#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 28 Multiple: The Marrying-est Man in Mercer County

My sons' 3X great-grandfather, Elijah Preston Meadows nicknamed "Lige," was noted in his lifetime for holding the record in Mercer County WV for the most marriages--five (although technically he was actually married in Raleigh County, next door to Mercer.)

The much-married Elijah Preston Meadows was the son of Richard Meadows and

 Mary Moye, born in 1852 in Wyoming County WV.  He spent his life farming in the Slab Fork District of neighboring Raleigh County WV. Slab Fork, so named because it is on the Slab Fork of the Guyandotte River in Southwest West Virginia, became a coal-mining town in 1907, and the Slab Fork Coal Mining Company operated there until 1983.  In its heyday, Slab Fork produced more than 400,000 tons of coal per year.

Somewhat ironically, Wikipedia's description of Slab Fork today (population 202) says that the community's percentage of married households is lower than the national average.  Lige certainly did his part to raise the average.

Lige's first (and longest) venture into the bonds of matrimony was in 1875 when he married his cousin, Jemima (Mima) Meadows, the daughter of Elijah Meadows and Naomi Cox.  Elijah and Mima had eight children:
William 1876
Elijah Richardson 1878
Netah Mahala 1880 (my sons' 2X great-grandmother)
James Albert 1882
George Washington 1884
Mary 1887
Thomas Stealbert 1889
Henry Everest 1891

Elijah and Mima divorced about 1895 and each of them moved on to another marriage.

Lige's second matrimonial venture was with 16-year-old Nancy Clementine Tilley in 1896. Nancy, born in Tennessee, died in Slab Fork in 1900.  She and Elijah had no children.

Lige's 3rd marriage occurred in 1901.  (He did, after all, still have quite a few children at home.)
He married 49-year-old divorcee, Martha Jane Farley Sneed, the mother of ten Sneed children with her previous husband, Wiley Everett Sneed (who promptly remarried).  I'm not sure how many of the Sneed children moved to the Meadows farm with their mother, but it must  have been quite a houseful. Elijah and Martha's marriage ended four years later with Martha's death in 1905.  Elijah and Martha had no children together.

Byre Mills

Lige married for the fourth time in 1906 to the 31-year-old widow Byre Mills Mitcham, who was the mother of five children with her first husband, Dennis Mitcham.  Byre and Elijah had two sons: Admiral Dewey Meadows in 1907 and Norman Alderson Meadows in 1912.

Sadly, Byre died on Christmas Eve 1912, when her youngest son was only a few months old.  She apparently had a heart attack on her way back from milking the cows.  

The 60-year-old Lige married for the fifth and final time in 1913 to the 44-year-old widow of Jarrett Mann, Virginia Bowles Mann.  She was the mother of five children with her first husband, but did not have any children with Elijah.  It was this marriage that earned him the marriage record. She outlived Elijah, dying in 1955 in Mercer County WV

Elijah Preston Meadows died in 1929 at the age of 76.  He is buried in the John Mills Cemetery in Egeria. 

Among Elijah and his five wives, they racked up a total of nine marriages. 

I feel I should add here while I am discussing the theme of multiples, that although Lige may have the most marriages, his career was perhaps not the strangest matrimonial saga in the family.  His first father-in-law, also named Elijah Meadows (my sons' 4X great-grandfather), was married four times, including twice to the same woman.  He married Naomi Cox in 1857, had 13 children with her, divorced her, remarried, and then married Naomi again in 1898.  I'm sure there is an interesting story there, and I wish I knew it.

#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 23 Wedding: Three Generations of Southern Maryland Weddings

Most of the time, any family historian would count herself lucky to have found a wedding photo of her grandparents.  And I am fortunate to have a charming wedding photo of my maternal grandparents, Paul Francis Summers and Theresa Evalina Sasscer from 1924.  In addition, thanks to my grandmother's tendency to collect clippings, I also have the detailed account of the wedding from the local paper. And further, I also have the photo and newspaper account of the wedding of my great-grandparents, Thomas Reverdy Sasscer and Theresa Evalina Wallis in 1894. (Yes, she was a collector too.)  And, of course, I have the photo and newspaper description of my own parents' wedding in 1947, Frank Philip Scrivener and Anne Theresa Summers.  (At least I know I came by that hoarding gene honestly.)

So, since I have these treasures, I thought it would be interesting to compare the three Southern Maryland weddings and look at how things changed, or didn't over the course of the 50 years that separated these nuptials.

Theresa Evalina Wallis (Eva) was 20 years old when she married Rev Sasscer,  a Prince George's County tobacco farmer who was 23 years her senior. Eva had come to Prince George's County from Kent County on the Eastern Shore to teach in the one-room school house located on the Sasscer property.  She boarded with Mr. Sasscer and his sister and soon the wedding bells were ringing.

The Wallis-Sasscer wedding took place at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Chestertown, Kent County, the bride's home town on November 14, 1894. The bride wore a handsome gown of "tan henrietta cloth ( a type of fine wool) with gloves and hat to match." She was escorted to the altar by her brother, Francis Wallis, and two other brothers were mentioned as ushers.

The church, according to the newspaper, was beautifully decorated, the altars banked with white and yellow chrysanthemums and the chandeliers festooned with trailing vines.  "Numerous candles shed a mellow light over the scene."

Music for the service included both Mendelsohn's and Lohengrin's Wedding Marches, as well as  Ave Maria, Veni Jesu, and God Be Praised in All His Works, sung in solos and choruses.

After the ceremony, the bridal couple were given a marriage breakfast by Rev. George Ott, the officiating minister.

The bride's parents--Francis Adolphus Wallis and Georgiana Willson--signed the marriage certificate as witnesses.

My grandparents' wedding took place at St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church in Upper Marlboro, Prince George's County, on the 26th of April 1924. (As an aside, my paternal grandparents, Frank Scrivener and Elizabeth Dent, were married in the same church just a few weeks later.)  Paul and Evalina had attended school together at Baden Agricultural High School and also attended the same church, St. Mary's. Paul Summers (28) had served in the US Navy during WWI and then returned to the family farm.  Evalina (25) had worked for the War Department in Washington DC and then taught school before her marriage.

The bridge wore a gown of ivory Canton crepe draped with Venetian lace and a tulle veil held in place by a bandeau of orange blossoms. Her sister, Eunice Sasscer Turner, was her matron of honor, wearing pale blue satin duchesse with a white picture hat.  The flower girl was Paul's niece, Dorothy Perrie in a shell pink frock. Since her father had died several years earlier, Evalina was escorted to the altar by her brother, Francis Wallis Sasscer. The groom's best man was his brother Joseph M. Summers.

Jerome Summers (Paul's brother), Clarence Sasscer (Evalina's brother), Charles Turner (Evalina's brother-in-law), and Francis Summers (cousin) were the ushers.

There was music, of course, but the specific musical selections were not named in the account.  The paper did identify the organist, Georgia Wilson, a cousin of the bride and two soloists, Josephine O'Connor and Nellie Ronan.

A wedding breakfast at the home of the bride followed the ceremony.  The paper includes a long list of the guests, a virtual catalog of the siblings and cousins of the bridal couple. The paper noted in particular "the presence of a charming group of children who were nieces and nephews, added another attractive feature to the interesting wedding."

The couple took a "northern trip" (Baltimore, perhaps?) before returning home to settle in at the home of Evalina's mother, Eva Sasscer.

My parents, Frank Scrivener and Anne Summers, were married at the same church, St. Mary's in Upper Marlboro on August 2, 1947.  Frank, 22, had just returned from service in Europe during WWII and was a student at Loyola College in Baltimore.  Anne, also 22, had graduated from George Washington University and was working for the federal government in Washington DC. They had met as youngsters when Frank came down to Upper Marlboro to stay with his Scrivener grandparents.

Their wedding was described by the Marlboro Gazette as "one of the outstanding weddings of Southern Maryland this year."

In addition to the pastor, Fr. McLaughlin, Monsignor Andrew Gwynn of South Carolina, Dad's great-uncle, also officiated at the ceremony.  There were more than 600 guests at the church.

The bride, who was given in marriage by her father, Paul Summers, wore a white gown with a lace bodice and white chiffon skirt with lace panels.  Her fingertip veil was held in place by a lace headdress.  She carried American Beauty Roses.

Wedding music was furnished by Mrs. Roland Ripple, Fred Wyville, Mrs. Arthur Gilman and Olivia Raphel (who was soon to marry Frank's brother Keene).

Evalina Summers was her sister's maid of honor and the other attendants were cousins Brooke Stiefel and Effie Melchior, sister-in-law, Carmelite Scrivener, and friend Jeanne Sauerwein. The attendants wore  frocks in a rainbow of silky faille with matching picture hats. Mary Brooke Kelly was the flower girl and the bride's brother, eight-year old Robert Summers, was the ring-bearer.

Jack Scrivener was his brother's best man, and Paul Summers Jr. (Anne's brother), Jack Fish, Jerry Laroque, and Tom Ostendorf (college buddies and tennis partners of Frank) served as the ushers.

 The reception was held at Maplehurst, the Summers farm, where the large outdoor area could accommodate the hundreds of guests (and the scene of many future weddings, some of which I can remember attending as my mother's younger sisters married.)

The couple left on a "Northern Honeymoon." (As my mother tells this story, Dad planned to take her to a resort where there was a tennis tournament he wanted to play in.  But that is a story for another time.) On returning, they planned to live in Baltimore.

So, here we have three Southern Maryland wedding stories.  All the couples were Catholic and married in a Catholic Church.  The weddings seem to get progressively more elaborate.  Great-grandmother got a nice new dress that she could wear many times after the wedding, while her daughter and granddaughter had specific wedding dresses that probably were not worn again. (Do you notice that none of the wedding articles bother to comment on what the groom was wearing? That didn't change in 50 years.)

On the matter of attendants, all of the wedding parties emphasized family.  Great-grandmother had no female attendants, just ushers, all family members.  Grandmother had a matron of honor and a flower girl as well as ushers, again all family members.  Mother had a full panoply of attendants, male and female including friends as well as family members. 

The celebrations progressed from a simple wedding breakfast at the rectory to a more elaborate breakfast at the bride's home, to a huge celebration with a catered dinner for hundreds of guests.  

What strikes me as the unifying note of all these ceremonies, though, is the degree to which they were family celebrations. The families went all in to start these new couples off in the right spirit.

What do you notice?

#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 40 Oldest: Mathieu Agee, Oldest Agee Ancestor in America

Mathieu Agee, the 7X-great grandfather of my sons, was the founder of the Agee family in America.

Mathieu Agee, the son of Antoine/Anthony Agee and Judith Chastain, was born about 1670 in Nantes, in the Loire Valley of France. He was of the noble Des Age family.

In order to understand Mathieu's move to America, we need a little background.

The Agees were Huguenots, a Protestant sect following the teachings of John Calvin that began

in France about 1550 when preachers brought Bibles from Switzerland to France. The Huguenots believed that they did not need the intercession of a church hierarchy in order to achieve salvation and that they could interpret Scripture on their own.  They saw themselves as enemies of the follies of this world, trying to live modestly and eschewing public festivities. 

By 1562 there were 2 million Huguenots in France. Both the dominant Catholic church and the French monarchy feared this movement, and civil war raged over the years culminating in the horrific St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris in 1572 when thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered. The Religious Wars continued for decades until, in 1598, the French king issued the Edict of Nantes which promised religious freedom. But over the years, more and more freedoms were stripped from the Huguenots and more and more pressure was put on them to convert to Catholicism.  Their churches were destroyed, and they were not allowed to bring cases in the civil courts. Many Huguenots were killed as heretics.

As early as the 1620's, Huguenots began to leave the country, some ending up in America. (In fact, George Washington and Paul Revere are both descendants of Huguenots.) But the largest exodus came when King Louis XIV repealed the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and more than 400,000 Huguenots fled the country. The flight of the Huguenots dealt a double blow.  The hardworking Huguenots were among the most prosperous citizens of France, masters of the crafts in which France excelled.  When they fled, they took their skills with them and taught France's enemies techniques of weaving, lace-making, and silk-work that had once been the exclusive possession of the French.  In addition, many Huguenots enlisted in the English, Dutch and German armies to fight against France.  Some historians attribute France's decline in world power to the flight of the Huguenots.

William of Orange

So, among those who fled was young nobleman Mathieu Agee.  In 1688, he fled to Holland, where he joined up with the staunch Calvinist,
William of Orange. In what has been called "The Glorious Revolution," William and his troops went to England where they defeated the Catholic King James, who was incidentally William's uncle as well as his father-in-law.  William then assumed the crown of England, ruling jointly with his wife Mary. In recognition of the Huguenots' aid to his cause, William offered free passage to the New World and land grants.  A large number of the French refugees, including Mathieu, took advantage of this offer.  

Mathieu arrived in Virginia about 1690, received land grants west of Richmond and built a plantation about seven miles from the town of Manakin where a large group of Huguenots later settled.

In 1714, Mathieu married fellow Huguenot refugee, Ann Godwin (or Gandovin).  They had four children: Anthony, Isaac, James, and Judith.  James and Anthony each had twelve children, known as "The 24."  From them descend all of the Agees in America.  My sons are descendants of Anthony and his wife Mary Jane Binnion.

In Manakin, the Huguenots established King William Parish, named for their patron.  Mathieu and his family were communicants in that parish and a plaque there commemorates him.

Mathieu Agee died about 1761 in Buckingham County VA.

The Huguenot Cross: The Cross consists of an open four-petal Lily of France, and the petals thereby form a Maltese Cross. The four petals signify the Four Gospels. Each arm or petal, at the periphery, has two rounded points at the corners. These points are regarded as signifying the Eight Beatitudes. The four petals are joined together by four fleur-de-lis signifying the Mother Country of France, each of which bears a rounded point distally. The twelve rounded points described in the four petals and the four fleur-de-lis signify the Twelve Apostles. There is formed between each fleur-de-lis and the arms of the two petals with which it is joined, an open space taking the shape of a heart which suggests the seal of the great French Reformer, John Calvin. Suspended from the lower central petal by a ring of Gold is a pendant dove signifying the Church under the Cross. In times of persecution, a teardrop supplanted the dove.

#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 22 Uncertain: The Elusive Miss Crompton

John Weems, my 7X great-uncle, was the youngest son of James Weems and Sarah Parker of Calvert County MD.  Born in 1737, John married four times and died in Louisville KY in 1813.

John's 2nd, 3rd, and 4th marriages to Elizabeth Miller, Alice Lee, and Mary Swan, respectively, are fairly well documented.  His first marriage, however, raised a big mystery.

In 1854, John's son--John Crompton Weems--wrote a long letter laying out his knowledge of the family history, the kind of letter every genealogist prays for. Here's what he says about his father and mother:

My grandfather’s youngest son, my father, John Weems, married a Miss Crompton of Calvert County, my grandfather James Weems, having married her mother Mrs. Crompton, as his 4^th wife.  The children, my father and mother being both quite young were brought up to call each other brother and sister and after their marriage built and settled at Weems Forest in Calvert County and had very large family.

Christ Church, Calvert County MD

Wait, what!  He married a Miss Crompton.  OK.  That's a good clue.  In 1746, James Weems married as his second wife, Mary Skinner. (Note that John C. had that part backwards.  It was Mary's fourth husband, not James' fourth wife.) Mary, being already a widow three times over, brought into her fourth marriage a whole passel of children, including three daughters of her third husband, Thomas Crompton: Ann, Mary, and Catherine shown in the register of Christ Church Parish in Calvert County MD.  These three girls would have been under the age of 10 when they moved into the Weems household, close in age to John Weems.  As the letter above notes, the girls were brought up in a large family with a number of step-brothers and sisters.

In any case, John Weems and Miss Crompton were married sometime before 1760, when their first son James Weems was born (approximately, no birth record).  They had four more children: Mary (ca. 1765), Sarah Margaret (ca. 1766), William Loch (1772), and John Crompton, above, (1777, the only one with a definite birth date). Miss Crompton died sometime before 1784, when John married his second wife, Elizabeth Miller in Philadelphia. 

So, the question is, which Miss Crompton did John Weems marry? You would think that John Crompton Weems might have thought to mention this detail somewhere in the letter, but he does not, leaving the family historian to search out other clues.

Unfortunately, I was never able to find those clues. Other than their birth records in Christ Church Parish, those three Crompton girls seemed to leave to no trace. No marriages, no wills. No mention in their parents' estates as far as I could find. Mrs. _____ Crompton  Weems was not mentioned in her husband's will or estate records.  She did not have a convenient tombstone with her name on it.  None of her other children left letters with her name in them.

Now John Weems served in the Maryland Legislature right before the Revolutionary War, which means that he is included in that exemplary Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature.  But even the excellent researchers at the Maryland State Archives failed to come up with the name of his first wife. The best they could do was: possibly Ann Crompton.  No word on why they chose to go with Ann instead of the other two sisters.

John Crompton Weems served in the US House of Representatives, but his official biography is also silent on the question of his mother's name.

Naturally, I researched the heck out of those five Crompton-Weems children, hoping to find that one of them had mentioned their mother's name.  Nada.

• James was a surgeon serving in the Revolutionary War.  He died at sea.  No children.
• Mary married the well-known theologian, Rev. Charles Henry Wharton.  She died childless in Philadelphia PA. (Possibly named for Miss Crompton's mother, Mary Skinner.)
• Sarah Margaret married Phillip Thomas of Cecil County and had 13 children with him.  She did name her oldest daughter Catherine.
• William Loch married Mary Kinsey, daughter of Judge Kinsey of NJ.  They had four children. Only daughter named Catherine.
• John Crompton married Elizabeth Webster.  They had ten children, youngest daughter named Catherine Crompton Weems.

Still no explicit evidence for Miss Crompton's name.  So, in desperation, I went through and counted up all the Catherines among the descendants and decided to go with Catherine Crompton since that name showed up more than any of the others. Best guess. 

And there my research stood for many years.

Until one day I was busy adding tombstone pictures to my research and lo and behold I came across the tombstone of Mary Weems Wharton in St. Peter's Churchyard in Philadelphia. 

There it was, written in the tombstone inscription:

To the Memory of
MRS. MARY COMPTON WHARTON
the beloved Wife of the Rev'd
Charles H. Wharton, D.D.
This monument was erected by her most
affectionate and disconsolate Husband.
She was the daughter of John Weems, Esq.,
And Catharine, his Wife, of Calvert County,
in the State of Maryland.
She died in this City, June 2d A.D. 1798
Aged 37 years
and was buried in this place.
Blush not, recording Marble, to proclaim
What e'ver was mortal, of a spotless name
Here lies entomb'd; th' immortal spark above
Glows, unextinguishe'd, in the realms of love,
And in new worlds enjoys th' enraptured bliss
That crowns the virtues of the just in this.
And just she was, if e'er imperfect Man
By Heaven's kind aid accomplished Heaven's plan,
Each human virtue triumphed in her soul,
While Faith's ennobling signet stamp'd the whole.
Yes, Mary, such thou wast, and O! may I!
Like thee, live humbl'd, and as blameless die.

God bless you Rev. Wharton for adding that little detail and solving that genealogical puzzle for me.

#52 Ancestors 2020 Week 24 Handed Down: My Cousins and the Maryland Horse Racing Tradition

My cousins, Samuel Ogle and Benjamin Tasker,  were instrumental in developing Maryland's tradition of Thoroughbred horse racing.

Samuel Ogle, the son of Samuel and Elizabeth Ogle, was born in England about 1694.  He was appointed as Maryland's Royal Governor in 1731. In 1741, he married Anne Tasker and had five children: Anne, Mary, Samuel, Benjamin, and Meliora.

Samuel's brother-in-law, Benjamin Tasker Jr., the son of Benjamin Sr. and Anne Bladen, was born in Annapolis in 1721.  He never married, but at the death of Governor Ogle in 1752, Tasker took on the care of his son and heir, Benjamin Ogle (later Governor himself). In 1743, Tasker built Belair Mansion for Ogle on a 7000 acre plantation in what is now Bowie MD.  There Ogle established the Belair Stud, a stable of Thoroughbred horses that would continue for more than 200 years, one of only two stables to have produced two Triple Crown winners: Gallant Fox (1930) and Omaha (1935).

Horse racing in the New World dates as far back as 1665, when New York's royal governor plotted a race track on Long Island.  Until the 1720's, racing was often a match between two wealthy country gentlemen, each convinced they had the faster horse. The men frequently rode their own horses, grabbing and punching at each other as they hurtled down a narrow path surrounded by fans trading bets.

In wealthy Annapolis, where the citizens were often said to be more British than the British, racing evolved into something a little less bawdy. There, in the early 1700's, the highlight of the social season was a week of parties and plays organized around a racing meet. 

The Maryland Jockey Club, the oldest chartered sporting club in North America, was founded in Annapolis in 1743, the same year that it held the first recorded formal horse race in Maryland.  Governor Ogle is credited with introducing the sport of Thoroughbred racing to America. The silver Annapolis Subscription Plate, second oldest trophy in America, was awarded to the winner.  George Washington frequently attended the Maryland Jockey Club racing meets.

The prestige and money associated with racing inspired the gentlemen to try to breed faster horses.  British soldiers had long told stories of the fabulous horses they had seen in the middle east.  So Arabian sires were imported into England and led to the development of a new breed--the Thoroughbred.  Soon these leaner, faster horses were imported to America, but of course only the wealthiest men could afford to pay for the grueling three-month trip across the rough Atlantic. Samuel Ogle, the royal governor of Maryland, and his brother-in-law, Benjamin Tasker, were two of the first to import thoroughbreds. Ogle imported "Queen Mab" the famous English brood mare, and "Spark" a blooded stallion originally owned by Frederick, Prince of Wales and given to Ogle by Lord Baltimore.  (Among his other livestock at Belair,  Ogle kept a buffalo.) 

The Godolphin Arabian

Now, Tasker's Thoroughbred was a mare named Selima; her sire was the Godolphin Arabian, one of the three Middle Eastern horses that had started the Thoroughbred breed. (Many of America's most famous horses--Sea Biscuit, Man o' War--trace their lineage back to the Godolphin Arabian.) Selima was born in England in 1745 and shipped to Maryland in 1750. Her most famous race was in 1752.

  

William Byrd III, son of William Byrd of Westover (founder of Richmond), and member of the Virginia House of  Burgesses, was a notorious gambler.  He would bet on practically anything.  In 1752, he was dying to show off his new horse and score a big gambling win; plus, running a horse in a big race would be another way to emphasize his prominence.  He put up 500 pistoles (Spanish trading currency, a fortune big enough to furnish a sizeable mansion) for any horse to race against his horse Tryal.   His flamboyant challenge resulted in the first significant Thoroughbred race in America, what some historians have called "the most important race of the colonial era." 

 John Tayloe, another wealthy Virginian put up 1000 pistoles and entered two of his Thoroughbreds.  Another Virginian, Francis Thornton, entered his mare, and Benjamin Tasker sent word from Maryland that he would race his mare Selima. And thus was set up an epic five-horse, four-mile contest worth 2500 pistoles, at a time when a winning horse usually won about 30 pistoles.

Belair

Tasker's decision to enter Selima aroused regional passions as Maryland's owners and breeders believed their racing was vastly superior to Virginia's.  So Selima's race took on great symbolic value. Selima had been trained at Belair for two years, had already won her first race, and at seven years old was in her prime racing form. She was described by one racing historian as "one of those majestic matriarchs whose greatness is monumental."

Even after walking 150 miles to the race in Virginia, Selima bested Byrd's horse and of course won a great victory for the honor of Maryland racing. There is no record of her winning time, but other winning horses of the era covered four miles in about eight minutes. 

The Virginians were outraged and banned Maryland horses from racing in Virginia henceforth. Maryland breeders got around that by taking their pregnant mares to Virginia to deliver, thus making their offspring technically Virginia-born.

Selima retired after that race with a perfect two-for-two record.  As a broodmare, she produced ten sons and daughters, nine of whom were spectacular racers. Her most famous son was Selim, a temperamental bay foaled at Belair in 1759.  Sold as a yearling to Samuel Galloway, proprietor of the Tulip Hill estate in Galesville, Anne Arundel County (and another cousin of mine), Selim began competing at age 4 and never lost until he was 9, continuing with very few defeats until retiring at age 13. In his greatest victory, a virtual replay of his dam's finest moment, he defeated a Virginia-bred horse in 1766 when the local gentry raised 100 pistoles to lure "the two most famous horses on this continent" into a race.

Benjamin Tasker went on to be Mayor of Annapolis in 1754 and was friends with Benjamin Franklin, who visited him at Belair. Tasker died at Belair in 1760.  His nephew Benjamin Ogle went on to be Maryland's governor from 1798 to 1801.

William Byrd, by the way, continued to breed Thoroughbreds but never participated in another major race.  He died by suicide, deeply in debt, in 1777 at the age of 48.

My family's interest in horse racing was evident even in the 20th century as my uncle Robert Summers was instrumental in the return of Thoroughbred racing to the Marlboro Race Track  He was the owner of Maplehurst Farms, a Prince George's County MD stable and president of the Marlboro Hunt Club at the time of his death in 1991.