The Civil War casualty
by Lisa Harkema
While Hambletonian is forever immortalized in the history of trotting, what could possibly have turned out been his best son at stud is largely forgotten. One of Hambletonian’s very first foals, Alexander’s Abdallah was a spectacular sire whose life tragically ended way too early during the Civil War.
Alexander’s Abdallah’s dam, Katy Darling, was one of the four mares bred to Hambletonian when he was an unknown 2-year-old. These breeders were for free, and these four are the only foals of Hambletonian where no service or foal fees were charged. Articles from back then describe her as a spectacular trotter. A March 1896 article in The Breeders and Sportsman said “Katy Darling had the name of being the best road mare of her time on the old Third Avenue speedway. It was the custom back then for everybody who drove a trotter out to the Red House track in Harlem to leave the rendezvous together for the homeward drive in the afternoon, and that the last man down to Billy Van Cott’s four mile house, which stood on the present site of Proctor’s Pleasure Palace of thereabouts, had to settle for the wine. It is said that in these four-mile races, to wagon, Katy Darling was always in the first flight, fighting for the lead.
Mendham Maid was another of the good ones of that day, and in the winter of 1850-51 a rivalry sprung up between the Maid and Katy Darling for the mastery of the snow path, the outcome being a match race to sleighs, which resulted in a decisive victory for Katy Darling. After celebrating the old-fashioned way, victor and vanquished harnessed together for a moonlight drive up the road that night. When they were some distance north of the Harlem River, on the White Plains road, Katy Darling stepped on a loose stone, or got her foot caught in the frog of a railroad track, as another story has it, and stopped short, so badly crippled that she could hardly hobble to the nearest barn. There she remained until Lewis J. Sutton, of Warwick, Orange County, bought her for $50 the next spring. Sutton managed to get the mare home after much trouble, and late in the Summer he bred her to the Kent mare’s colt, then an unnamed two-year old.”