Race Courses of the Northern Neck

The principal racing track in the Northern Neck was known as the Coan Race Course, which was situated in Westmoreland County.  Persons residing in the neighboring counties seem to have often preferred this course to ones much nearer to them.  For instance, in 1694 Captain Rodham Kenner, who was the high sheriff of Northumberland, left that county to try on the Coan track the running powers of a mare named Folly against those of Smoker, owned by Mr. Joseph Humphrey.  The stake agreed upon amounted to fifteen hundred pounds of tobacco.  Folly, which really belonged to Mr. Peter Contanceau, won the race, although Smoker was one of the most famous race­horses in the Colony.  Humphrey claimed that Smoker had not been fairly beaten because the jockey riding him had held his bridle tightly in order to diminish his speed; but when this assertion was submitted to a jury, they promptly decided in favor of Kenner.  Still dissatisfied, Humphrey obtained an injunction against further proceedings on the common law side of the court until a point of equity involved in the case had been passed on in chancery; and when this also went against him, carried his cause up to the General Court on appeal. The persistency shown by Humphrey was due not so much to a sense of the injustice which he thought had been done him, as to his extreme jeal­ousy in preserving the reputation of his horse, a repu­tation which perhaps touched him as closely as his own. The whole case illustrates the serious spirit in which the most ordinary horse race at this time was run, and how little the expense of a suit was consid­ered if it would remove from a favorite animal the dis­credit of defeat.  At a later date, we find Humphrey and Kenner engaged in a second race.  In 1695, Smoker was run in a race on the same track against Prince, a horse belonging to Mr. John Haynie, and won.  The wager in this instance was fixed at four thousand pounds of tobacco and forty shillings.

Some years previous to this race one had been run, apparently on the Coan Race Course, between the horse of Mr. John Stone, of Rappahannock County, and the horse of Mr. Yewell, of Westmoreland.  The stake amounted to ten pounds sterling, or to two hun­dred and fifty dollars in our present currency.  That this race was not simply a private trial of speed in which only the jockeys and owners of the two horses were present is shown by the fact mentioned in the record of the event that there were many people in at­tendance as spectators.  Mr. Stone's horse carried off the wager, but it was only after a suit that Mr. Yewell consented to make payment.  Yewell, who was deeply interested in this branch of sport, appeared again and again in the courts either as plaintiff or defendant in dispute as to the winning or loss of stakes.  In 1688, a very important suit was tried before the justices of Westmoreland County involving a number of races in which John Hartridge and John Washington, on one side, and John Baker and Yewell, on the other, had participated.  After all the various evidences for and against had been formally presented the jury left the court room and proceeded to the race track, which they examined with great care in order to obtain a more in­telligent understanding of the testimony which they had just heard.  But, nevertheless, they were unable to agree on a verdict.  When the court was informed of that fact, the sheriff was ordered to keep them in confinement without bread, drink, candle, or fire until they should reach a decision.

Among the earliest races recorded of Willoughby's Old Field in Richmond County was one, which took place there in the year 1693.  On this occasion there seem to have been numerous horses entered for the stakes, whilst the attendance of spectators deeply interested in the upshot of the different heats was evidently extraordinary.  Among those who had come to the course was Mr. John Gardiner, of Westmoreland county; and he had brought with him a horse celebrated in all that region named Young Fire, which must have been a conspicu­ous object even among that group of picked animals, for it was of the purest white in color.  During the progress of the first races of the day, Gardiner kept Young Fire in the background, as if wishing first to observe the powers of his possible competitors; then, when several races had been run, in which all the other horses perhaps had taken part and shown what they were equal to, Gardiner suddenly led Young Fire forth and boldly challenged the owner of any horse on the track to run his steed in a race for a stake of one thousand pounds of tobacco and twenty shillings in coin.  Daniel Sullivant, borrowing Mr. John Baker's bay horse, which perhaps had exhibited its superiority to the other horses in the races that had already taken place, promptly accepted the guage, and it was agreed to try the white and the bay, the one against the other, instantly.  Mr. Raleigh Travers became the security for the payment of the wager, whilst Mr. John Clemens and Captain William Barber were selected to stand at the poles in order to report the name of the winning horse.  At the end of the race, a dispute arose as to whether the wager had been fairly lost and won, and it was only finally settled by a suit in court.

A third race course in the Northern Neck, hardly less well known or less frequently used than the Coan and the Willoughby Old Field tracks, was the one situated at Yeocomico.  Here, in 1694, the racehorse Smoker turns up again, no longer belonging to Mr. Joseph Humphrey, but to Captain Rodham Kenner, whose Folly had defeated Smoker, as we have seen, in a race on the Coan Race Course a few months before.  Kenner had, perhaps, in his admiration for the speed, which the horse had displayed on that occasion, pur­chased him, but quite certainly only at a very high price.  In the race at Yeocomico, Smoker was run against Campbell, a horse belonging to Captain John Hartley.  The stake agreed upon was five hundred and seventy-seven pounds of tobacco, and the stretch was for a quarter and a half-quarter of a mile.  Campbell soon showed himself to be so superior in speed to Smoker that his rider was not required to ply poles first, when Richard Kenner, a brother of Rodham, who had been told to stand back lest his nearness should frighten the horses, rushed forward and with a loud "bellow and shout," and a violent waving of his hat, caused Campbell to shy suddenly from the track, and thus technically to lose the race.  Richard Kenner was arrested for his offense, and tried by a jury, but seems to have been acquitted.  This incident forms an additional proof of the serious spirit in which even the most casual horse race was run, and the pop­ular determination that it should be conducted with perfect fairness, even if the assistance of the courts had to be invoked.

1752 ~ or ~ 1756.

A horse named Janus was imported to Virginia.  Grandson of the Godolphin Arabian, he was quick & compact. Janus is credited as the foundation sire of the American Quarter Horse.

REPUBLICAN, Bred by the late Mr. William Brent of Stafford County, stands at my stable in Brent-Town, Prince-William County, five years old, about 15½ hands high, and will cover mares this season till the first day of August next ensuring, at THREE POUNDS—Those who will be pleased to favor me with their custom, are desired to send their cash or their-notes of hand with their mares, payable by the fifth of August next.—Good pasturage, gratis, for alt marcs that come a distance, and the greatest care shall be taken of them, but I will not be liable for escapes or other accidents.

Republican was got by True-Whig out of Young Selima, sister to the noted Chatham; Selima was got by Col. Baylor's imported Fearnought, out of Mr. William Brent's Ebony; she was, out of Col. Tasker’s Selima, by Othello, both imported by him, True-Whig was got by Regulus, out of the noted swift and high bred horse Apollo's Dam; Regulas was bred by Col. Baylor, and got by his horse Fearnought out of Jenny Dismal, who was got by Old Dismal; he won one thousand guineas sweepstakes, and five King's plates without ever being once beaten; his sire the Godolphin Arabian; Jenny Dismal's dam was got by Lord Godolphin’s Whitefoot; Regulus, while the property of Mr. Fitzhugh, won at Aquia £.50, at Port-Royal £.50, at Annapolis two of £.50 each; at Upper Marlborough £.50, at Leeds-Town £.60, and at Fredericksburg the jockey club purse of 100 guineas, where he carried ten stone.                                       JOHN T. FITZHUGH.   April 1, 1785

Messenger  …the great progenitor and founder of the American Trotting Horse, in England 1780.