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Mollie McCarty
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Mollie McCarty (often spelled McCarthy) was the undefeated California champion of the 1870s, and the first California-bred to travel east to race, where she was finally bested by the champion east-coast horse, Ten Broeck in a match race held in Kentucky. This famous meeting was immortalized in song (Molly and Ten Broeck; Run, Molly, Run, and others), which has gone through many iterations over the years, and in some instances has become enmeshed in the Skewball/Stewball ballad popularized in the U.S. by blues musician Leadbelly, and later folksingers Peter, Paul and Mary and Joan Baez.
Her sire Monday, by Colton, a lesser son of Lexington, had been brought to California by Adolph Maillard, along with her dam, Hennie Farrow, and (Young) Eclipse, by Orlando. (Young) Eclipse had been purchased in England by Richard Ten Broeck and sent to Maillard's Bordentown, New Jersey, stud, where he had several seasons before journeying west; during that time he got the good racehorse Alarm, the sire of Himyar (a leading sire in 1893), who got Domino. Maillard emigrated to California in 1870, not long after the Union Pacific Railroad was completed in 1869, and established a new thoroughbred nursery in Marin County, north of San Francisco. Monday became one of the leading sires in California in the following decade, with winners such as Joe Hooker (the sire of the great race mare Yo Tambien), Raven, Lottery, Mark Twain, Mark L., Grover Cleveland, and many others, but turf writer Thomas Merry, who saw all these horses and had been involved in the western turf since before the Civil War, said he always felt Mollie McCarty had been gotten by Eclipse.
Mollie's dam, Hennie Farrow (1853) became an exceptional matron in California. In addition to Mollie McCarty, she produced Shannon (1872), the grandsire of Racine, one of the fastest juveniles and great weight carriers of the '80s, winner of eleven consecutive stakes and purses in his first season in California for Leland Stanford's Palo Alto Stock Farm; Racine also won in Chicago at age three, breaking the track record for three year olds over a mile. In another race, Racine beat the fast four-year-old, Marion C., over a mile, conceding weight, and breaking the national mile record (1:39-1/2), which had been set thirteen years earlier by Ten Broeck, the horse that broke Mollie McCarty's unbeaten streak.
In 1877 Hennie Farrow dropped, to the cover of Norfolk, Flood, a good racehorse for Theodore Winters, and later, for Leland Stanford, the sire of Guenn, an excellent runner in California and winner of the Brooklyn Cup in New York, later dam of the good race mare Emma C., the dam of Commando. One of the foals Hennie Farrow dropped in New Jersey was Mayflower (1867, by Eclipse), the dam of Joe Hooker. Hennie Farrow's 1871 daughter Electra (by Eclipse) had several daughters that bred on in tail-female through the end of the twentieth century, including Travers Stakes winner Annihlate'em (1970).
Mollie McCarty, "named for a dashing blonde," was, in her racing days, described as "very bloodlike, highly finished, and full of quality," one of those "hard-muscled, fine-grained" horses that "make up in quality what they lack in substance." She was sold to Theodore Winters, who had a large ranch in Nevada's Washoe Valley and, at the time, one almost as large in Yolo County, California (between San Francisco and Sacramento) where he stood his undefeated son of Lexington, Norfolk.
Mollie won her only start at age two, and went undefeated at age three, winning six races, including two in one day in Sacramento, and a $10,000 purse at San Francisco. At age four she won five races in succession. She started once for Winters at age five, a match race over two miles, conceding 14 pounds to her opponent, Jake, and besting him in straight heats. There were no horses in California left for her to beat. As Mollie gained stature as a racehorse, public discussions in turf journals and private discussions between the principals began to center around matching Mollie, the champion mare of the west, with one of the best 4-mile horses in the east, Ten Broeck, bred and owned by John Harper.
This match of four mile heats for $5,000 each side, the first and last east-west match of its kind, represented the end of an era, that of the long-distance race horse. Already in the east, and to a great extent in the west, the English style of "dash" racing was supplanting the great distance races held in heats. The era of the great "north-south" matches was over, and although there were still impressive local and regional matches over four miles, the shift to shorter, fast races where the winner took all in one dash took precedence as the decade of the 1870s progressed. In fact, the career of Alarm, by Maillard's (Young) Eclipse, was representative of the new style of racing; he won and raced over a mile and a quarter, maximum, in the process setting a new mile record of 1:42-3/4 at Saratoga in 1872. It's no wonder that the first east-west match held in the east (eastern runners, such as Joe Daniels, True Blue, and Katie Pease had traveled west in the mid-70s to compete for very rich purses in San Francisco), and the last of the great national four mile distance races was commemorated in a song.
Mollie's opponent, Ten Broeck (1872) was the embodiment of this shift; he was a champion four-mile horse who had won five of his eight races at age three, and four of his five (beaten by Aristides over 2-1/8 miles at Lexington) at age four, including beating the four mile record set by Fellowcraft in 1874 (previously held by Lexington), by running the distance in 7:15-3/4. At age five he won nine of his ten races, and, like Molly, ran himself out of opponents, and ended that year by racing against time, and in doing so, also set the record for a mile distance at 1:39-3/4, a record that stood for thirteen years. At age six he was beaten by Pierre Lorillard's Parole over 2/-1/2 miles at Pimlico, Maryland in a famous three-way match that included Tom Ochiltree, another good performer, who ran third. Ten Broeck was giving away 9 pounds to Parole. This defeat shocked his supporters, but three days later he came back to win the Bowie Stakes in four-mile heats. In November of that year, he and Parole were both taken to Jerome Park (New York) for a match, but Ten Broeck was withdrawn and Parole walked-over for the win. |
Ten Broeck
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He was a handsome bay horse by imported Phaeton, a son of King Tom; Phaeton had such poor legs that he never raced, but in addition to Ten Broeck, he got King Alfonso (also 1872), a great winner in Kentucky and Tennessee. Ten Broeck's dam, the Lexington daughter Fannie Holton, was out of Nantura, a winner of the important 2 mile Lexington Produce Stakes, and later also the the dam of Longfellow, who was also bred and raced by Harper. After he was retired to stud, Ten Broeck was modestly successful, the sire of Bersan (Travers Stakes), Ten Strike, Free Knight (later sire of Kentucky Derby winner Elwood), Kentucky Oaks winner Ten Penny and Alabama Stakes winner Tolu, and of some good producing daughters. |
The Match
Mollie made the then difficult trip across the Rockies; the rails over the mountains in the west that carried her had been completed less than eight years earlier. The day of the race, July 4, 1878, dawned clear, but the track was slow, due to a heavy shower the previous night, footing Mollie had displayed a disinclination to like. The crowd at the Louisville Jockey Club was the largest seen to that time, with some estimates putting its size at 30,000, an observer reporting that all trains, extra trains, steamboats and inner-city transport jammed to capacity to reach the grounds. Mollie received applause from the crowd when she appeared in her white sheet, but the crowd roared when Ten Broeck stepped onto the track.
They started evenly, and Mollie led for the first mile, "with such a beautiful and apparently easy stroke, and the horse seemingly at labor, but really annoyed at restraint, that a shout went up that she had already beaten him." Mollie led for the second mile, but after the quarter pole Ten Broeck drew ahead, and by the time they had reached 2-1/2 miles he was leading by a length, and at the third mile he was ahead by twenty yards. At 3-1/2 miles Mollie gave up the chase, and Ten Broeck cantered home easily in the slow time of 8:19-3/4. "Such a shout as went up over the triumph of Ten Broeck, and such a scene of wild and extravagant excitement, I never saw before, and never expect to again, outside the impulsive state of Kentucky." It was Mollie's first defeat, in fact, her first defeat in any heat at any distance. This race was Ten Broeck's last.
Mollie went on, in the ownership of E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin, to run the Minneapolis Cup, in which she ran second. Baldwin was a long-time associate of Winters' -- both had made much of their money in the silver mines of California, and Baldwin, in addition to importing expensive stallions and purchasing the best sons and daughters he could find of leading American sires in the east, would purchase a number of Winters' young horses to race, including the great Emperor of Norfolk. Baldwin's great ranch, Rancho Santa Anita, was located in Southern California, where the present-day Santa Anita racecourse is located.
At age six Mollie won Chicago's Garden City Cup, and, back in California, a purse race in San Francisco. She had won 15 of her 17 races, and was retired to Rancho Santa Anita. She produced three foals in succession to Baldwin's home stallions, between 1881 and 1883. She died on March 15, 1883, soon after dropping her filly by Rutherford, which was poignantly, or perhaps matter-of-factly, named Mollie's Last.
Her first foal was the brown 1881 filly, Fallen Leaf, by Grinstead, a winner of races between one and four miles in the east and in California, including the Glidelia Stakes at Latonia and the Illinois Oaks at Chicago, and second in the Latonia Derby to Audrain. Grinstead was a son of Gilroy, a full brother to the champion Kentucky (the latter's sole defeat was by Winters' Norfolk). Grinstead was an influential stallion in California, and a good sire of broodmares; he got Baldwin's first two American Derby winners, Volante and Silver Cloud, and other high-class runners. Fallen Leaf's female descendants remained in the Rancho Santa Anita stud, producing minor winners, for several generations, and several branches in tail-female produced long-running hard-knocking winners, such as California Ada (13 wins in 103 starts, dam of six winners none running less than 38 times). A distant male descendant became a remount stallion in Arkansas in the 1930s, and another was a juvenile stakes winner in Florida.
Mollie's second foal, the colt Brandy-Wine, was by Lexingtor, one of Lexington's last offspring Baldwin had bought sight-unseen as a weanling; although Lexingtor won or placed in six of his seven starts, he was a very minor winner, and a "...pony-built, mongrel-looking, chuckle-headed freak," to boot. Perhaps Baldwin was looking to Mollie to improve him as a stallion, because he certainly had access to much better animals, his own and those of others, whose quality might have equaled that of Mollie's. Her third foal, Mollie's Last, was by Rutherford, son of the leading U.S. sire Australian, and brother to Spendthrift; Mollie's Last was a stakes winner in California, and ran third in the Jerome Handicap in New York in 1896, but did not breed on.
For lyrics to songs that have given Mollie a kind of immortality-- Ten Broeck has fared less well, with some name changing-- see this page.
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