HAMBLETONIAN (HARRIS’) (also known as Bristol Grey and Remington Horse).—This was a grey horse, about sixteen hands high, and possessed great strength and substance. When young he was an iron grey and probably pretty dark, but as he advanced in age he became lighter in color. His head was large and bony, with great width between the eyes. He was short in the back, with long hips, and the rise of the withers commenced far back, showing a fine, oblique shoulder. He was a horse of unusually large bone formation; his limbs were large, but flat and clean, with a heavy growth of hair at the fetlocks. He was of docile and kindly disposition and worked well either alone or with another. His gait was open and decided and at a walk his long slinging steps carried him over the ground unusually fast. His speed as a trotter was never developed, but his action at that gait was so free, open and square that those who knew him well have insisted that his manner of going indicated the possibility of great improvement, if he had been handled with that view. His offspring were slow in maturing, and for many years, indeed till toward the end of his life, he was not appreciated as a stallion. He was in constant competition with the little, plump, trim and trappy Morgans, and at three and four years old his long, lathy, plain colts cut but a sorry figure against the well formed and fully developed Morgans of their own age. With such a rivalry, sustained by the question of profit to the breeder by early sales, it is not remarkable that he should have been neglected, till it was clearly demonstrated that he transmitted the true Messenger trotting instinct in greater strength than any of his competitors.
He was bred by Isaac Munson, of Wallingford, Vermont; foaled 1823, got by Bishop’s Hambletonian, son of Messenger; dam the Munson mare that was brought from Boston, 1813. There never has been any question about the sire of this horse, but up to 1869 the representation made by Mr. Harris that his dam was an imported English mare was generally accepted as the truth. I was led to doubt this, and in December of that year I made a thorough search of the records of the custom-house in Boston, and found the claim was without any foundation whatever. Through the kindness of Mr. Henry D. Noble I was enabled to get beyond Mr. Harris, who really knew nothing about the mare, back to the Munson family, and to Mr. Joseph Tucker, the earliest and best authority living in 1870. In order that this evidence may be preserved I will here insert Mr. Tucker’s letter entire.