Tag Archives: Ashland

REMEMBERING CHRISTOPHER T. CHENERY, FOUNDER OF MEADOW STABLE

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 Saratoga CTC portraitWe’re interrupting our “Ancestors of Secretariat” series to take a moment to remember the visionary founder of Meadow Stable, Christopher T. Chenery.  He died 40 years ago on January 3, 1973 at the age of 86.  The man who created “an empire built on broodmares” in Caroline County, Virginia, never lived to see his greatest horse win racing’s greatest prize – the Triple Crown – on June 9, 1973. And now, as we prepare to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Secretariat’s historic victory, it seems fitting to pay homage to the man who set it all in motion. 

Chris Chenery evinced a passion for horses starting in early childhood. Perhaps it began in 1888 when his father Jimmy Chenery lifted him aboard a horse as a toddler at The Meadow, the family’s ancestral homeplace owned by their cousin, Mary Ann Morris. Chris spent many happy summers there, riding over the fields and by the brambly riverbanks on a borrowed horse. 

Later, he would walk seven miles from his house in Ashland to exercise the Thoroughbreds owned by his cousin Bernard Doswell at his farm at Bullfield, once a legendary racing stable. There, young Chris soaked up the lore of Bullfield’s glory days and admired the gleaming trophies won at tracks from New York to New Orleans.  It inflamed his imagination and quite likely set the stage for what was to come.  

The horse-crazy boy grew up to become an accomplished horseman, teaching equitation for the U.S. Army during World War I.  Rising from humble roots, he became a self-made millionaire in the utilities industry.  Finally achieving financial security for his family, he could indulge his passion for horses further.  Robust and vigorous, he played polo, foxhunted and even started his own riding club, Boulder Brook, in Westchester, New York. 

 But Chenery longed for more.  In 1936, he made a decision that would forever change his life, his family’s life and the sport of horse racing.  In the middle of the Great Depression, he went back to Virginia and bought back The Meadow, which had been sold out of the family in 1912.  As a man accustomed to shaping his own destiny, Chenery was determined to restore and reshape the dilapidated property into his vision of a first-class Thoroughbred horse farm and racing stable. 

Once he rebuilt the farm, he set about building up his foundation stock.  Known to have “an eye for a mare,” Chenery purchased well-bred but affordable broodmares. Several of them, such as Hildene, Iberia, Imperatrice and her daughter,  Somethingroyal, became some of the most influential broodmares of the 20th century.

By 1950, Chris Chenery and his upstart Meadow Stable produced Horse of the Year, Hill Prince.   Hill Prince  won the Preakness and several other notable races that year, but ran second in the Kentucky Derby.  For the man who seemed to possess the golden touch in all his pursuits,  Chenery would find winning the golden trophy of the Kentucky Derby his most elusive goal.  

He sent two more Derby favorites to the post: First Landing in 1959 and Sir Gaylord in 1962.   First Landing finished third and Sir Gaylord broke down before the race.  Cicada, the favorite for the fillies’ race, the Kentucky Oaks, in 1962, could have run in the Derby after Sir Gaylord was injured.  However, Chenery kept her in the Oaks, which she won handily.  

Not until 1972 did Chris Chenery’s dream of breeding a Kentucky Derby winner finally come true.  Riva Ridge, by First Landing, avenged his sire’s defeat and brought home the roses for Meadow Stable. But by this time, Chenery was not in his customary box seats at Churchill Downs. He lay mute and immobile, confined to a hospital bed in New Rochelle,   felled like a giant timber by the ravages of Parkinson’s disease and what was then called hardening of the arteries.  When the nurse pointed out his daughter Penny in the winner’s circle with Riva, a tear rolled down his withered cheek. 

Penny had taken over management of Meadow Stable when her father fell ill in the late 1960s. Over the protests of her family, she vowed to keep racing the horses and to keep her father’s dream alive.  “At least he knew,” she has said about Riva winning the Derby.

 Of course, the next year in 1973, Secretariat, who was born and raised at The Meadow,  took  Chenery’s dream to heights no one imagined. Secretariat, the first Triple Crown winner since 1948, broke the track records for the Derby, Preakness and Belmont, the only champion to ever do so.  Together he and Riva Ridge won five of six consecutive Triple Crown races in 1972 and 1973, something no other stable had done. 

The bloodlines that Chris Chenery established for Meadow Stable produced 43 stakes winners.  Most outstanding were:

Hill Prince:  1949 Champion two-year-old colt; winner of 1950 Preakness; 1950 Champion three- year-old colt; 1950 Horse of the Year; 1951 Champion handicap male; elected to Racing Hall of Fame

First Landing:  1958 Champion two-year-old colt

Cicada:  1961 Champion two-year-old filly; 1962 Champion three-year-old filly; 1963 Champion handicap female; elected to Racing Hall of Fame (additionally she ranked as the top money-winning female for nine years)

Riva Ridge: 1971 Champion two-year-old colt; winner of 1972 Derby and Belmont; 1973 Champion handicap male; elected to Racing Hall of Fame

Secretariat:  1972 Champion two-year-old colt; 1972 Horse of the Year; winner of 1973 Triple Crown; 1973 Champion three-year-old colt; 1973 Champion turf male; 1973 Horse of the Year; elected to Racing Hall of Fame

Additionally, the great mares Hildene, dam of Hill Prince; Iberia,dam of Riva Ridge; and Somethingroyal, dam of Sir Gaylord and Secretariat, were named Broodmares of the Year. Sir Gaylord, after his pre-Derby injury, distinguished himself as a sire of international importance through his best son, Sir Ivor.

Today, Chris Chenery’s legacy lives on.  Many of racing’s brightest stars in the 21st century can trace their bloodlines back to Secretariat, who became a great broodmare sire.  His daughters such as Weekend Surprise, Terlingua and Secrettame  produced such outstanding sires as A.P. Indy, Storm Cat and Gone West.  The progeny of those stallions  – think Smarty Jones, Bernardini, the late Pulpit and his son, Tapit, for example – have further distinguished themselves in the sport.

And so we celebrate Chris Chenery, the  “Virginia gentleman” as sportswriters called him, whose dream turned into an American legend!

NOTE:  Look for our upcoming post on Penny Chenery, who celebrates her 91st birthday later this month and has kept the legacy of her father and Secretariat alive for over 40 years.

 by Leeanne Ladin

co-author of “Secretariat’s Meadow –  The Land, The Family, The Legend”  and “Riva Ridge – Penny’s First Champion”

  In our book “Secretariat’s Meadow,” Chris Chenery’s granddaughter, Kate Chenery Tweedy, chronicles how her grandfather’s driving ambition lifted him from humble beginnings to the heights of corporate America and into the top tiers of Thoroughbred racing. You can order the book at  www.secretariatsmeadow.com

Before there was Big Red…there was “the Great Red Fox”

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A century before Meadow Stable, home of Hall of Famers Secretariat, Riva Ridge, Hill Prince and Cicada, put Doswell, Virginia on the racing map, Bullfield Stable in nearby Hanover County dominated the American racing scene.  Its most famous son was a long-striding chestnut stallion named Planet, also called “the great red fox.” He was considered, after Lexington, the greatest racehorse up to the time of the Civil War.

On August 10, the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga will induct Planet into the Hall of Fame in the historical category.  Not only did this great champion and Bullfield Stable symbolize an era known as “the golden age of Virginia horse racing,” but they were an early influence on a horse-crazy boy named Christopher T. Chenery and the future Meadow Stable.

 Founded in 1824, Bullfield became known as “the Red Stable” because so many of its winners were sorrels and its jockeys wore flashy orange silks.  Operated by Major Thomas  Walker Doswell and his father, Bullfield gained renown as one of the most successful Thoroughbred farms of the East Coast.  In fact, the locality of Doswell was named in their honor.

 Planet was born in 1855, sired by Revenue, the leading sire in 1850. His dam was the great racer and broodmare Nina, said to be the best racing daughter of the top sire Boston. A prolific broodmare, she gave Bullfield Stable 15 outstanding foals, including Exchequer and Ecliptic, a son of the great Eclipse. Planet was said to be Nina’s best. She was one of the reasons that writers of the period referred to Bullfield as “a nursery of Virginia racehorses.”

 Planet was a handsome horse, described by John Hervey in his book “Racing in America – 1665-1865” as follows:  “In color a rich chestnut, 15.2 ½ hands tall, he was remarkable for his symmetry of mould and the excellence of his limbs…” 

 Those limbs exhibited whirlwind speed against the top horses of the day such as Daniel Boone, Congaree, Hennie Farrow, Socks and Arthur Macon.   Planet won 27 of 31 races and became the top money winner with nearly $70,000 in purses, a record that stood for 20 years.  

He possessed enormous stamina as well. Those were the days when horses raced in heats ranging from one to four miles, sometimes running as much as 12 miles in one afternoon. Such races would be unthinkable today, as would the practice of racing the horse again after only a three-day layoff, as Planet’s schedule occasionally dictated.

 However, the versatile Planet could win at any distance, long or short, posting some of his best performances at four mile heats. He carried Bullfield’s orange silks on familiar Virginia tracks at Ashland, Petersburg and Broad Rock and further afield on the Southern circuit from New Orleans, Mobile, Savannah, Charleston and even north to New York.  

 Planet also displayed another form of versatility.  He was an accomplished trotter who could do a mile in three minutes. According to John Hervey, this talent landed him in trouble at the New York track in 1860 where he was being worked at a flying trot before a meet. A race official ordered Planet and his rider off the track, declaring that trotters were not allowed. Other horsemen jumped to Planet’s defense, finally convincing the official to rescind his order against the champion Thoroughbred.

 The Civil War and its aftermath curtailed racing in the South and interrupted what would have been Planet’s best years at stud (1861-1868). During that time, many of the Bullfield horses were hidden in the woods to protect them from marauding horse thieves. Nevertheless, an advertisement of the era proclaimed that “Planet – Virginia’s Unrivalled Race Horse will make his season of 1866 at Bullfield… commencing March 1st and ending July 15th, at $50 the season, with $2 to the groom.”  

 Despite the handicap of war, Planet managed to sire impressive offspring who made turf history of their own.  His blood figures in the pedigrees of Kingman, winner of the 1891 Kentucky Derby; Bowling Brook, winner of the 1895 Belmont Stakes; the great filly Regret who won the Kentucky Derby in 1915; Exterminator, winner of the 1918 Kentucky Derby; and (on the female side) Fleet Nasrullah, successful son of the legendary Nasrullah, the grandsire of Secretariat.

 Planet passed his trotting blood, which flowed from his sire Revenue, to his daughter Dame Winnie. She was bred to Electioneer, the great Standardbred, and produced the champion trotting stallion of his day, Palo Alto. 

 In the custom of the day, Planet’s portrait was painted by the famous equine artist Edward Troye, who at Major Doswell’s insistence, included Planet’s black jockey Jesse in the saddle.  During a raid on Bullfield, the portrait was cut from its frame by Yankee soldiers. It was later found in a ditch and returned to the Doswells by someone who recognized the orange silks worn by Jesse.  

Major Doswell sold Planet to Mr. Alexander of Woodburn Farm in Kentucky, where he lived until his death in 1875 at the age of 20.

Planet and Bullfield influenced not only Thoroughbred history but also the history of  Meadow Stable in neighboring Caroline County.  After Major Doswell died in 1890, his son Bernard inherited a portion of the farm called Hilldene and ran his own small stable there. Bernard’s younger cousin by marriage, Christopher T. Chenery, would walk seven miles from Ashland to Bernard’s farm and exercise his few remaining horses on the old Bullfield track.  Here, Bernard regaled Chris with tales of Bullfield’s glory days, introducing him to a  heady world of gleaming trophies and fine-blooded Thoroughbreds, a world far removed from  the boy’s humble circumstances in Ashland.  Perhaps it is no small coincidence that when Chenery purchased The Meadow in 1936 and began building his foundation bloodlines, he named one of his most prolific mares Hildene.

 And, as everyone knows, The Meadow also produced a great red stallion, one who became Virginia’s and the nation’s “unrivalled racehorse.”  Secretariat, “Big Red,” together with Planet, “the Great Red Fox” of Bullfield  stand as pillars of equine perfection and performance, reminding the world that some of the most magnificent horses of the American turf sprang from Virginia soil.

We will have the honor of attending the Hall of Fame ceremony in Saratoga next Friday with Sarah Wright, the 93-year-old granddaughter of Bernard Doswell and her daughter Cecelia.  Sarah’s meticulous documentation of her family history in her book “The Doswell Dynasty” helped the Secretariat’s Meadow book team offer the nomination of Planet for the Hall of Fame.  You can read more about  Planet, the Doswells and Bullfield in “Secretariat’s Meadow – The Land, The Family, The Legend.”    

by Leeanne Meadows Ladin

co-author of “Secretariat’s Meadow – the Land, the Family, The Legend”

The Secretariat Birthday Party Goes On!

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Some of you may have heard the sad news that The Meadow, which was owned by the State Fair of Virginia, has been closed to the public.  The Fair (a private, not for profit organization) was forced into Chapter 7 bankruptcy on March 8 when the bank did not accept its plan to reorganize. 

This was heart-breaking news for Virginians who grew up going to the Fair and especially for those of us who had enjoyed a long association with its staff.  That association had become even more enjoyable in recent years as we worked together on  the annual Secretariat birthday party, which the Fair hosted at The Meadow,  and the popular  “Secretariat’s Meadow Tours” for public and private groups. We even announced our “Secretariat’s Meadow” book there in 2010.  It was very sad to see our friends lose their jobs.

 Our book team  did not want these circumstances to force the cancellation of the annual Secretariat’s Birthday celebration, planned for Saturday March 31. So we took this on as a volunteer effort  and are happy to say that Randolph-Macon College in nearby Ashland will host the event on March 31 in Andrews Hall from 1 – 5 pm. There are longstanding ties with the college as Christopher Chenery, who founded The Meadow in 1936 as a Thoroughbred farm, attended school there, along with two of his brothers.  Last year, Randolph-Macon awarded Penny Chenery an Honorary Doctor of  Laws degree.

 Yes, the birthday  program is scaled back but we still have fans coming from Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, North Carolina and Delaware!  That speaks volumes about what this magnificent horse means to people across the country!

Here’s a brief outline of the program:

  •  1:00 pm. – Welcome and Presentation on the history of The Meadow,  Secretariat and Riva Ridge by Kate Chenery Tweedy and Leeanne Meadows Ladin, co-authors of “Secretariat’s Meadow, The Land, The Family, The Legend”
  • Meeting former Meadow grooms and jockeys and seeing Riva’s first training saddle
  • Discussion of possible historical designation options for important sites at The Meadow
  • Continuous showing of Secretariat’s and Riva’s most famous races
  • Book signings and sale of Secretariat items
  • Secretariat and Riva cake
  • 3:00 p.m.  – Repeat presentation by authors 
  • 5:00  p.m. – EVENT CONCLUDES

Tickets are $5 at the door and advance registration is required.  Because seating is limited, we ask that you indicate whether you will attend the 1:00 pm or 3:00 pm presentation. Go to our website www.secretariatsmeadow.com for more info and to register.

As for The Meadow, we will keep our readers posted on future developments here, on our website and our Facebook page. 

In any event, we sincerely hope that next year in 2013, we will be back at The Meadow to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Secretariat’s Triple Crown!

by Leeanne Meadows Ladin

co-author of “Secretariat’s Meadow”

copyright 2012

www.secretariatsmeadow.com

Secretariat’s Meadow and Santa…Dashing through the Stores

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The holiday rush began with a flurry of November book signings.  Lots of Secretariat fans are telling Kate and me that they are buying our book as presents for horse lovers and racing followers. We are happy and honored to hear that!

We kicked off the season by signing at the Holiday Shoppers Fair at the Virginia Historical Society.  This is a great event where all the Richmond area museum gift shops come together to offer their wares under one roof.  So we got some shopping done too!

Next we gave a talk to a wonderful audience at the Joseph-Beth Bookseller in Fredericksburg. Kate stayed in town to speak the following night at Mary Washington College.  We teamed up again at the Barnes & Noble in Charlottesville to do a Q&A session and signing with a large and enthusiastic crowd who was very knowledgeable about Big Red and The Meadow.  There are many Charlottesville ties to The Meadow.  Howard Gentry, the indispensable farm manager, came from Ellerslie farm  and we were thrilled that some of his relatives attended our event.

Then we sped down the road (almost as fast as Big Red) to Richmond for another Barnes & Noble signing that afternoon.  Kate flew back to Denver, only to turn around and fly back to Louisville, KY this past weekend for another event with our friends at the beautiful Kentucky Derby Museum.  I returned to The Meadow to sign at the Virginia Christmas Market show.

We have lots more book signings coming up in December, including two big  events in Ashland where Kate’s grandfather, Chris Chenery, the founder of Meadow Stable, grew up.  So check out our updated event section.  We hope to see you as we go dashing through the stores!

I had a little chat with Santa at the Virginia Christmas Market when he came over to get a book. He promised me that he would have plenty of copies of “Secretariat’s Meadow” in his knapsack for the holiday season!

Santa and Leeanne Ladin at the Virginia Christmas Market show