HAMBLETONIAN AND SONS

By all accounts, William Rysdyk was a man with a plan. He paid his employer Jonas Seely, a prosperous farmer and knowledgeable horseman of Orange County, New York, the sum of $125 for a well-bred and well-conformed colt, then set out to breed good horses and thereby make his fortune.

When the colt reached age 2, Rysdyk broke him to drive and arranged to take him to the county fair. To make sure he would be noticed, Rysdyk decked the colt out in a white bridle and harness---and noticed he certainly was, at least as much for the speed and power he was beginning to show at the trot as for the flashy gear. Rysdyk repeated the display at the next year’s fair, and along with the colt’s greater maturity came a few bookings.

Of course some local men doubted the colt’s ability and laughed at Rysdyk’s choice of the name “Hambletonian” for him—surely, they intimated, Rysdyk must be trying to play off the reputation of the famous Thoroughbred sire of the same name. Rysdyk responded by inviting them to put their money where their mouths were, and the result was Hambletonian’s only officially timed race, a match contest carried out on a local road, which he handily won in a time of 2:42 seconds to the mile. After that, a steady stream of mares came in for service. Several years later, when a majority of his colts began to show outstanding speed, soundness, and tractability, the trickle became a flood. Hambletonian’s fee was initially $25 for the season, $35 to insure the mare in foal, but soon rose to $100 and at that rate, it was not long before Rysdyk returned to buy Seely’s farm for a sum