentuckian Of the Blus Grass
loves his horse; perhaps not more
than does the Vernsoni5er, the Texan
hess, the acc pied tradition that in all
matters equine the Kentuckian is an
oracle in pedigree and speed lore and
the qualification of Kentucky Bred"
as applied TO a horse, vouchsafes that
the animal is an equine aristocaat.
The thoroughbred horse is the prod
uct of some twenty generations of
substantial breeding in England and |
the American throughout is, in al
most every instance, a direct descen-
dant In improved descent from inn
ported English stock. Earlier impor-
tations, as a rule, went to Virginia
and its from the Old Dominion, her
mother state, that Kentucky secured |
her foundation families from which |
have COME great horses that have
brought her fame and fortune Througl
predominant in the production of the
thoroughbred, Kentuclly's light har-
ness horse industry overshadows thai
of its thoroughbred interests and it
may be said advisedly that the trot-
ter and the PAGER of the present day
had its origin of species where the
succul9nt blue grass and the limpid
limestone constituted the formula
from which the American trotter was
"invented, although Hamble'onia
Mambrino Chief, Pilot Jr, and JUS
tin Morgan, the great quartete OF
trotting Nestors, are OF N-ly Eng
land progenimre. 1t was, however,
from their sons and daughters, from
their grandsons and granddaughters,
transplanted ON Kentucky soil, that
the present type of hte trottar and
PAGER has come: and, Kentucky, in
turn, has sent the descendants of
these to all the four corners of the
earth.
Thre was at the same time, some
thing more than the blue grass and
the limestone wat5r which produced
the Kentucky trotter. This something
was the Kentuckian's innate love OF
all things animal a passion inherit
from his Virginia offbsars, and, even
none so, was it the Kentuckian's rev
erence of all things genealogical. TIL
earliest landed gentry of the Blue
Grass plateau Were sciOns OF the "tirs
families of Virginia, to whom the
family tree was even more sacred
than was the log of the Mayflower
to the offspring of the Pilgrim Faith
es and the average KSntuckian, Of
the present day, has in no manner
lost caste in his Worship Gf the pen
ates of his fathers. Pedigree is to
him the beacon of eternal fitness and
he has applied the laws of hereditive
descent, as he understands them, to
his everyday devotion OF breeding live
| stock, be it horses, cattle swine, sheep,
dogs or chickens.
1t was this unfailing attentiveness
to pedigree, generation after gener-
, alton, which evolved the Kentucky
bnad'' hors and, while financiers in
other states Joftimes spent fortunes
some large and some small, i'm thu
: attempt to produce animals which
could compete with the products OF
the Blue Grass, few If any, succeed
: ed.
3 On the other hand, every farmer an
every farmers son in Kentucky was
breeding a winner; not because They
r were each and every one Luther Blu
| bank, but bacauss they We're devou'
/, Mohammedans to the causla III her1dit
2 and because they We're breeding in
+ tensely," as their fathers and thell
! fathers fathers, before them, had donf
? They were dwotecs to the logic OF
; Like bagsts like" So 1t as so 1T Is
3 and SO it will always be,that the Ken
: tuckian, city man and country mar
!. alike, is proud in the ownership OF a
e least one brood mare, OF stanneh ant
approved lineage, and the annual ad
|, vent OF her foal by an approved stall
5 ion is the occasion OF the year. Their
I are times. of course, when success
Z does not ATTEND a breeding venture
! but preponderance OF successes s.
e far overshadOws the failures tina
n the breeding of the trotter, as man
, aged by the Kentuokians, is tha won
a der of the world.
] There Is a world of truth in fiction
I and especially in horse fiction. In
: novelist invariably impnessas Ken
e lucky for his scenarium and The rea
I, heroine Is the "Colonel's Black hess'
e the mortgage litter and hose proves
!. in the futurity brings Happiness an
IS anfluenoe TO he owner. Such fctio
II is fact down in the Blue Grass countr
a a hn