Later today, the Kentucky Derby will be run for the 138th
time.
Twenty thoroughbred horses – a very large field – will thunder
around the track at Churchill Downs for a mile-and-a-quarter in an attempt to
win what their owners and jockeys have been dreaming of: the first and likely
the most impressive jewel in racing’s Triple Crown. Before darkness falls tonight, millions of dollars in bets will have
changed hands, and it’ll all be over in about two or three minutes, start to
finish.
Horse racing is all about good breeding and good training. Good breeding comes first.
If there are people anywhere who are as passionate as
genealogists about tracing pedigrees, they can be found in the world of
thoroughbred horse racing and breeding.
Untested yearlings are bought and sold for staggering sums by folks who
study the horses’ genealogical charts for ten generations or more. It’s a sport where bloodlines are everything…at
least in the beginning.
Today’s race has an interesting genealogical twist. Every horse in today’s Kentucky Derby is a
cousin of one sort or another to every other horse. In fact, each horse racing today is a
descendant of an English-born stallion named “Bonnie Scotland.”
I know this piece of racing trivia because I spent part of
last night and this morning poring over the contending horses’ genealogical
charts, acting on the hunch that Bonnie Scotland would likely appear somewhere in
each thoroughbred’s ancestry.
Bonnie Scotland died in 1880 in Davidson County, Tennessee,
after serving eight highly successful years at stud, siring the ancestors of all
of today’s Derby contenders, and thousands of other thoroughbreds.
And so begins our unusual family tale, which will first take
us back to early Virginia and to an early ancestor of Mrs. Blogger named Rene
Massoneau LaForce.
Rene Massoneau LaForce, immigrant from France, died in
Goochland County, Virginia in 1728. Two of his many grandchildren were Zulima LaForce (daughter of his son Rene Junior who was Mrs. Blogger’s ancestor) and Zulima’s younger cousin Giles Harding, son of Rene Senior’s daughter Sarah. (For those interested, an
excellent and thorough study of the early LaForce family of Virginia was
researched and written by Cameron Allen, FASG, and was published in several
parts in The Genealogist in 2004/2005.)
Rene’s granddaughter Zulima married and settled down not far
from her parents and grandparents homeplaces in the part of Virginia where
Goochland and Fluvanna counties meet.
Her cousin Giles and his brother William, however, had other, more
adventurous radical ideas. Like many other
Virginians of the time, Giles set out with his young wife to try his luck in Tennessee,
while his brother William went south to North Carolina.
No one can say if Giles or William Harding kept in touch
with their first cousin Zulima and their other kin in old Virginia. Chances
are, it didn’t take long for the families to lose touch. Chances are, Zulima never learned much, if
anything, about Giles and his children and grandchildren in Tennessee.
What follows is the story of that part of Giles’ life that Zulima
never learned about.
Giles Harding and his wife settled in the part of Tennessee
close to Nashville. His son John Harding
started acquiring large tracts of land early on and was quite successful in his
land dealings. Young John Harding’s holdings grew
and grew, and he was soon one of the county’s largest landowners.
He called his
ever-growing plantation “Belle Meade.”
John Harding’s son William Giles Harding took over the
day-to-day management of Belle Meade from his aging father in the mid-19th
century. By then, Belle Meade had grown
to more than 5,300 acres, and its master was a very wealthy man.
The 1860 census tells us approximately how wealthy.
William Giles Harding, the great-great grandson of Rene
Massoneau LaForce, owned Davidson County land worth $275,000 and had personal
(other than real estate) wealth of $130,500.
You can see Harding’s 1860 census entry here:
While Belle Meade was a very large working farm, part of the
family’s wealth came from horses.
You
see, William Giles Harding, like his father John before him, had a way with
horses. They bred them. They boarded them for others, including their
friend and neighbor President Andrew Jackson. They trained them. And then they raced them. The Harding horses were thoroughbreds, with
impeccable bloodlines.
In fact, the very first racing silks ever worn in the United
States were the Belle Meade silks. And the Belle Meade-bred and Belle Meade-trained horses won races, with ever-increasing regularity. Word soon spread.
After the Civil War, William Giles Harding devoted all his
energies and resources to his thoroughbreds and his stud farm. Belle Meade became known around the racing
world on two continents as the premier thoroughbred breeding operation in
North America. Winner after winner traced a lineage to the Belle Meade
Stud.
When the very first Kentucky Derby was run in 1875, six of
the fifteen horses in the race had some ancestral connection to William Giles
Harding’s Belle Meade Stud. It is said
that Harding’s collection of silver racing trophies was the largest in the
world. In the racing world, William Giles Harding was a man to contend with, as were his horses.
In 1872, Harding bought a stallion for stud that had been raced in England a few years earlier.
The stallion’s English racing career wasn’t particularly distinguished, but he
had an impeccable bloodline. That horse
was named Bonnie Scotland. While at
Belle Meade, Bonnie Scotland’s performance at stud far surpassed his
performance on the race course.
Bonnie Scotland appears in the genealogical charts of many
of American racing’s greatest horses. Secretariat. Northern Dancer.
Seattle Slew. A.P. Indy. They can all trace their pedigree back to Tennessee
and a stallion named Bonnie Scotland who lived out his later life at Rene Massoneau
LaForce’s great-great grandson’s Belle Meade Farm and Stud.
Sorry to say, Mrs. Blogger’s "stay-at-home" side of the same family
did not prosper to quite the same degree. While they also had some land and they
also had a few horses, their land and horses were different, in both kind and
degree. You see, none of their horses
were known for winning races, even at the county fairs. In fact, most of their horses saw service behind ploughs, where stamina was more important than speed.
So when we watch the Kentucky Derby later today, we’ll be cheering
on the distant progeny of very distant cousin William Giles Harding’s
magnificent stud horse Bonnie Scotland.
All twenty of ‘em.
Remember - no matter what the outcome, one of Bonnie Scotland's descendants is certain to win. You heard it here first and you can bet on it.
Like I said, good breeding comes first.
The best way to attend the Kentucky Derby is to purchase a package that includes your tickets to the Derby and Oaks (upgrades available), Airport Transfers, Hotel Accommodations, Hospitality access, a free gift and much more.
ReplyDeleteHotels are not the only places filling up for Derby weekend. With a few key strokes, people from all over the world can find the comforts of home in the Derby City. Dozens of sites are offering visitors homes of every shape, size and style imaginable.
ReplyDeleteDerby Home Rentals
Right you are. Good breed horses like the Thoroughbred Horse is an exceptional. Thanks a lot for contributing to such a post.
ReplyDelete