Goldsmith Maid
| Goldsmith Maid | |
 Goldsmith Maid with Budd Doble, 1876 |
|
| Race: | American Standardbred |
| Father: | Alexander's Abdallah |
| Mother: | Old Ab |
| Mother, father: | Abdallah |
| Gender: | mare |
| Year of birth: | 1857 |
| Year of death: | 1885 |
| Country: | United States |
| Colour: | Tan |
| Breeder: | John B. Decker |
| Owner: | 1. John B. Decker (1857–1864) 2. John H. Decker 3. William Tompkins 4. Alden Goldsmith (1865–1868) 5. Budd Doble and Barney Jackson (1868–1874) 6. Henry N. Smith (1874 –1885) |
| Record: | 7 × world record over 1 mile |
| Prize amount: | $ 364,200 |
| Greatest wins, titles and awards | |
| Greatest victories | |
| 92 wins | |
Goldsmith Maid (* 1857 ; † September 23, 1885 ) was a bay American Standardbred mare who was famous in the 1860s and called "Queen of the Trotters". Her trotting career lasted 13 years. She improved the world record for a mile several times and won her last race at the age of 20 against a much younger horse named Rarus .
Lineage and early years
Goldsmith Maid was originally simply called Maid . She was born in the spring of 1857 on John B. Decker's farm in Deckertown, New Jersey.
Decker bought Maid's mother, Old Ab, from a peddler in 1853 because he liked her even temperament. Old Abs's father was Abdallah , who also sired Hambletonian 10 , the progenitor of the American Standardbred.
Decker is a good wish colt for the farm and let Old As of Alexander's Abdallah cover. This was a grandson of Abdallah , which is why Maid was inbred in the male line .
While Old Ab was calm and friendly, her foal Maid was a fiery, wild mare who did everything possible to get into the neighboring corn fields. Depending on the opportunity, she broke or jumped the pasture fences Decker put in her path.
Maid did not allow herself to be harnessed to a wagon or a plow . She could not be used as a trotter or for any other useful work on the farm. Still impressed by her lively spirit, Decker kept her on his farm for seven years. A farm worker secretly started some local races with her, even though she was not broken into. This made Maid known as bad-tempered, but she also got a reputation as a very fast racehorse.
In November 1864, Mrs. Decker's patience with the mare, widely known as Decker's worthless mare, was exhausted and she convinced her reluctant husband to sell the mare to his nephew, John H. Decker, for $ 260. He sold Maid a few days later on her way home to Newburgh, New York, for $ 400 to William Tompkins, a harness racing driver. Tompkins was also unable to successfully start Maid in races, as she put the driver and sulky in danger with her uneven running style . He sold Maid to Alden Goldsmith in 1865 for a second-hand buggy and $ 650. Goldsmith changed the horse's name to Goldsmith Maid and gave it to William Bodine in training.
Racing career
By the spring of 1865, Goldsmith Maid was eight years old and still untamed. She also had a persistent upper respiratory infection. Bodine and Goldsmith chose to respond to Maid's quirks and treat them gently. They did without overcheck , martingale , blinkers and whips . In August 1865 she started her first trotting race . She initially won a few local races. Then Maid broke the track record on the Historic Track in Goshen, New York by running a mile in 2:26 minutes.
In 1868 Maid ran a mile in 2: 21½ on the Mystic Park Racetrack. Still, Goldsmith assumed that the 11-year-old mare's racing career was coming to an end and sold her for $ 20,000 to Budd Doble, a well-known harness racer and trainer.
Goldsmith Maid , however, ran very successfully for Doble for another six years. Maid won important races in Buffalo , Sacramento and East Saginaw against stallions and geldings half her age. In the years from 1869 to 1874, Goldsmith Maid became a crowd-pleaser, drawing thousands of viewers. She started in special match races , in which she competed against the strongest trotting horses in the United States. Doble made so much money from these races that The Maid was able to travel to these events in her own railroad car.
Goldsmith Maid broke the world record for a mile for the first time in 1871 in a duel against Lucy in Milwaukee with 2:17. In the following years she improved the world record several times.
Goldsmith Maid broke the world record for the last time in 1874 at the age of 17 and ran the mile in Boston in 2:14. It was then sold to Henry N. Smith, owner of Fashion Farm in Trenton, New Jersey , for $ 35,000 . In the last four years of her career, she has defended her title against several challengers. In 1875 she came close to the world record again when she ran a mile in 2:14 ½ at Charter Oak Park in Hartford.
Her last race Maid denied on September 27, 1877 in Toledo, Ohio against Rarus. Rarus lost this race, but later managed to improve Maid's world record.
Goldsmith Maid won 350 heats and won 92 of 121 races. Her lifetime winnings are $ 364,200, a record that lasted nearly 70 years and wasn't broken by a trotter until the 1940s.
retirement
Goldsmith Maid retired at Smith's Farm in Trenton at the age of 20 after a 13 year racing career. She had three colts, but they did not become successful trotters. In retirement, she became a local celebrity and a tourist attraction in Trenton. She died unexpectedly of pneumonia on September 23, 1885 at the age of 28. Her death was widely reported in the press. She was mourned nationwide, according to the New York Times .
Honor
Goldsmith Maid was inducted into the Harness Racing Hall of Fame in 1953 . The museum is dedicated to the history of harness racing and serves as the Hall of Fame for the American Standardbred.
A race in Meadowlands is named in her honor .
ancestry
|
Father of Alexander’s Abdallah Brauner 1852 |
Hambletonian 10 Brauner 1849 |
Abdallah Brauner 1823 |
Mambrino † 1806 |
| Amazzonia ‡ 1810 |
|||
| Charles Kent Mare Brown 1834 |
Bellfounder | ||
| One Eye | |||
| Katie Darling Brown 1842 |
Bay Roman Brauner 1815 |
novel | |
| Pinckney's Hickory Mare around 1820 |
|||
| Dam of Katie Darling 1832 |
Young Mambrino 1822 |
||
| unknown | |||
|
Mother Old Ab |
Abdallah Brauner 1823 |
Mambrino † 1806 |
Messenger † Schimmel, 1780 |
| Sour crout mare † | |||
| Amazzonia ‡ 1810 |
Dove Schimmel, 1807 |
||
| Fagdown | |||
| unknown | unknown | unknown | |
| unknown | |||
| unknown | unknown | ||
| unknown |
† Thoroughbred ‡ Norfolk Trotter
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e New York Times. September 25, 1885
- ^ A b Porter and Coates, Famous Horses of America Henry B. Ashmead Press, Philadelphia, 1877, 7
- ^ Sports Illustrated. "The Belle Of The Seventies." August 16, 1954
- ^ "Goldsmith Maid's fast time at Cold Springs , New York Times September 10, 1871, accessed January 16, 2016
- ^ The Turf The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, August 13, 1874, accessed January 16, 2016
- ^ Gocher, W (1928). Trotalong , page 102
- ^ New Jersey Historical Marker
- ↑ Goldsmith Maid Final , Meadowlands, November 25, 2017, Race 6
- ↑ sporthorse-data.com
- ↑ allbreedpedigree.com