Living Soil, Living Art: Eve Balfour, Her Arab Mare Bendira, and New Bells Farm

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

This post is part of the ongoing Crabbet Chronicles series, which also includes Lady Anne Blunt’s Stradivarius and Wilfrid Blunt’s meeting with Lawrence of Arabia.

In 2018, Prince Charles sent his “warmest congratulations” to the UK’s Arab Horse Society (AHS) on its hundredth anniversary, writing, “As the proud owner of four very beautiful Arabian horses, I have come to appreciate this particularly special breed....For one hundred years The Arab Horse Society has devoted itself to promoting interest in Arabian horses in the United Kingdom.” The AHS’s first president was Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who, with his wife Lady Anne Blunt, established the world-renowned Crabbet Stud in Sussex.

Eve Balfour, “the Compost Queen,” and her draft horses (from Brander 2003).

The previous year, Prince Charles had celebrated the seventieth anniversary of the Soil Association, “the UK’s leading food and farming charity, and organic certification body,” whose motto is “healthy soil, healthy people, healthy planet.” While at the association’s annual luncheon, he lamented the fact that he had never met its founder, Lady Eve Balfour, OBE (1898–1990), nicknamed “the Compost Queen” for her efforts to inculcate organic farming in the UK. In addition to obtaining a degree in agriculture (at a time when few women were college graduates) and writing the literally groundbreaking book The Living Soil, Eve was an early member of the AHS and owned a mare named Bendira—a daughter of the Blunts’ famous stallion Mesaoud, whom they had imported from Egypt to their Crabbet Stud in 1891.

Eve Balfour in the 1940s (photo credit: Wikipedia).

Born in 1898, Eve was the niece of Arthur James Balfour, who later became British prime minister; she called him “Nunkie.” Her mother was the daughter of a viceroy of India, a granddaughter of prolific author Edward Bulwer-Lytton (of “It was a dark and stormy night” fame), and a sister of Neville Lytton, third Earl of Lytton, who was an artist, an Olympic medalist, and son-in-law of the Blunts. His wife, Judith Blunt-Lytton, is known to Arabian horse fanciers as the breeder and author Lady Wentworth.

Drawing of Eve by her uncle, Neville Lytton (from Brander 2003).

From a young age, Eve knew she wanted to be a farmer. She was fortunate to be born into an eccentric, passionate family. A number of her Balfour relations were early members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) (her uncle by marriage, Henry Sidgwick, was the SPR’s first president), and her aunt, Constance Lytton, was a suffragette who was jailed four times. As Eve’s biographer noted in 2003, “It must have required a strong personality and an equally strong voice to hold one’s own in the often animated family discussion….Nor were such discussions restricted to the male side of the family.”

Fishers Hill, Eve’s childhood home (photo credit: The Lutyens Trust). 

The house in which Eve grew up—Fishers Hill, in Surrey—had been designed by the well-known architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, whose wife, Lady Emily (Lytton)Lutyens, was Eve’s aunt. (Lady Emily became a Theosophist and went on to become a follower of Krishnamurti.) The architect’s biographer (and descendant), Jane Ridley, wrote that Eve’s mother, Betty, “was unworldly and helpless in practical matters. She shocked [Lutyens] by travelling in dirty third-class carriages with her children, none of whom ‘looked as if any care, thought or trouble was taken with their appearance, either clothes or body.’ For a family of intelligent, tomboyish, and rather neglected girls, Fishers Hill was a paradise; it [was] ideally suited to games and outdoor theatricals. Betty’s grandchild Anne Balfour remembered it as a magical house, with the feel of Kipling and Puck of Pook’s Hill.”

The teenage Eve working  with a pony (from Brander 2003).

As a youngster, Eve was often on horseback, and had numerous cats, dogs, and other animals. She became a vegetarian at a young age and also took a great interest in plant growth, encouraged by her mother and her aunt, both excellent gardeners. Whereas in a typical family of her socioeconomic class, she would have been expected to “marry well” and raise children,  her biographer wrote that it was “an example of the advanced approach to parenthood of both her mother and her father that when she announced her wish to become a farmer…she was promptly entered for the Agriculture Department of Reading University College.”

Eve’s biographer also recounted that while Eve was in college, she “was closely in touch with her Lytton relations at Crabbet Park. Judith Wentworth, her [aunt by marriage], was to become the noted Arab horse breeder. Eve, of course was greatly interested in her work and enjoyed vising her. She even contemplated leasing one of the Crabbet Park farms in Sussex and went as far as discussing the possibility with Judith. At this stage her inclinations were strongly towards eventually taking a farm in Sussex.”

However, after Eve’s graduation, she and her sister Mary instead found a 157-acre, dilapidated farm in Suffolk named New Bells. There, the two of them and an assortment of friends, relatives, and, eventually, employees, worked twelve-hours days in an attempt to make New Bells a profitable concern. Her biographer noted, “Despite the fact that there was no running water or electricity, and sanitation was primitive in the extreme, everyone seems to have enjoyed themselves in this youthful household and contributed their assistance to the farm, whether feeding pigs, herding sheep, milking, or harvesting.” Eve’s cousin Betty Lutyens remembered her first visit to New Bells, “when she was greeted at the door by Eve...in breeches and a red spotted handkerchief.”

In 1939, after working at New Bells for two decades, Eve and her associates began the well-known Haughley Experiment at New Bells and a nearby farm. This study compared organic and chemically fertilized farming methods. As Kevin Desmond wrote, “Balfour published the initial results of her experiment in a book called The Living Soil where she presented the case for an alternative, more sustainable approach to agriculture. Its influence was such that, in 1946, Balfour co-founded and became first president of the Soil Association. While continuing the Haughley [E]xperiment for the next 25 years, the Association has developed into an international organization pioneered by Balfour. [She] continued to farm, write and lecture for the rest of her life.”

Eve’s “Lytton relations” at Crabbet Stud had sold her the well-bred Arabian mare, Bendira, around 1909. Bendira’s sire, the aforementioned Mesaoud, was one of the world’s most influential stallions, appearing (often multiple times) in the pedigrees of upwards of 90 percent of today’s Arabians.

Mesaoud (Aziz x Yamamah III).

Bendira’s dam, *Bushra, was bred by the Blunts. She stood only 14 hands. Arabian historian Carol Mulder noted that though she was a bit “long and low” through the body, in some photos “she could look very beautiful.” *Bushra was purchased by Charles Husted and imported to the US in 1900. Of her nine foals, only *Ibn Mahruss and Sira have living descendants.

*Bushra (Azrek x Bozra) (from Mulder 1991).

Bendira made a cameo appearance in the journals of Lady Anne Blunt, who recorded on June 3, 1903 that Prince Scherbatoff had come to tour Crabbet Stud and that her husband “took the Prince in the road cart with Bendira to see the mares and fillies….” Some years earlier, Scherbatoff and his brother-in-law Count Stroganov had established the Stroganov Stud near Tersk, in the northern Caucasus, where they bred Arabians. In 1899, the two men had visited Crabbet and had seen Bendira’s sire Mesaoud. In their book on Arabians, published in Russia the following year, Scherbatoff and Stroganov wrote that Mesaoud was “Crabbet Park’s number-one sire. He is a splendid specimen of a first-class Arabian and has won many prizes in England.” In 1903, Scherbatoff came back to Crabbet to look for more horses. Within weeks of Scherbatoff’s ride with Wilfrid Blunt driving Bendira, Mesaoud was purchased by a Polish breeder, Wladislaw Klineiwski, and appears to have changed hands again rather quickly, as he soon took up residence at the Stroganov Stud.

*Berk (from Covey 1982).

Bendira was closely related to the Crabbet-bred stallion *Berk, whose descendants often had excellent movement. *Berk was by Seyal, a son of Mesaoud, and out of Bukra, a three-quarter sister to Bendira’s dam *Bushra. (I wrote about *Berk’s daughter Tahdik and granddaughter Santa Fe, maternal ancestors of *Marwan Al Shaqab, for  Arabian Horse Life Magazine in 2019.)

Bendira was registered initially in the UK’s General Studbook (GSB). In 1906, it was noted that she had been bred to Narkise but came up barren. The 1909 GSB recorded the birth of Bendira’s “only produce to live,” a filly named Beneyeh (by Feysul)—suggesting that if Bendira had previous offspring, it or they had died before registration. Beneyah herself was never assigned a registration number, which presumably means that she did not survive for very long. Bendira was not re-bred in 1908, and after that was sold to Eve.

In 1920, a periodical called The Near East featured the following notice: “A council meeting of the Arab Horse Society was recently held at the Grosvenor Hotel, S.W., where entries for the Stud Book Vol. II and for the Arab-bred Register were accepted.” “Miss Eve B. Balfour, of New Bells Farm,” was listed as one of the new members, and Bendira, now twenty years old, was given AHS registration number 172. She was described as a chestnut mare with a blaze and three white socks, her color and markings similar to those of her sire.

Eve did do some horse breeding at New Bells, but her biographer, Michael Brander (Eve’s nephew by marriage), did not discuss about this aspect of her farming in any detail, other than to reproduce a letter from Eve’s mother in which she wrote that “the horse dealer who brought the stallion to Eve’s mares nearly had a fit when he found the New Bells farmer was a young girl. He’ll get accustomed to that....” Whether Bendira may have produced some part-Arabian foals for Eve is unknown, though possible, since one of the reasons for establishing the AHS was “to encourage the re-introduction of Arab blood into English Light Horse breeding.”

The same letter from Eve’s mother also mentioned seeing Eve’s fellow farmer, her sister Mary, driving a pony named Betty who “just gets in between the shafts and goes a jolly pace.” Is it possible that the “pony” Betty was actually Bendira, an experienced driving mare who could have inherited her dam’s small size? We likely will never know, but it’s charming to imagine Bendira, a flashy chestnut daughter of the great Mesaoud, trotting along at “a jolly pace” at New Bells Farm.

A Robe, a Hovercraft, and Lawrence of Arabia: The Curious Connections between Alec Guinness, Sydney Cockerell, and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

This post is part of the ongoing Crabbet Chronicles series, which also includes Lady Anne Blunt’s Stradivarius and the Crabbet-bred mare owned by Eve Balfour. 

Wilfrid Blunt knew, was related to, had affairs with, and/or wrote about everybody who was anybody in England from the mid-1800s to the 1920s. His “Secret Diaries,” which were sealed for fifty years after his death in 1922, “mixed up scandalous gossip with serious commentary,” according to his biographer Elizabeth Longford. Blunt’s observations have provided many a historian with a useful perspective. Peter de Mendelssohn, Winston Churchill’s biographer, called Blunt “a shrewd observer of men and a faithful and reliable recorder of their opinions.”

Blunt and one of his Arabian horses. Etching by Tristram Ellis, 1883. 

National Portrait Gallery. NPG D1079

Blunt, who wrote verse prodigiously, believed that he would be known to posterity as a poet. However, the first word about him in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is “Hedonist,” followed by “poet,” then “breeder of Arabian horses.” (His wife’s grandfather, Lord Byron, was the real poet in the family.) As Oscar Wilde wrote about minor poets, like Blunt, “they are never quoted.”  Blunt’s poems didn’t even make it into the Cambridge Book of Lesser Poets—whose compiler had excluded him only due to the “magnitude” of his output. During his lifetime, Blunt’s work did have its admirers, including Yeats, who remarked (incorrectly) that “certain sonnets, lyrics, stanzas of his were permanent in our literature,” and Pound, who praised Blunt’s double sonnet “For Esther” (a pseudonym for Catherine Walters, known as Skittles, considered “one of the last great courtesans of Victorian London,” linked not only to Blunt but also to King Edward VII and Napoleon III).

Just as Blunt would be disappointed about posterity’s view of his poetry, it’s likely that Academy Award–winning actor Sir Alec Guinness would be less than thrilled to learn that he is now best remembered by people under forty for originating the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars franchise—whose dialogue he dismissed as “rubbish.”

Although Guinness never met Blunt, who died when Alec was a mere seven years old, they do share a curious connection through a robe belonging to Sir Sydney Cockerell, as discussed in Guinness’s memoir, Blessings in Disguise.

This robe was not, however, Guinness’s most famous robe, the one that his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi required him to wear (copies of which are worn by millions of kids annually on Halloween). After shooting ended on Star Wars, that robe, and other costumes from the film, went into storage at Angels and Bermans, a costume company in London. “The [robe] was thrown in with hundreds of monks’ robes and later rented out to customers, also being worn by an extra in the 1999 film The Mummy…Company boss Tim Angel said the [robe]was only discovered during a routine stock check.”    In 2007, the robe was sold for 54,000 pounds (about $71,000).

Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Seventeen years before the release of Star Wars, Guinness had the opportunity to wear yet another robe when he portrayed T. E. Lawrence—Lawrence of Arabia—on the London stage in Terence Rattigan’s Ross. As blogger Groggy Dundee notes, “Ross began as a film project for the Rank Organization. In 1955, producer Anatole de Grunwald commissioned Rattigan to pen a screenplay based on Basil Liddell Hart’s T. E. Lawrence in Arabia and After (1934). The movie was to be shot in Iraq, ruled by the descendants of Lawrence’s ally Emir Feisal, with Anthony Asquith directing and Dirk Bogarde as Lawrence. However, in July 1958 Iraqi army officers overthrew Iraq’s King Feisal II and the project was scrapped.” (I can’t help but note here that Asquith’s mother, the former Margot Tennant, had been one of Blunt’s many lovers.) Rattigan then reworked the screenplay into a play. The following year, the playwright was asked to turn it back into a screenplay, but by then, David Lean’s film Lawrence of Arabia was already in production, with Guinness–again wearing a robe—playing Prince Faisal opposite Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence.

Alec Guinness as T. E. Lawrence.

In the film, which a contemporary reviewer gave an “A” for entertainment and a “C-“ for historical accuracy, Lieutenant T. E. Lawrence, a former archaeologist, is sent by the British army to Arabia to find Prince Faisal. Lawrence’s goal in Arabia, like Byron’s in Greece, was to help free the locals from their oppressors—in this case, the Turks. Over the years, historians’ perspectives have shifted on Lawrence’s legacy; he is known variously as a hero, a poseur, a cultural appropriator, and even a traitor.

Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal.

For example, here is Isabella Hammad, writing earlier this year in the Paris Review:

I am familiar with the legend of T. E. Lawrence—fluent Arabist, British hero of the Arab Revolt of 1916, troubled lover of the Arab peoples—as well as with the ways the Jordanian tourism industry has capitalized on this legend. Nevertheless, I am still surprised when I hear someone mention him with admiration. The image of Lawrence as an adventuring Orientalist, galloping through the desert in flowing robes at the head of a Bedouin army, has endured in the imaginations of the British and American publics at the expense, arguably, of an accurate understanding of Lawrence’s role in the events of the First World War and its aftermath. Despite the fact that, to date, Lawrence has been the subject of nearly fifty biographies and scores of critical works, it is the image of Lawrence in the film Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole and a heavily made-up Alec Guinness as the Arab Prince Faisal, that has stuck.

After his experiences in Arabia, Lawrence greatly wanted to meet Blunt, who, many years earlier, had traveled widely with his wife Lady Anne (and on her dime) in the Middle East. He was a fierce anti-Colonialist, sympathetic to Irish, Indian, and Egyptian nationalism. In 1888, Blunt’s support of Irish Home Rule landed him in Galway and Kilmainham  prisons for two months. (After Blunt published a book of poems about his prison experience, his acquaintance Oscar Wilde, years away from his own stint in jail owing to his relationship with Blunt’s cousin Lord Alfred Douglas, wrote, “prison has had an admirable effect on Mr. Wilfrid Blunt as a poet.”) Blunt also had some political influence over both Randolph Churchill and his son Winston. As A. Warren Dockter writes in “The Influence of a Poet: Wilfrid S. Blunt and the Churchills,” “Where Lord Randolph took Blunt’s anti-imperialism with a grain of salt, Winston accepted him as a more serious figure.”

It was the younger Churchill who facilitated Lawrence’s pilgrimage to Blunt’s Sussex home; Lawrence later proclaimed the elderly Blunt a prophet. Blunt was equally taken with Lawrence, writing in his diary that Lawrence had embarked on “an adventure of the heroic kind [in the Middle East], carrying out very exactly the old one I had dreamed of attempting myself in 1880.”

A couple of decades before he met Lawrence, Blunt hired a secretary, Sydney Cockerell—later the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University—who had previously been employed by designer William Morris (with whose wife, Janey, Blunt had an affair). Cockerell and Lawrence later became friends and correspondents, in part because of their mutual interest in the Middle East. The Fitzwilliam Museum’s website notes that:

Blunt and Lady Anne, both self-taught Arabists, nurtured Cockerell's interest in the history, literature and arts of the East. They offered him a first-hand experience of the Orient. During his visits to their house [Sheykh Obeyd] near Cairo he explored the region's rich culture, travelling to Karnak, Thebes, Memphis, Beirut, Baalbeck, and Damascus, camping with Bedouins in the desert, and surviving a shipwreck on the way to Mount Sinai in 1900. Cockerell swore to keep his beard for the rest of his life. He kept his Arab robes too and wore them at a Fancy Dress Ball at the Cambridge Guildhall in 1919.

Sir Sydney Cockerell and friend.

 Blunt and Lawrence were both dead by the time Guinness met Cockerell on a “hot Sunday in March 1939 [that] was heavy with the unmistakeably dusty, peppery and aromatic smell of Egypt and the Near East which can make even drab places seem glamorous.”  Despite a large disparity in their ages, they instantly took a liking to one another. Indeed, many years later, when Guinness was studying for the role of Lawrence in Ross, he visited Cockerell to, as he put it, “pick at Sydney’s memories.” According to Guinness, Cockerell remembered Lawrence as a “terrible fibber,” but Sydney’s companion, Miss Dorothy Hawksley, painted a more comprehensive picture:

I came in here one day and saw a small man, dressed as an airman looking out of the window. His back was turned to me. I wondered why Sydney should be talking to such a very undistinguished little man. Then, just as if he could read my thoughts, the little man turned round and stared at me. I was stupefied; I don’t think I have ever encountered such a strong personality. I didn’t know who he was, of course, until introduced. He rather gave me the creeps. 

Cockerell’s young son Christopher, who later became an inventor, had an opportunity to meet many famous men of letters who came to see his father. However, “Sydney was very disappointed when Christopher showed very little interest in literature, public affairs and other aesthetic pursuits of such visitors. It was only when T. E. Lawrence stayed at their home that he showed an interest—this was in Lawrence’s 1000 cc Brough Superior motorcycle.” Lawrence owned eight of these motorcycles, one of which he crashed when he swerved to avoid two bicyclists. He died from his injuries six days after the accident, in May 1935.

T. E. Lawrence on one of his Brough Superior motorcycles.

It was through Cockerell that Guinness acquired the robe that connected him to Blunt. Guinness recalled, “Sydney gave me a coarse, striped robe which he had bought from a Bedouin when he and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt had been wrecked off the coast of Sinai in 1900. He used it as a dressing-grown later in life; lent it to Lawrence who in turn handed it on to [George Bernard Shaw]. Eventually it found its way back to Sydney, and shortly after it came into my possession I handed it over to Clouds Hill, T. E.’s hideaway cottage in Dorset, as a memento.”

Today, Clouds Hill is a British heritage site. Among Lawrence’s effects there, in addition to the “coarse, striped robe,” is a copy of Blunt’s In Vinculis — a volume containing the Irish prison poems that Wilde admired.

And as for Sydney Cockerell’s concern about his son’s lack of culture, Christopher Cockerell turned out just fine. Almost two decades before the landspeeder in Star Wars enchanted young moviegoers, Christopher, who was more taken with Lawrence’s motorcycle than with Lawrence himself, invented the Hovercraft, which employs a cushion of air to stay aloft above water or ground. Hovercrafts are “now used throughout the world as specialised transports in disaster relief, coastguard, military and survey and applications, as well as for sport or passenger service.” As writer Amy Cowen noted, “Remember Luke’s landspeeder in the original Star Wars trilogy? Remember the way it skimmed across Tatooine’s surface of sand as he went in search of R2-D2 and found Obi-Wan? While not necessarily a textbook example of hovercraft technology, the story set in a “galaxy far, far away” did a memorable job in 1977 of showing the potential—and alluring ‘glide’—of an air-cushion vehicle.”

Like his father, Christopher Cockerell received a knighthood, though the son’s was “for services to engineering,” something the elder Cockerell likely never expected of the son he once derided for being “no better than a garage hand.”

Hank the Cowdog, Trainer Hank Ack, and an Arabian Stallion Named *Zbrucz: The Brusally Ranch Connection

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History Project Essay

In 1982, a writer named John R. Erickson penned the first entry in his Hank the Cowdog series of children’s books, about a canine head of security at a ranch in Ochiltree County, Texas. As of this year, there are 73 Hank the Cowdog titles, as well as toys, games, t-shirts, and other merchandise. With sales of more than six million books, Hank’s popularity shows no sign of abating.

      To be honest, I had never heard of Hank the Cowdog until earlier this year, when I was helping my friend, dressage rider and painter Shelley Groom Trevor, with her forthcoming memoir, A Riding Life: Memories, Dreams, Art, and Love. One day, I was fact-checking the lives of various people she’d written about, including cutting-horse trainer Hank Ack, who worked with Arabian horses at Shelley’s grandfather’s Brusally Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the early 1970s. A Google search of Hank Ack’s name brought up something interesting, a 2007 article by Joshua Rabe in The Oklahoman:

Hank the Cowdog, the fictionalized “head of ranch security” dreamed up by Texas children's author John Erickson, is known to thousands of kids and their parents. Hank the cowdog, the real one that inspired Erickson's character, was known to few.

But he was no less beloved.

“I can still just see that dog,”  recalls Glen Kirkendall, best friend of Mark Mayo, the man who owned and trained the real Hank to be a real cowdog. “He would jump up and put his feet on your stomach. He'd wag his tail and stand there and have a conversation with you.” 

The tale begins about 1970 when Mayo, a horseman [and Arabian horse owner/breeder] who had inherited a 10,000-acre ranch outside nearby Mocane [in Oklahoma] with his brother, decided to try his hand with a working cattle dog. At a horse show, Mayo was entranced by two Australian shepherds that dazzled the crowd with their ballet of herding maneuvers. “The male was a three-legged dog, and he was an incredible cowdog,” said Mayo's daughter, Meredith Lemaster, 43, of Bartlesville. So impressed was Mayo, he got one of the three-legged dog's four-legged offspring… [and] Mayo named the dog after its sire's owner, Hank Ack.

A 1976 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph reported that “Ack trains Appaloosas, Arabians and Quarter horses for all events, but specializes in cutting horses and reining horses. He has trained and shown five national champion Arabian cutting horses, and the Kansas state champion Appaloosa cutting horse.”

Hank on Jameel Basklawi.

      I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Hank Ack, but many years after the fact, I learned that he’d been a crucial player in an event that made a big impression on me.
      Back in 1974, while I was attending my first Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show, I was fascinated by the Formal Combination class, in which the horses are first driven, then ridden. After the driving portion of the class, helpers in white coats enter the ring, remove harnesses and buggies, and outfit each horse with a cutback saddle and full bridle. During this intermission, a beautiful bay horse broke loose from his handlers before they could put on his bridle. With two sets of reins around his neck, and the headstall and bits near his feet, he went soaring around the show ring at a dead run, leather straps flapping, breaking, and goading him on—until some brave soul stepped over the ring’s low wall and caught him.
      For a moment, it appeared that the horse and his lovely young rider/driver were going to have to be excused from the class due to broken equipment. Just then, a long-legged cowboy came running back with a new bridle, hopped the wall, and went to help the young woman. Within minutes, the horse was saddled. With his petite blonde rider aboard, the bay stallion went right back to work and took third place in a large class. To this day, I don’t remember who won, but I’ll never forget that striking stallion doing laps around the arena.
      That was the first time I ever laid eyes on Shelley Groom (now Trevor) and *Zbrucz, the well-known son of Comet who’d been 1970 U.S. Reserve National Champion Park Horse and was a top sire for Brusally Ranch. And the quick-thinking man who dashed back to the barn for a bridle? That was Hank Ack. Shelley remembered Hank as a “tall, lanky blond-haired cowboy with a grin that creased his whole face.”

Shelley Groom Trevor and *Zbrucz in a (different) 

Formal Combination class at Scottsdale.

      A few years earlier, Hank had been a trainer at Brusally Ranch, where he’d taught Shelley how to cut cattle on another son of Comet named *Centaur. Hank and Shelley both did well with *Centaur at the 1970 Arabian Nationals in Oklahoma City; Hank was Top Five Open Cutting, and Shelley was Top Five Novice.

Shelley Groom Trevor and *Centaur, mentored by Hank Ack,

 at the 1970 U.S. Arabian Nationals in Oklahoma City.

     By 1974, Hank was working as a cutting-horse trainer for Arabian breeder Owen McEwen of Wichita, Kansas. No longer an employee of Ed Tweed, Hank had no obligation to help Shelley and *Zbrucz—but his actions kept her in the ribbons that day.
      As I continued my Google search into Hank Ack’s life, I found a post on Facebook that dated to 2006. Hank, then 64 years old, was at a cutting competition in Ardmore, Oklahoma. As his friend Rod Miller recalled, Hank had just finished a run that was “good enough to win a check.” Hank stepped off his horse to talk to friends, then collapsed and died. As Miller noted, “If Hank was going to script his passing, he could not have done it any better.”
      Hank the cowboy inspired Hank the Cowdog, helped a friend in a time of need, and died doing what he loved. I’d call that a life well lived.

“Horse Racing Royalty”: Allison Janney, Ruffian, and a Ride on Secretariat

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

Just after Finest City won the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Santa Anita Park, NBC’s racing commentator Laffit Pincay—son of Hall of Fame jockey Laffit Pincay Jr.— made some remarks that “won” him a Turkey Award courtesy of racing’s Paulick Report. It all started when actress Allison Janney arrived in the winner’s circle to present the trophy to Finest City’s connections. Pincay accidentally introduced Janney as “Elizabeth Janney,” and then compounded his mistake by calling her an Academy Award winner—which she was not. That is, not until last week, when she received an Oscar for her supporting role in I, Tonya.

If you happened to notice Allison Janney in the winner’s circle that day, you may have wondered if she had any particular interest in horses or horse racing. Indeed she does, and she comes by it naturally.  In fact, Allison is not the only statuesque, talented, award-winning female member of the Janney family: her great-uncle, Stuart Janney Jr., and his wife Barbara Phipps Janney, were the breeders and owners of the incredible filly Ruffian, the highest-ranked female runner on the Blood-Horse’s list of the top 100 racehorses of the twentieth century and a member of the Horse Racing Hall of Fame.

Although Janney appears to be more of a dog person than an equestrian, she did say, during an October 2013 appearance on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, that she is “horse racing royalty,” and that in addition to her uncle having owned Ruffian, her cousin Stuart Janney III had bred and raced that year’s Kentucky Derby winner, Orb, who descends from the same female family as Ruffian. Then the future Academy Award winner ended the episode by climbing aboard a pantomime horse called Secretariat that was a fixture on Ferguson’s program. Tally-ho and congratulations, “Elizabeth Janney”!

Celebrating the Man O’ War Centennial, Part 2: Arizona’s Own C. W. “Doc” Pardee—Plus Tom Mix, Gallant Fox, and a Handy Guy Named Sande

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History Project Essay

This essay is part of the ongoing Arizona Horse History Project series, which also includes posts on Penny Chenery and Secretariat, Hank the Cowdog, Man O’ War’s son By Hisself, General Jonathan Burton, and Frank Brophy. 

In 1975, I was a horse-crazy kid growing up in suburban Phoenix, who spent more time reading about horses—like Man O’ War, The Black, Flame, and Sham—than riding them. Therefore, I leapt at any chance to sit on my cousin’s gelding, Passum, who was boarded at a facility in south Phoenix owned by a horseman named Rob Traylor. During my occasional rides, I enjoyed pretending that this sorrel Quarter horse bore a resemblance to my hero, Secretariat.

One afternoon, Rob and I were in his tack room. He was looking for the latest issue of the Blood-Horse, a weekly magazine that he’d often pass on to me. (While my classmates were devouring Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine, I was committing the pages of the Blood-Horse to memory; twenty-five years later, I found myself writing articles for this periodical I’d treasured so long.) As he continued to search his desk, Rob caught me staring at a framed black-and-white photo on the wall, its glass dusty and cracked. “Know who that is?”

I thought for a moment. “The horse looks like a C. W. Anderson drawing of Man O’ War. But who’s the old guy sitting on him?”

For some reason, this struck Rob as funny. When he stopped guffawing, he answered, “It is Man O’ War, and that old guy was a friend of mine—one of Arizona’s greatest horsemen, Doc Pardee. If you don’t know his name, you ought to. He died a couple of months ago.”

In this post, I’ll explain why everybody ought to know Doc Pardee’s name—as well as those of Big Red’s four jockeys, one of whom, Hall of Fame inductee Earl Sande, also has an Arizona connection. Tom Mix, Samuel Riddle, William Woodward Sr., Philip K. Wrigley, Damon Runyon, and others will make cameos here, too.

Let’s begin with the jockeys. During his twenty-one starts, over two seasons of racing, four talented athletes had the privilege of riding Man O’ War to victory.

The racing career of Chicago native Johnny Loftus was a study in contrasts: Although he has the distinction of being the first jockey to win the U.S. Triple Crown, aboard Sir Barton, and also rode Man O’ War to nine wins in 1919, he is perhaps best known as Big Red’s rider during his only loss, to Upset, in the Sanford Memorial Stakes. As Jennifer Kelly wrote, Loftus’s “legacy became forever tied to the misfortunes that resulted in Big Red’s only loss. He mysteriously lost his jockey’s license the following year and was never able to regain it; he applied for a trainer’s license, though, and was granted that immediately. He stayed in the game as long as he could, training stakes winners for prominent owners, but, when he had a streak of bad luck, he gave up the racing game for something far calmer and less risky: carpentry. He died in 1976, far away from the bugle’s call and the tiny square of leather that had been his office for so long.” Loftus was inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame in 1959.

After Loftus lost his jockey’s license, Clarence Kummer, the son of a horseshoer, took over the ride on Big Red for most of the 1920 season. This native of Jamaica, New York, was known to be strong, smart, and courageous. Kummer was in the irons for several of Man O’ War’s notable victories, including the Dwyer Stakes, in which Big Red was sorely tested by doughty John P. Grier; the chestnut champion’s 100-length trouncing of Hoodwink in the Lawrence Realization Stakes; and Big Red’s final performance, a seven-length win over Sir Barton. Kummer—who had also ridden Sir Barton to victory in 1920—retired from racing in the late ʼ20s when his body could no longer withstand the punishing regimen he maintained to keep his weight down. He died in 1930 and was named a member of the National Racing Hall of Fame in 1972.

Andy Schuttinger, from Brooklyn, rode Man O’ War once, to a win in the Travers Stakes. He was substituting for Kummer, who was convalescing from a broken shoulder incurred when a filly he was riding, Costly Colours, fell on him. Schuttinger had a good career as a jockey; in addition to his win on Big Red, he was aboard Exterminator when “the Galloping Hat Rack” won the Saratoga Cup, and he was the regular jockey for Roamer, a Hall of Fame inductee. Schuttinger made a successful transition from jockey to trainer, conditioning stakes winners like Sun Beau and Pilate. He died in 1971.

Earl Sande, a native of Groton, South Dakota, rode Man O’ War once, winning the Miller Stakes during Kummer’s convalescence. Years later, Sande—who had ridden a host of other great horses, including Sir Barton, Gallant Fox, and Zev—maintained that Big Red was still the greatest horse he ever rode. He also did well with Man O’ War’s offspring, racking up stakes wins on Bateau, Crusader, Edith Cavell, Dress Parade, Mars, and Taps. He’s also known for training Stagehand, who prevailed over Man O’ War’s grandson Seabiscuit in the 1938 Santa Anita Handicap.

Earl Sande on Man O’ War.

When Sande was a child, his family relocated to American Falls, Idaho. As Richard J. Maturi wrote in his biography of the jockey, “At age nine, Sande acquired his first horse, trading three 5 dollar gold pieces, four ducks and a bicycle for the filly. The strawberry-colored horse could run like wind. Sande named her Babe. The two engage in impromptu races against dogs and horses of other area kids. At age fourteen, the lanky, freckle-faced Sande weighed only seventy pounds. On July 14, 1914, Earl rode in his first official horse race during the American Falls Fourth of July celebration activities….[When local racehorse trainer] Burr Scott  announced to the spectators that he needed a rider. Sande jumped at the opportunity and bounded out of the crowd. He rode the horse, Guise, to victory. Sande won a $10 purse. Scott rewarded the youngster with a silver dollar for his skill.”

Scott saw Sande’s potential and encouraged the boy to accompany him, on what he called the “outlaw circuit,” as Scott and his horses traveled by train to tracks in Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Earl won so many races at these bush tracks that he was nicknamed the “Idaho Hot Potato.” By 1916, Scott, who felt that he had no more to teach Sande, got him an apprenticeship with his old friend Cecil W. “Doc” Pardee, of Prescott, Arizona. This proved to be a major turning point in Sande’s budding career. As soon as Earl was settled in, Pardee wrote a letter to the teenager’s mother back in Idaho: “Earl is being well looked after. I have him in my own special care and Earl is not exposed to the temptations that so often beset jockeys. My wife, Edith May, is looking after his feeding and he won’t go wanting in that department. Earl is a fine lad.”

Pardee, born in Kansas in 1885, was eight years old when he competed in his first horse race and established his own livery stable in Oklahoma at the ripe old age of fourteen. Despite his moniker, he never did become a veterinarian; he took a couple of vet-school classes and then began doctoring horses. A retrospective of his life that appeared in the July 14, 1968 issue of the Arizona Republic noted that he’d had “a varied career as rodeo performer, announcer and director, wild west show promoter, movie cowboy, wrangler, and racehorse breeder and trainer that has given him a saddlebag of fond memories.”

Pardee’s movie career came about thanks to his friend, movie star Tom Mix. In 1912, the two became acquainted in Dewey, Oklahoma, when Doc won the World’s Championship Bronco Busting competition. Pardee is said to have played a bit part in a film featuring Mix that was shot near Pawnee, Oklahoma. The next year, in need of money, Pardee traveled to Prescott, where he appeared in at least one more Mix film, The Sheep Runners (1914). An article about Mix’s activities in Prescott appeared in a Daily Courier article dated September 8, 2013:

“In late 1913, Tom Mix was sent to California, where he was made head of his own Selig [a.k.a. Selig Polyscope, an early film studio] satellite unit based at the Bachmann Studio in Glendale, not far from downtown Los Angeles. Mix remained with Selig until late 1916 before signing with the Fox Film Corporation. After seven years in the picture business, Tom became an “overnight sensation” at Fox. With stardom came clout, and Tom returned to supervise the Northern Arizona Fair rodeo with Prescott local Lester Ruffner in 1918, 1919, and more significantly attended Prescott's Frontier Days in 1920, where he shot scenes for The Texan….Mix made 85 pictures for Fox between 1917 and 1928, returning to Prescott several more times, notably in 1922 for his film Romance Land. Unfortunately, most of Tom’s Fox films are now “lost” due to nitrate decomposition, and a disastrous 1937 Fox vault fire. But, almost miraculously, The Texan, with its images of Prescott's Frontier Days, survives at the Danish Film Institute.”

Pardee and Mix remained friends for the remainder of Mix’s life, which was cut short in 1940 when the cowboy star died in a car crash on a highway north of Tucson, Arizona. In addition to his bit-part work in films with Mix, Doc also appeared in The Gentleman from Arizona (1939), The Vanishing American (1925)—filmed in Arizona’s Monument Valley—and Wild Horse Mesa (1925), the latter two based on novels by Zane Grey.

Within a few months of his arrival in Prescott, Earl Sande competed in his first horse race under Pardee’s tutelage. At the 1916 Prescott Rodeo—the oldest annual event of its kind in the United States—Pardee won the World’s Champion Bronco Busting medal, and Sande won a race on Doc’s gelding, Tick Tack, whose previous owner had used him to pull a milk wagon. Doc and Earl also performed on horseback for spectators at the Castle Hot Springs Resort, where notables like Zane Grey and the Rockefeller family stayed.

Over the next year or so, Pardee and Sande ran Tick Tack and Doc’s other horse, Vanity Fair, on the Arizona county fair circuit. At a meet in Springerville, Sande won an astonishing twenty-three races—twenty-one match races and two purse races—in one day. Soon afterward, Doc informed the young man that it was time for him to move up to the big time. Putting Sande aboard a train to New Orleans, he handed Sande a letter of recommendation to Doc’s friend Joe Goodman, a trainer at the Fair Grounds track. Sande’s first official race took place in New Orleans on January 5, 1918; he finished second. By the end of the year, the horses he’d ridden had won 158 races and $138,872. Within two years he would be sitting on the likes of Man O’ War and Sir Barton, but his most famous achievement was far in the future, and he owed it, in part, to his association with Pardee and to the construction of a new Arizona landmark.

In 1929, a new resort, the Arizona Biltmore, opened to great fanfare in Phoenix. Designed by Albert Chase McArthur, in (contentious) consultation with Frank Lloyd Wright, the property was constructed of Biltmore block, “a variation on a textile block first used by Wright to construct private homes. The pre-cast blocks were made from desert sand on-site and created in 34 different geometric patterns inspired by the trunk of a palm tree.” The next year, the Biltmore was purchased by Chicagoan William Wrigley, Jr., chewing-gum magnate and Chicago Cubs owner.

The Biltmore established an on-site stable of dude horses for guests, and Pardee—who had moved to Phoenix years earlier—was hired to manage it. In 1932, after William Wrigley’s death, his son Philip inherited the family business and various properties, including the Biltmore. The younger Wrigley was a horse fancier, and for part of each year, Philip would keep his Arabians at the resort’s barn, before transporting them to the family’s El Rancho Escondido, on Catalina Island, off the southern California coast. (In 1955, the Biltmore arena was used to stage Arizona’s first all-Arabian horse competition—forerunner of today’s Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show—and it was underwritten by Philip and Helen Wrigley, along with local breeders Ed and Ruth Tweed, and Fowler and Anne McCormick.)

A view of the Arizona Biltmore Arena, c.1954, showing Ed Tweed’s Arabian stallion Skorage, ridden by Florence Daugherty.

Among the well-heeled visitors Pardee met during his employment at the Biltmore was William Woodward, Thoroughbred breeder and owner of Belair Stud. In early 1930, while wintering at the resort, Woodward asked Pardee for his opinion about possible jockeys to ride his rising star, the homebred Gallant Fox. Doc didn’t hesitate to name his onetime protégé, even though Sande had been through some hard times over the past few years. These included a serious riding injury, the death of his young wife, a fortune lost in the stock market, retirement from riding, and a lackluster new career as a racehorse trainer. However, Pardee knew Sande still had the ability to bring out the best in a good horse, and he urged Woodward to use him.

When Woodward went home to Maryland, he and his trainer, James “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons, compared notes on whom each man thought should ride Gallant Fox. Both agreed that Kummer and Sande would be suitable. According to Richard J. Maturi, Woodward initially said nothing to Sunny Jim about his conversation with Pardee. Then Fitzsimmons pulled out his work diary, on which he’d written, “Earl Sande, Gallant Fox jockey.” Woodward sent a telegraph to Sande that evening. Within a few months, America had its second Triple Crown winner and Sande’s legendary status had grown larger. One of Earl’s most prominent fans, newspaperman Damon Runyon, of Guys and Dolls fame, wrote reams of doggerel about Sande over the years, including this prescient 1921 piece, which appeared in the New York American:

Maybe there’s better jockeys
Somewhere on land or sea
But gimme a handy guy like Sande
Riding the mount for me.

During his years at the Biltmore, Pardee crossed paths with another important racing personage: Man O’ War’s owner, Samuel Riddle. Doc must have made quite an impression on Riddle, for he was invited not only to see Man O’ War but also to sit on him. In an Arizona Republic interview from November 21, 1966, Pardee recalled, "I had the thrill to be the only man other than the exercisers and jockeys to ride the famous horse. Man O’ War stepped around like he was on springs."

Pardee, who died at age ninety, outlived practically everyone closely connected with Big Red, such as Riddle and his wife, his trainer Louis Feustel, his well-known groom Will Harbut, and all four of his jockeys, including Sande, who passed away in 1968. (Curiously, after the death of his wife Marion Casey Sande in 1927 and his friendly rival Clarence Kummer three years later, Earl married another Marion—Kummer’s widow.)

To the end of his days, Doc was actively involved with horses. In 1967, the American Horse Shows Association named him Senior Horseman of the Year. The following year he was named honorary chairman of the Prescott Frontier Days Rodeo. A July 14, 1968 Arizona Republic story noted that, because of the couple’s age, the event organizers arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Pardee to have box seats overlooking the rodeo arena. But Pardee wasn’t having any of that, replying, “Heck, let’s go all the way. I’ll even ride in the parade you’re gonna have—and ride in the grand entry at the rodeo, too!” And that’s exactly what this Arizona legend did.

An Unexpected Encounter with Penny Chenery, Owner of Secretariat

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History Project Essay

This essay is part of the ongoing Arizona Horse History Project series, which also includes posts on Hank the Cowdog, Man O’ War’s son By Hisself, Frank Brophy, and Doc Pardee. 

I read today that Penny Chenery, owner of racing legend Secretariat, died yesterday at age 95. Although we never had an opportunity to meet, Ms. Chenery and I did have an unexpected encounter some years ago.
 

      In 2000, Secretariat's second-oldest son, Statesman, then aged 26, lived with me at my home in Scottsdale, Arizona. Statesman was one of two test foals sired by Big Red out of non-Thoroughbred mares, and he went on to have his own career as a breeding stallion, polo pony, and dressage horse. In addition to having an absolute blast riding him, I'd also written two articles about Statesman--one in Blood-Horse and another in Dressage Today. (The latter was later reprinted in An Apple A Day, an anthology edited by well-known equine writer Kimberly Gatto.)

       Statesman's farrier at that time was my friend J.P. Luyssaert, who decided to attend the Rolex three-day event in Kentucky that year. While there, he noticed that an artist was selling signed prints of Big Red and that her co-signer for the day was Penny Chenery. JP kindly decided to buy one for me as a gift.

        When Ms. Chenery asked JP whom she should inscribe it to, he replied, "Make it 'To Tobi and Statesman.'" Ms. Chenery then surprised him by asking if he meant Statesman, the son of Secretariat in Arizona. When he said yes, she told him she'd enjoyed reading my Blood-Horse article and that she was glad that I was enjoying Statesman so much. I was touched by both JP's gesture and Ms. Chenery's kind words.  Godspeed, Penny, and thank you.

Celebrating the Man O’ War Centennial, Part 1: Big Red’s Arizona Son—By Hisself —Rancho Loma Verde, and the Casa Grande Ruins

By Tobi Lopez Taylor

An Arizona Horse History Project Essay

This essay is part of the ongoing Arizona Horse History Project series, which also includes posts on Penny Chenery and Secretariat, Hank the Cowdog, Major-General Jonathan Burton, and Doc Pardee. 

Considered by many to be the best racehorse of the twentieth century, the colt christened Man O’ War was born in March 1917, days before America’s entry into World War I. The centennial of his birth has been celebrated this year in various ways, including the restoration of the larger-than-life bronze statue, sculpted by Herbert Haseltine, that marks his grave at the Kentucky Horse Park, near Lexington. Also at the park is the exhibit Man O’ War: The Mostest Horse That Ever Was. Other exhibits commemorating his life, career, and legacy opened this year at the Kentucky Derby Museum and the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame, in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Racing fans tend to associate this equine champion—known as Big Red—with two states: Kentucky, where he was born, stood at stud, and died, and New York, where the majority of his races were run. However, Man O’ War has some interesting connections to Arizona, which I’ll be discussing in a series of three blog posts as part of my ongoing Arizona Horse History Project.

The colt’s owner, Samuel D. Riddle, retired him in late 1920 after Big Red had compiled a record of 20 wins in 21 starts, including 14 straight victories. (For more on the colt’s career, check out Dorothy Ours’s wonderful book, Man O’ War: A Legend Like Lightning.) Hopes were high that Man O’ War would transmit at least some of his blazing speed to his offspring. Alas, his first two foals, a set of twin colts, were born dead on January 27, 1922. His next foal, a filly, died before she could be named. The first colt to survive and flourish was born on April 18 of that year to the mare *Colette II. The brown colt was named By Hisself in honor of an anecdote that Riddle loved to tell. Once, when Man O’ War was having his morning workout, an observer inquired about his sire: “Who’s he by?” And a groom retorted, “He’s by hisself and there ain’t nobody gonna get near him!”

By Hisself was bred by Walter M. Jeffords and raced in the colors of his wife, Riddle’s niece by marriage. Like many of the Man O’ War offspring, the colt wasn’t particularly precocious but  came into his own as he grew into his large frame and began to run at longer distances. Over two seasons, he ran 33 times and won 8 races, including the Bayview Handicap.

Regarding his appearance, one newspaper writer noted that “By Hisself no more looks like Man O’ War than night resembles the day. In the first place, he is a brown in color—a solid color at that…and much heavier than Man O’ War was as a two-year-old.” A few years later, By Hisself was said to measure 16 hands and weigh 1,140 pounds.

By Hisself sired a total of 85 registered foals, including 31 race winners and 3 stakes winners. Breeding historian Rommy Faversham notes that By Hisself also became a “useful sire of steeplechasers,” such as Saluda and Yemasee; this is not surprising, given that a number of Man O’ War’s sons, like Battleship, Blockade, Holystone, and Annapolis, showed excellent jumping ability.

When he was 13 years old, By Hisself became the property of the U.S. Government, to be used as a Remount stallion to sire high-quality horses that could be used in the cavalry. (Presumably he was donated by the Jeffords family, but the record is unclear on this point.) By Hisself was not the only son of Big Red to be used as a Remount stallion; there were 10 in all, including Hard Tack, best known as the sire of Seabiscuit. As one reporter wrote in 1918, “Military opinion everywhere has decided that the only truly efficient military horse is the thoroughbred grade [i.e., half-Thoroughbred]. To get thoroughbred grades in serviceable numbers the Government must have at its disposal a vast number of good thoroughbred stallions.” A remount stallion was either housed at a breeding depot or shipped to a knowledgeable horseman, who not only bred his own stock to the stallion but also encouraged the surrounding community to send mares of any breed to him. If the resulting foals met army standards, the government would then have the option of buying them.

In 1935, By Hisself arrived in the tiny town of Coolidge, Arizona, home of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument. He was installed at Rancho Loma Verde, owned by Major R. C. Woodruff, a racehorse breeder and owner dubbed “the Sage of Sacaton Mountain” for his success on California and Arizona tracks. The year before, Woodruff had stood the Remount stallion *Golden Boss, a 24-year-old Thoroughbred imported from Ireland. For Woodruff, *Golden Boss had sired 7 registered foals in 1935, including the stallion’s sole stakes winner, Boss Martin.

 

Woodruff’s co-owner in his horse-breeding operation was his good friend Martha Root White, of Santa Fe, New Mexico. White and her sister Amelia Elizabeth were wealthy transplants from New York; their father had been editor of the New York Evening Post and Chicago Tribune. The sisters’ home in Santa Fe, known as El Delirio—the madness—was the center of the nascent art and literature scene in the New Mexico capital. Today, the house is known as the headquarters of the School for Advanced Research. Both sisters raised Afghan Hounds and Irish Wolfhounds. Elizabeth was also involved in the establishment of the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, the Wheelwright Museum, and the Laboratory of Anthropology. In 1934, an article about the sisters’ interest in dogs noted that “Miss Martha White is as interested in horses as in dogs, and is an excellent horsewoman. She is fond of jumping and can put a horse over the bars, whether using the saddle or not. She owns a half interest in a ranch near Coolidge, Arizona, where she has a large stable of thoroughbred breeding stock.”

Around the time that By Hisself was standing at Rancho Loma Verde, the White sisters decided to build themselves some guest quarters: a five-level, Spanish Colonial–style house of native stone, designed by well-known Italian architect Luigi Vietti, located within sight of the barn.  Although they traveled to Coolidge a few times during the home’s construction, and filled it with furniture and artwork from their travels, the sisters never occupied it; Martha was not in good health, and died of cancer in 1937. The house was instead given as a wedding gift to Martha’s godson Julian Woodruff and his bride Mildred in June 1936.

During his single season in Coolidge, By Hisself sired 14 registered Thoroughbred foals. Of these 14, all but 2 were race winners and 1—a colt named One Shen—was a stakes winner and a durable performer. Over seven seasons, One Shen ran 144 times and won 24 of his starts, making him By Hisself’s highest earner.  In fact, on September 5, 1938, One Shen was one of three starters to “romp to victory” in a single afternoon at Del Mar Racetrack for the “Arizona sportsman.” During that race, One Shen was so underestimated by bettors at Del Mar that he paid $79.80 to win—an enormous payoff during the Depression era.

For unknown reasons, in 1936 By Hisself was transferred by the government to rancher Floyd W. Lee, in San Mateo, New Mexico. Lee was a New Mexico state senator as well as county treasurer. Although his 300,000-acre ranch, originally part of a Spanish land grant, was known primarily for its cattle and sheep operations, Lee had stood the Remount stallions Gadar (an Arabian bred by W. R. Brown) from 1929 to 1931 and Gay Laddie (a Thoroughbred) for one year, 1935. Neither stallion appears to have sired any registered foals, but Gadar did sire at least one Palomino half-Arabian after leaving the Lee Ranch. Also around 1936, Lee is known to have built a 40-foot-tall barn and invited both locals and friends from elsewhere to attend the barn opening. One observer recalled that Lee had “some fine saddle as well as draft horses in stalls.”

By Hisself is recorded as standing at stud for Lee from 1937 to 1939. During this time, he sired only three Thoroughbred foals, including the race winner Bihigh. His last recorded Thoroughbred foal was born in 1939. Given the size of the ranch, and the number of saddle horses the operation would have required, it is likely that By Hisself sired a number of partbreds out of the ranch’s Quarter Horse mares.  Man O’ War's oldest living son, By Hisself, died at age 22 in 1947—the same year as his celebrated sire.

In the next installment of this centennial tribute to Big Red, we’ll look at a legendary Arizona horseman—Doc Pardee—who was the only person, aside from jockeys and exercise boys, to sit on Man O’ War. And he even had his picture taken to prove it!