How Kentucky Became Southern. Maryjean Wall
all born in 1861: Asteroid, Kentucky, and Norfolk. Alexander had sold Norfolk for a record $15,001 (exceeding by $1 the record $15,000 he had paid for the sire, Lexington) to a mining and transportation mogul in California named Theodore Winters. But he was to state many times over that he believed Asteroid to be the best of the three.49
Alexander was justifiably proud of Asteroid. In this horse more than any other, he saw his theories and agricultural practices approach as close as possible to perfection. He had set out to breed livestock in a highly organized manner according to those proved crosses of bloodlines that were known to result in success. He practiced this method during an era when some horse owners persisted in the old ways, breeding their mares to whatever stallions were closest to their farms, simply because this was more practical. Mares had to be walked or ridden or shipped to the breeding stallions via unreliable railroad transportation; this was difficult and, in many cases, impossible if one lived in a truly remote area.
Alexander had divided Woodburn Farm into well-organized sections so that the trotting horses were relegated to one area with their own exercise track close by and the Thoroughbreds had stabling quarters in another section with their track close to their stables. Everything Alexander did with his livestock he carried out with great planning and organization. He maintained journals and breeding records. He expressed particular interest in bringing order to the disarrayed state of American pedigrees in Thoroughbreds and trotting horses.
To Alexander’s thinking, American horse pedigrees existed in such a state of disorganization that no one could know for certain which bloodlines would cross most profitably. Moreover, no one could be certain whether the stated pedigree of any mare or stallion was correct—or whether it was fabricated, something Kentuckians were frequently accused of. Alexander had vowed to bring order to the confusing state of American Thoroughbred pedigrees. He asked anyone sending a mare to the stallions at Woodburn to also send a written record of her family history, believing that all would tell the truth. He relied on his superior knowledge of pedigrees to feel certain when other breeders were truthful. “Those who knew him know that no man in Kentucky in his time was so well posted in pedigrees, and none was more careful and thorough in his investigations,” Busbey wrote. “He made no mistakes. He was the one man that sharpers avoided.”50
Alexander had assembled at Woodburn an excellent band of broodmares and three valuable stallions: Lexington (standing for a breeding fee of $200), Scythian (with a $75 breeding fee), and Australian (with a $50 fee). He kept careful records of the Woodburn broodmares and their progeny in a printed guide called a catalog that he published privately each year. He was believed to be the first of American breeders of Thoroughbreds to produce such a catalog; he certainly was the first to print a catalog of horses and livestock he offered for sale in the public auctions he held at his farm. The Woodburn catalog for 1864, for example, noted that the broodmare Nebula was the dam of Asteroid but had not produced a foal in 1864.51
The original owner of Nebula, Jack Pendleton Chinn, had sent the mare to Woodburn for safekeeping during the war; Alexander came into ownership of the mare during that time. Alexander’s friend Richards, of Georgetown, had done the same with the stallion called Australian, selling him to Alexander soon after the start of the war. The intent of these horse owners to put their horses in safekeeping on Alexander’s estate must have seemed ironic as the war progressed. Alexander’s neighborhood grew quite dangerous, with outlaws stealing Asteroid and other valuable trotters and Thoroughbreds. All Kentucky was a dangerous place during these times, and Woodburn Farm was no exception, despite what all had wanted to believe. Alexander had thought he would be safe from marauders because, as a British citizen, he flew the British flag. But he was not safe, as events would show.52
Americans of this time had some basic knowledge of Woodburn Farm, partly because travel writers had begun visiting the estate prior to the Civil War. Visitors had written glowingly, describing a vast property situated at the heart of a region “undeniably [the] ‘game bed’ of the United States, in blooded horses, stock, and chivalrous sons and daughters … [where] horses were brought out, and led around for our inspection, and negro boys attended us everywhere.”53
Visiting writers unfailing painted the squire of Woodburn as a kind and charming gentleman farmer of cultivated manners. They told how he resided without a wife in a home that his slaves made comfortable for him. They described how he had enlarged his home over the years from its log-cabin beginnings to a house of ample proportions that retained the log-cabin facade on one wing. Alexander had filled the house with elegant furnishings, which customarily drew comment from his visitors. Visitors also reported on the pleasing hospitality that he dispensed with ease at his laden table. If nothing else, this picture of Woodburn Farm was helping reinforce emerging images of Kentucky horse country as a place stocked with fast horses, of “negroes” attending the horses and guests, and of a patrician gentry class that dispensed hospitality in the fashion of knightly cavaliers more often associated with the Deep “Cotton” South.54
Robert Aitcheson Alexander lived in this home, which had retained its log facade along one side, evoking imagery of the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth, when Bluegrass Kentucky stood at the edge of the Western frontier. (Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, October 1883, 729.)
Whether this vision of Kentucky horse country was to remain relevant to the new world of Thoroughbred racing was another question entirely. The new capitalists getting into the sport were bringing their own culture to the game; they brought an urbane style that disconnected their practices from the quasi-plantation traditions of Kentucky horse country. The English-type coaches in which they traveled to the races represented one expression of this break from Bluegrass tradition; the private stud farms they were building close to the city of New York represented still another. These new farms featured the latest improvements in the training and housing of horses and, thus, did not entirely resemble the older, established farms in Bluegrass horse country. In these and other ways, it was clear these new men were bringing their own ideas to the sport. The cultural practices and iconography that had linked Thoroughbred racing with rural, Deep South plantation imagery and traditions before the war now teetered between the new, urban style and antebellum obsolescence.
Alexander might not have felt a connection to these new men from the Northeast like Travers and his group. He appeared uninformed about their identities, perhaps even disdainful of the position they already had assumed in the sport. On at least one occasion, he referred to Kentucky’s owners not by name but as “some New Yorkers,” as though dismissing their identities and relevance to the sport as he knew it in Kentucky. A slip like this might have seemed unconscionable to racing enthusiasts in the Northeast, however, where men like Travers considered themselves the essence of New York society and sport. But Alexander continued to see the Bluegrass as central to the sport. He had the best horses. His horses had the proven bloodlines. He held the power in Bluegrass Kentucky, where other horse breeders looked to him for leadership. If “some New Yorkers” wanted to play at his level, perhaps it was understandable for him to assume that they would have to play his way.55
This might have been one reason why Alexander ignored, at first, the pleas of Travers and his group to bring Kentucky and Asteroid together in the Saratoga Cup. Besides trying to reestablish his racing stable after the war, he was meeting during the Cincinnati race meet in June with other leaders of the Western sport. They were attempting to bring order to horse racing in Kentucky, Ohio, and Missouri now that the war was over. Unfortunately, the intensity of the desire for the race between Asteroid and Kentucky was building in the Northeast just as Alexander was deeply engaged in his organizational efforts.
Alexander met with these men to establish an orderly racing circuit in the Western region. With Alexander representing the Woodlawn Course in Louisville,