The Aloof Matron
by Lisa Harkema
She was an aloof and difficult mare, preferring to be left alone even when she went blind. Medio is also one of the most important matrons in history.
Born in 1887, the chestnut mare Medio was bred by Major PP Johnson, president of the National Trotting Association. Medio was born was her dam Topsey 4 years old, but it is lost to history whether the dam was bred early because of injury or some other reason. Breeder Johnson sure wasn’t afraid of short generation intervals, though, both of Medio’s parents were 3 when they were mated. Her sire Cooper Medium was bred in Georgetown, KY by John H. Cooper and born in 1883. Not much is known about this stallion but he produced a few 2:30 trotters. Even less is known about her dam Topsey, a daughter of Mambrino King. Supposedly her dam was by the famous thoroughbred Grey Eagle, but since that could be properly authenticated John Wallace left Topsey’s maternal side blank in the studbook. It should be added that Wallace was as quarrelsome as they come, abhorred thoroughbred blood and rarely let go of an opportunity to exclude these parts of the pedigrees. However, as John Hervey wrote in an article on Mambrino King in the May 25, 1938, edition of Harness Horse, “there is good reason to believe, however, that the Grey Eagle cross was not fictitious; the dates made it easily possible and there were many Grey Eagle mares in Kentucky at that period, of which a good number were not orthodox thoroughbreds, for it is well known that the stallion covered many non-thoroughbred mares.”