Lady Suffolk, an inbred Messenger, was spoken of for a while as the Queen of Trotters, and she was a remarkably good one both in breeding and in performance. She was sired by Engineer II, by Engineer, a son of imported Messenger; her dam was by Don Quixote, son of Messenger. So it will be seen that she was closely inbred to Messenger and had as much of the Thoroughbred blood as any trotting horse of remarkable performance. She was a gray, and was foaled in 1833 on Long Island. She began trotting when she was five years old, and had a remarkably successful career. She trotted 138 races, winning eighty-eight times and receiving forfeit three times. When she was twelve years old, at Beacon Course, Hoboken, she trotted the second heat of a five-heat race in 2.29½, which was the first time 2.30 had been passed, and was, of course, the record. In 1849 she made a saddle record of 2.26. She was bred to Black Hawk in Vermont, but the colt was prematurely born, and she left no descendants. Although this record was reduced in 1849 to 2.28 by Pelham, a converted pacer, another second was knocked off in 1853 by Highland Maid, also a converted pacer, there was nothing in the way of trotters to take the great place of Lady Suffolk until Flora Temple, the queen of them all, came along about 1850, and proceeded to beat all that attempted to rival her for speed and courage. When I was a boy, Flora Temple was considered almost as great as Lexington. In Kentucky at that time, her wonderful performances, her speed and her courage were considered all the more remarkable from the fact that no one knew how she was bred, and inferred that she had no breeding that was good. This was not a fair inference. Her appearance, her gameness, her fighting qualities, together with her nervousness, all indicated that she was a high-bred animal. To say what that breeding was is another matter. So a pedigree was fixed up for her. On the plate published by Currier and Ives when she was at the very zenith of her fame, her pedigree was set down as follows: “Sired by one-eyed Kentucky Hunter, by Kentucky Hunter; dam Madam Temple by a spotted Arabian horse.” I have no doubt that this pedigree is as arrant nonsense as was ever put in print, and was simply made up to put on the advertisements of the races in which she was entered. I doubt, even, whether there was any serious effort to trace her pedigree when she was a filly, for it was not until she was five years old that she attracted the attention of a horseman and he bought her for $175, and sold her quickly for $350. Previous to that she had been used in a livery stable, though I recall a tradition that she had been used in a milk cart.