The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and DevelopmentWallace, John Hankins
History
The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development
Wallace, John Hankins
Horse breeds -- History; Horses -- Breeding -- United States; Horses -- United States -- History
the sale of Sampson this man left the service of James Preston,
Esq., and went with the colt into that of Mr. Robinson. His
account of Sampson’s dam was that she appeared about three
parts bred, a hunting figure and by report a daughter of Hip,
which, however, could not be authenticated; and the fact was
then notorious and not disputed in the Yorkshire stables....
Mr. Tattersall lately stowed me a portrait of Sampson in his
flesh, in which this defect of blood appears far more obvious
than in one which I had of him galloping.”
Again, in his great quarto work, issued 1809, Mr. Lawrence reiterates his
belief that Sampson was not thoroughbred. He says:
“I am by no means disposed to retract my opinion concerning
Robinson’s Sampson. Not only did the account of the groom
appear to me to be entitled to credit, but the internal
evidence of the horse’s having had in him a cross of common
blood is sufficiently strong by the appearance both of the
horse himself and of his stock; an idea in which every
sportsman, I believe, who remembers Engineer, Mambrino and
others will agree with me.”
Here then, we have the answer to the whole inquiry reduced to its
simplest form. The groom who coupled the mare with Blaze from which
came Sampson says the mare was called a Hip mare, but that her pedigree
was really unknown. For the intelligence and honesty of this groom Mr.
Lawrence does not hesitate to vouch, and he adds the common belief of
all the Yorkshire sportsmen of that day, who knew the mare, that she was
of unknown breeding. This evidence is further supplemented by the family
characteristics of the stock descended from Sampson, to say nothing
of the great lack of “blood” in the appearance of Sampson himself. As
against this we have the dry, unsupported assertion of Mr. Weatherby,
forty years after the event, and probably copied from an advertisement of
the horse. In view of all this we must tabulate the pedigree of Sampson
as follows:
{ Childers { Darley Arabian.
{ { Betty Leeds.
{ Blaze {
Sampson { { Confederate Filly { Grey Grantham.
(1745). { { D. of Black Barb.
{ Called a Hip Mare
{ (Unknown).
ENGINEER, son of Sampson, was a brown horse, foaled 1755, and was out
of Miner’s dam, by Young Greyhound; grandam by Curwen’s Bay Barb, and
the next dam unknown. This is all the pedigree that has ever been
even claimed for this horse, and it falls far short of the rank of
thoroughbred. That the eye may take it all in at a glance we will here
put it into tabular form. There is a discrepancy of one year between
Weatherby and Pick in the age of the horse, and we find Pick is right in
giving his date as 1755.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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