The Carolinian, like a true Englishman,
was devoted to field sports. He rode from his infancy. Attempts have
been made to show that horses were natives of America, and plausible
arguments have been adduced to establish the fact;but Bartram, the
best authority, informs us that the horse was not originally found in
the possession of Indians. It is curious that horses are not
mentioned in the instructions to Governor Sayle, which otherwise give
such minute instructions for the material he was to take out or to
obtain for the settlement of the colony in 1670, unless horses were
intended to be included in his instructions as to cattle; these, he
was instructed, the Proprietors would cause to be brought from
Virginia.
And though it is usually supposed that the horses of
Carolina were obtained from the Spaniards, who had produced a
remarkable breed in Florida, there can be little doubt that Virginia
was the source of supply to this province; indeed, so much did the
colonists depend upon Virginia for their horses, instead of attending
to rearing them themselves, that as early as 1700 the Assembly passed
an act reciting that the great numbers brought from Virginia and
other northern plantations were disadvantageous and detrimental to
the province, and imposing a heavy tax upon their introduction.1
Nevertheless Dr. Ramsay tells us that before 1754 a Spanish breed
called the Chickesaws were the best horses for the draught or saddle.
These horses, he says, in general, were hand some, active, and hardy,
but small, seldom exceeding thirteen hands and a half in height.
These, when crossed with English blooded horses, produced colts of
great beauty, strength, and swiftness.
After 1754 the stock of horses
was still more improved by foreign importations. Great attention was
paid to the breeding of these horses. They were trained to two gaits,
— the canter and the walk, — and in these they were unsurpassed.
The trot and pace were seldom used.
The saddle horses were excellent
hunters, and though but of medium size would seldom hesitate to take
a six-rail fence at a leap. The boys and girls learned to ride upon
tackies, which were often not more than ponies in size, but active,
enduring, and easy gaited.
The Low Country was not suited for fox
hunting. It was too much cut up with marshy creeks and swamps to
allow a fox chase.
The great sport was deer hunting, which was
carried on by clubs as a social diversion. The members met once or
twice a month, by turns providing a dinner in a plain building
erected for the purpose, and called the clubhouse. They met early in
the day with their hounds, horses, and guns. The hounds, usually in
charge of a negro, soon found the scent, and no sooner was it found
than in full cry the chase was begun.
The woods, says Dr. Ramsay,
reechoed with sounds more exhilarating to the party than any musical
instrument. From their knowledge of the country and the habits of the
deer, the hunters knew the precise course the deer would take, and in
anticipation of that would take different stands, but all ahead of
the game, so that the terror-stricken animal would sometimes run the
gantlet of many guns; or at others, when the number was small, having
missed a shot, the hunter would gallop through the woods with a swiftness exceeding that of the dogs, and reach another stand before the
game approached it. The deer seldom ran its full course. He often
fell before the first stand; he hardly ever escaped a second;
sometimes he was killed by a shot from the hunter while at full
speed. There was one of these clubs in St. Andrew's Parish as early
as 1761. The clubhouse still stands on the church grounds.
The Carolinians were fond of
horse-racing. As early as February 1, 1734, we find in the Gazette a
notice of a race for a saddle and bridle, valued at £20 as the
prize, mile heats, four entries. The horses carried ten stone; the
riders, it was stipulated, must be white. This race took place on a
green on Charlestown Neck, immediately opposite a public-house, known
in those days as the Bowling Green House. The course was staked out
for the occasion.
In the following year (1735) owners of fine horses
were invited through the papers to enter them for a purse of £100.
This year a course was laid out at the Quarter House, about six miles
from Charlestown, to which the name was given of the York Course,
after the course of York in England, which was then attaining
celebrity as a race ground.
From year to year, racing was con tinued
over the York Course, either in the month of Feb ruary or beginning
of March, the prize being generally a silver bowl or a silver waiter
or a silver tankard about the value of £100 currency (about £14
sterling), the riders never carrying less than ten stone weight.
Silver in some form continued to be the prize; and the silver plate
of many families in the colony was considerably increased by the
prizes won on the race-course. Occasionally, however, other prizes
were offered. On the 11th of March, 1743, a gold watch, valued at
£140, was run for; and on the 24th of February, 1744, a finely
embroidered jacket, of the value of £90. In this race, each rode his
adversary's horse, and the one that came in last took the jacket.
On the second Thursday in February,
1747, a race was run at the Ponds Old Field, near Dorchester, for a
very neat saddle and bridle, with blue housings, value £30, a pair
of silver spoons, and some other things, — one mile, the best in
three heats. Races at this place were continued for a few years.
As
we learn from a History of the Turf in South Carolina, published by
the South Carolina Jockey Club, up to this time not many full-blooded
horses had been imported into the province; but soon after some
well-bred horses and mares were brought from England, and many
planters raised their own horses. In consequence of the inconvenient
distance of the York Course from Charlestown, and with a view to
still further encourage and improve the herd of good horses, a new
course was established, by subscription, in the year 1754, and laid
out about a mile from the town.
It was announced to the public as the
New Market Course. Races took place on it for the first time on the
19th of February, 1760, under the proprietorship of Mr. Thomas
Nightingale, — a York shire man by birth, — the same we have
mentioned in a previous chapter as establishing a cow pen, or ranche,
near what is now Winsboro.
This course was situated on the common on
Charlestown Neck, commonly known as the Blake Tract; it occupied the
whole of the unenclosed ground between the King Street road and the
low ground of Cooper River, through which now runs Meeting Street
road. Meeting Street road was not then laid out; the road known as
the " Great Path " or " Broad Path " was that now
known as King Street road.
From 1760 an increased interest was
manifested in the sports of the turf in South Carolina. Races were
announced to take place in various sections of the Low Country. In
1768 there were races at Jacksonborough ; in 1769 at Ferguson Ferry,
and at Beaufort; and soon after they were in successful operation at
Childsberry, or Strawberry, St. John's Parish.
The races at the
last-named place were kept up by Mr. Daniel Ravenel and the
Harlestons. The principal breeders of race-horses appear to have
been Thomas Nightingale, Daniel Ravenel, Edward and Nicholas
Harleston, Francis Huger, and William Middleton.
It is probable many
will suppose, says the historian of the turf, that the contests which
took place up to this time had been little better than what would be
regarded in the present day as scrub races ; but this, says the
author, was far from being the case, though many horses which ran
were without pure pedigrees.
The first race which produced any very
unusual excitement was a match, January 31, 1769, between Mr. William
Henry Drayton's horse, Adolphus, bred in Carolina, and Mr. Thomas
Nightingale's imported horse, Shadow, — four-mile heats over the
New Market Course. The imported horse, which was one bred in England
by Lord Northumberland, beat the Carolina colt easily; and, after
winning the match, challenged, without acceptance, any horse in the
province.
Another famous horse just prior to the Revolution was
Flimnap, imported by the firm of Mansell, Corbett & Co., of
Charles- town. He beat all the horses in the country, among others
another celebrated horse of Mr. Nightingale's, called "Carless."
He was a horse of much celebrity, and held in high estimation in
England before he was brought to Carolina. Josiah Quincy, in his
Journal, enters, "March 3 (1773), spent this day in viewing
horses, riding over the town, and receiving complimentary visits. . .
. March 16 ... am now going to the famous races. The races were well
performed; but Flimnap beat Little David (who had won the last
sixteen races) out and out. The last heat the former distanced the
latter. The first four-mile heat was performed in eight minutes and
seventeen seconds, being four miles. Two thousand pounds were won and
lost at this race, and Flimnap sold at public vendue the same day for
£300 sterling. At the races I saw a fine collection of excellent,
though very high-priced, horses, and was let a little into the
'singular art and mystery of the turf. ' "
Among the Articles of Association
adopted by the Continental Congress, in 1774, the eighth pledged the
sub scribers to "discountenance and discourage every species of
extravagance and dissipation, especially horse-racing and all kinds
of gaming, cock-fighting, exhibitions of shows, plays, and other
expensive diversions and entertainments." This was no sacrifice
on the part of the Puritans of New England, where all theatrical
performances were forbidden by law, and where there was no such thing
as a race-course or a thoroughbred horse; but it was no little
sacrifice in Virginia and South Carolina, where the theatre and the
race-course were the constant resorts of all the people. But, while
John Rutledge was protesting against the in justice of the
prohibition of the exfoliation oLrice, we do not find that he raised
his voice to object to the suppres sion of amusements. The people of
South Carolina, how ever, even while showing their willingness to
fight for the cause of liberty, did not take kindly to these
deprivations, and especially did they disregard and violate this
prohibi tion of racing. So the General Assembly took up the matter,
and in an act reciting the pledge of the Association upon the
subject, prescribed that if any person should violate the said
Association from the passage of this ordinance by any manner of
horse-racing, he should forfeit the sum of money he bet and the horse
he ran. Whether this act was ever enforced we do not know ; but the
progress of the war put a more effectual stop to the sport and
dispersed the horses.
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