The Old Grey Mare of Long Island
by Lisa Harkema
Known as the “The Queen of the Turf”, she was the first to break the magic 2:30 barrier. A victim of bad and harsh treatment on many occasions, Lady Suffolk never sulked or quit.
Owned by Leonard Lawrence of Smithtown but born at the farm of Carl S Burr Jr in Commack in June 1833, Lady Suffolk was sold to David Bryan as a four-year-old. According to John Hervey’s book Lady Suffolk, The Old Grey Mare of Long Island, Lawrence “had no desire to keep the little thing and upon weaning her in the fall sold her for $60 to Charles Little. It was from Little that Richard Blydenburgh bought her, just when seems uncertain, but probably when she was a two-year-old; and again the accounts vary as to the valuation, which was perhaps $90. Blydenburgh was a butcher in Smithtown, and put her to work between the shafts of his cart. Tradition asserts that she was pulling it about Smithstown loaded with bivalves when David Bryan saw her and bought her for $112,50. That was in 1837, when she was four year sold.” Bryan ran a country town livery stable in Smithstown and presumably acquired the mare to work transporting people around. At first, he had no plans to race the mare.
From Hervey’s book, “She could not have been in Bryan’s possession very long when one day two gentlemen from ‘the city’ hired her to drove to Commack. They were not ordinary patrons. One of them was none other than William T Porter himself, who in the four years since he began editing the Spirit of the Times had made both it and himself famous. The other was his close friend and contributor James Oakes, Esq., of Boston, known to the readers of the Spirit as Acorn, over which name he kept them abreast of sporting and dramatic affairs of the Hub of the Universe. The editor was touring the sporting and breeding regions of the Island with his visitor from the Back Bay. We have no means of knowing just what was taking them to Commack; perhaps it was to call at Smith Burr’s farm to have a look at his stallion Engineer II and Napoleon. And perhaps it was for that reason that David Bryan gave them his newly acquired Engineer filly to drive. The more one thinks it over, the more probable it seems. The outcome of their drive behind her was momentous. The day was fine; the road was smooth; the filly was full of a desire to go, the change from an oyster cart having proved agreeable. The two connoisseurs of speed decided to let her step so that they might see what kind of stuff was in her. And the result astonished them so much that when they turned her back to David Bryan, Porter seriously advised him to made a race mare out of her, advice so acceptable to Bryan that he determined to follow it.”