The head of the Mambrino family
by Lisa Harkema
One of the first great stallions of the mid-1800s, Mambrino Chief was also the first star stallion in Kentucky and founded one of the first trotting families.
Bred by Richard Eldridge of Mabbettsville in Dutchess County, NY, Mambrino Chief came from familiar blood. He is by Mambrino Paymaster, a son of Mambrino, which means that he shares the paternal grandsire with Hambletonian. His maternal pedigree, however, was quickly lost to history. All that is known is that his dam “was a large and somewhat angular mare of untraced blood.” Some sources state his dam was large and coarse and “from the west”, meaning from Pennsylvania, indicating she might have been part Frisian. This is, however, just speculation.
Some have claimed that Mambrino Chief’s dam, often just referred to as the Edridge Mare, was by the Latham Horse, also known as Morgan Chief, who was a both paternal and maternal grandson of the famous Justin Morgan. However, nothing has been produced to attempt to prove this allegation. In the Breeders and Sportsman of Jun 12, 1886, it was suggested that the Eldridge Mare was sired by Messenger Duroc, a thoroughbred born 1820: “we are so fortunate as to have her described by one, Mr Pepsion Haight, whose brother once was her owner, and whose self was familiar with her during many years: ‘She was about 15 1/2 hands high, of a dark brown color, of heavy mould, body long and deep, and legs sturdy and well set on. She has as good a head, ear, neck, shoulders and legs as I ever saw on a horse. The one fault to be found in her build was as to her loins, which were rather narrow, but the space between her hips was wide, and her quarters were heavy. She was a fast walker, and a great roadster, with speed sufficient to haul a common box wagon, with two men in it, at a three-minute gait.’ Such, in the dim light of the horse world of forty years ago and more, was a rough portrait of Mambrino Chief’s dam, and its interest will be enhanced by one of her supposed sire, Messenger Duroc, through whom the claim of Mambrino partisans, that the paragon possessed a double strain of Messenger blood and a powerful current of that of Diomed is possible to be substantiated.” In the same article, Messenger Duroc’s breeder Ambrose Stevens is quoted as saying that the resemblance of Mambrino Chief to Messenger Duroc was so obvious that if he had been told that the the former was the son of the latter, he would readily have believed that.