This is a literal copy of the first printed announcement of Messenger in this country, and there are two very striking features connected with it, namely, its bad grammar and the absence of the name of the importer and owner. The former we may attribute to the times, but to the latter I have been disposed to attach no trifling significance. It is a fact that till this day we have no direct information as to who imported this horse. The name “Benger” was developed indirectly as the man, but not till years after the horse was dead, and probably the importer too, did I learn from an advertisement of a son of his that stood in Jersey that the importer’s name was “Thomas Benger.” In 1791 and for two years afterward he was advertised to stand at “Mount Benger, two miles from Bristol, Pennsylvania.” When I visited Bristol for the purpose of identifying “Mount Benger,” which I supposed was the country seat of the owner of Messenger, I was greatly surprised to find that none of the “oldest inhabitants” had ever heard of such a place, and when I was informed that there was no locality within half a dozen miles of Bristol where the ground rose to a hundred feet above the level of the Delaware River, the name “Mount Benger” assumed the character of an absurdity as well as a myth. From a very intelligent man of middle age, who had learned the blacksmith trade with his grandfather, I learned that he had often heard his grandfather speak of Messenger, and as having put the last set of shoes on him when he was taken away to New York the fall the yellow fever was so bad in Philadelphia. The tradition was still preserved in the family that Messenger reared up in crossing the river in a boat, and struck his groom on the head with one of those shoes, from the effects of which he died. As our informant was able to name two other horses, Governor and Babel, brought over by Mr. Benger, we were ready to accept his tradition that he lived at a point known in old times as “China Retreat,” two miles below Bristol on the Delaware. This point has been known later as “White Hall.” After all traditions were exhausted, without yielding anything tangible or satisfactory, we turned with great confidence to the records of the county of Bucks, in which Mr. “Benger” had lived for a number of years. After a diligent and protracted search, embracing a number of years before and after his known residence in the county, we were not able to discover that any person by the name of “Benger” had ever owned a foot of real estate in the county or had been in any way publicly connected with its affairs or its administration. We had search made in Philadelphia with the same fruitless results. There is a faint tradition that Thomas Benger, if that was his name, was a fox-hunting Irish baronet, and if this was so, it is probable he returned to the old country about the time he sold Messenger in 1793. However this may be, the owner is forgotten, but his horse will live forever.