The history of Messenger himself is still clouded in mystery, and the blood he inherited from his dam remains hopelessly unknown. The identity of his importer and owner has never been established, which of itself throws a suspicion upon the pedigree that is said to have come with him. He ran several races at Newmarket, England, and proved himself a second or third-rate race horse. The racing records there show that he was by Mambrino, and that is all that is known about his inheritance. He left a few tolerably good race horses, for their time, but he filled the country with the best road and driving horses that the horsemen of this country had ever known. A chapter each to Messenger’s ancestors and to himself will be found in their proper places in this volume. The twenty years of Messenger’s life and service in this country fell in a period of indifference to all kinds of racing except running. The English race horse was then the popular idol, and it is not known that any of his sons or daughters were ever trained to trot. Neither can it now be certainly determined that any of them were disposed to pace, but if we may judge of the habits of action of his immediate progeny by what we know of succeeding generations, we can hardly doubt that there were pacers among them. As the custom then was, and as it so remained for at least half a century later, all pacers were hidden away from public sight, as they were supposed to furnish evidence of ignoble breeding. The chapter on “The Sons of Messenger” will be long, but it will be of exceeding interest. They constitute the connecting link that brings together the peculiar trotting instincts of the sire and develops them in their own progeny. Several of them were not only trained to run, but did run successfully. It is not known that any of his sons was ever trained to trot, but it is known from contemporaneous evidence that several of them were fast natural trotters, notably Bishop’s Hambletonian, Bush Messenger, Winthrop Messenger, Mambrino, etc., all of which will be considered in their proper place. When we reach the second remove from Messenger we begin to enter into the full fruition of all the promises, and in considering such animals as Abdallah, Almack, Mambrino Paymaster, Harris’ Hambletonian, etc., we begin to feel that we are well within the trotting latitudes, for this remove began to found families and tribes that attracted the attention of all intelligent breeders.