This was a correct type of the pedigrees of that time, lacking date, location, breeder and all other things necessary to trace and determine its value. The horse had certainly trotted in 2:31, and he had trotted two miles to wagon in 5:09½, and to this evidence of his trotting ability it was claimed that he had run and won many races at all distances. This was such a combination of abilities as I never had heard of before, and in attempting to solve the riddle I became deeply interested. The search then instituted has been kept up ever since, and I must say that after all these years I know absolutely nothing about the breeding of this horse. His first known owner was a petty gambler and general outlaw in the neighborhood of Portsmouth, Ohio, and the story he told will be found in Wallace’s Monthly, Vol. I., p. 53, and Vol. VII., p. 597, besides other references. The search has been so barren that I have not even the shadow of a theory as to what his blood may have been. He got two or three trotters and one or two pacers, I think, and here we have to leave him as the most completely unknown horse in all my experience.

George Wilkes.—It is a grievous misfortune that the pedigree of this great progenitor should be in doubt. The misfortune is not in the fact that his descendants lose the supposed Clay cross in his dam, for that was not of very great value, but in the fact that we should not know just what belongs in its place. In December, 1877, I had the good fortune to meet with Mr. Harry Felter and Mr. William L. Simmons at a breeders’ banquet, and it was not long until we were in conversation about the blood of the dam of George Wilkes. I knew that the breeding of that horse had never been established, but I was greatly surprised that these two gentlemen—one the breeder and the other the owner of Wilkes—had never made any effort to trace and establish so important a fact. Mr. Felter stated that he had bought the mare from Mr. W. A. Delevan, and that Mr. Delevan had bought her from Mr. Joseph S. Lewis, of Geneva, New York. Thereupon I wrote to Mr. Lewis and the following is his response:

The receipt of this letter, so straightforward and clean-cut in its statements, developed a mystery that was incomprehensible to me. Dates, names, places, circumstances, all stand out as evidences of the truth of the representations, and also as evidences that Mr. Lewis had fully investigated the matter, and given the results of his investigations to his friends in this city; still, those friends had never heard the facts, or had entirely forgotten them. As there was a strong prejudice against Clay blood in certain quarters, it occurred to me that possibly that cross had been left in abeyance so long that it really had been forgotten. This did not clear up the mystery, however, and I determined to have the whole matter investigated from a different starting point. I submitted the matter to Mr. John P. Ray, a very capable and very honest man, and he kindly and without reward undertook the investigation. The Philips family lived in the vicinity of Bristol, and the first of the family met by Mr. Ray was Mr. E. V. Philips, nephew and adopted son of Joshua Philips (not Josiah, as Mr. Lewis had it), and he enumerated several head of Clays that had been owned by his uncle Joshua, among them a mare that was bred by Mr. Clark Philips, bought of him when a yearling by E. V. Philips, sold as a four-year-old to his uncle Joshua, and by him the next year to “some man from the eastern part of the country.” He next met Mr. Clark Philips, who fully confirmed E. V. Philips about the Clay filly already referred to and said she was got when old Henry Clay was owned by Kent and Bailey of Bristol, and that her dam was “Old Telegraph” by Highlander, etc. In his original report to me of his investigation Mr. Ray uses the following language:

Now, as between the original and voluntary statement of Captain Lewis and the investigation carried through by Mr. Ray, there is no conflict and all is smooth sailing, and upon the information derived from these two sources the pedigree of George Wilkes was decided as established by the Board of Censors. But more recent discoveries made by Mr. Ray, in which I have no doubt he is thoroughly conscientious and possibly thoroughly right, have raised a conflict that is irrepressible, for dates are involved and insisted upon that make the pedigree impossible. In his original statement Mr. Ray says that Henry Clay made the season of 1846 at Bristol, “when he became the property of Kent & Bailey. He was kept in that town for some years.” Up to this point there is no contradiction and no impossibility; Ray agrees with Lewis and Lewis agrees with Ray. But in the past two or three years Mr. Ray believes he has secured additional information, and this places Captain Lewis in a very unenviable position. The whole point of Clark Philips’ evidence is that he bred his mare “Old Telegraph” to Henry Clay when that horse was owned by Bailey Brothers, of Bristol, and I suppose they were the successors of Kent & Bailey of an earlier date. Now, as Mr. Ray told us in his first investigation that Henry Clay passed into the hands of Kent & Bailey in 1847, and as he tells us later that he did not pass into their hands till nine or ten years after that date and then fails to fix the precise year, it must be conceded by all that his information is not wholly satisfactory. Recollections may be ever so honest, but they are of various degrees of reliability. The best and final evidence is the service book of the horse. My best judgment of the whole matter is that Mr. Ray’s later information is probably correct, but until all doubt is removed by the production of some contemporaneous record covering the case there must remain an element of uncertainty attaching to the pedigree.