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Remembering Peter Green
Remembering Aiken’s Horsemen Peter Green: Champion Trainer
By Pam Gleason
Charles Peter Green was born in March 1883, one of five children in Mack and Sarah Green’s family. They were African Americans, and although Sarah (Scott) Green was born in 1867, after the Civil War, Mack, who was born in 1848, was most likely enslaved during the
Above: Peter Green with Louise Hitchcock, Celestine and her unruly pony. Right: with a young Thoroughbred.
first decades of his life. In 1888, the Green family moved from the surrounding countryside to a home on Fourth Avenue in Aiken, which put them in close contact with members of Aiken’s Winter Colony. There, Peter attracted the attention of the Hitchcock family and started working for them when he was just 11. Beginning as a groom, he eventually became Thomas Hitchcock’ right hand man and then the trainer of record for his champion steeplechase horses. During an era when Black trainers were a decided anomaly on the steeplechasing circuit, Green was honored many times as the top moneywinning trainer in the country. He trained horses for Hitchcock until Hitchcock’s death in 1941, and then went on to work for William Post & Son’s racing stable before he retired in his 80s. The neighborhood where the Green family lived, near Coker Spring on the edge of the Hitchcock Woods, was populated by other Black families. At that time Coker Spring was an important source of water for people in the city, many of whom used to travel there to fill up jugs that they would take home. Various members of the community turned the water source into a business. For instance, in a 1979 interview, Peter’s younger sister Malinda White remembered an old man who would deliver Coker Spring water to people in the city for 10 cents a barrel. As a young boy, Peter also made Coker Spring water into a business. As a child of 10 or 11, he used to polish up glasses, fill them with water and offer drinks to Winter Colony riders as they came in or out of the woods. This entrepreneurial spirit attracted the attention of Louise (known as Lulie) and Thomas Hitchcock, the main founders of Aiken’s Winter Colony. The Hitchcocks’ home, Mon Repos, was just up the street and it was not long before the young couple hired Peter to come work for them. He was just 11 and had only a second grade education, but he was smart and athletic and had an admirable work ethic. His first job was to ride a pony that the Hitchcocks had purchased for their first child, Celestine. The pony was cute but rambunctious, way too much for Celestine who was just a toddler at the time. Peter was instructed to ride the pony for two hours every morning to calm him down. “Yes, it seemed like a mighty easy job at first,” he told the Aiken Standard in a 1971 interview. “But it began to get tiresome after a while.” Next, when Celestine could ride a little, his duty was to accompany her on the hunts, stay with her and take care of her if the field started moving too fast. Peter was soon helping to break steeplechase horses for Thomas Hitchcock who maintained a stable of young prospects at Cedar Creek Farm, a sprawling plantation outside of town. Working as a groom, he accompanied the Hitchcocks north in the winter, living at their estate, Broad Hollow in Westbury, New York, on Long Island. Soon, one of his brothers, Jamesy, and his sister Malinda were also part of the Hitchcock household in New York. Jamesy worked in the stables while Malinda was listed as a domestic on U.S. Census records. The Green and Hitchcock families seem to have been quite close. When the Hitchcocks were in Aiken, Lulie is said to have visited Peter’s mother Sarah
Peter Green with Thomas Hitchcok and steeplechasers on the Ridge Mile Track, 1934. frequently, though it is hard to know if they were truly friends since their circumstances were so different and their relationship was obviously unequal. On the other hand, they were exactly the same age and they were very near neighbors. “From what I can understand, the people let their children go away with the tourists,” remembered Peter’s wife Rosa in a 1979 interview. “Everybody getting to go away was great,” she continued, explaining that this gave them a better chance to get an education and to have good jobs in the future. Rosa was speaking from experience: she graduated from Paine College in Augusta and then became a school teacher, working at Mt. Figuration School on Old Storm Branch Road, as well as at the Fermata School and Aiken Prep. Rosa had married Peter in 1930, when he was in his 40s. He had been married before to a woman named Mittie, but she had died, leaving him a widower. Rosa was also from Aiken, but she met Peter in New York when she, too, went to work for the Hitchcocks as a young woman. By the early 1920s, Peter no longer lived at the Hitchcock estate but owned his own home on Nassau Street in Westbury. During the racing season, he traveled with the Hitchcock stable to all the major meets in the country, including Saratoga and Pimlico. Rosa stayed in Aiken to work during the winter months and joined her husband up North in May after the school year was over. Peter worked as a groom, an exercise rider and a jockey before transitioning to the role of trainer. Although his name was on the official papers, he always worked in concert with Thomas Hitchcock, who was listed as owner. Together the two men developed some of the top steeplechase horses in the country. Thomas Hitchcock did not like to buy high dollar yearlings, preferring a particular type of less expensive animal that he imported from England. Under Green’s care and following Hitchcock’s training philosophy, these horses blossomed, and for decades Green was at or near the top of the country’s trainer standings. Although Black people had often been the best flat and jump trainers as well as jockeys in the 19th and very early 20th century, by the 1920s and 1930s, Peter Green may have been the only Black trainer left on the circuit. When reporting that he had once again been named the top trainer in the country, the newspapers sometimes alluded to this by naming him and then, adding in parentheses “colored.” Growing up immersed in the steeplechase world, Green was horseman through and through who had a deep understanding of horses as well as a sympathy for them. He was known for caring about each horse very deeply, and he was particularly upset when he saw a horse get whipped, since he did not believe that a horse could understand why he was being punished. Although Mr. Hitchcock had left him a lifelong pension in his will, he was not ready to stop working after Hitchcock died in 1941. Instead, he took a job at William Post’s racing stable, also based in Aiken and on Long Island. A 1956 picture in the Aiken Standard shows him holding one of Mrs. Oliver Iselin’s colts at the Aiken Training Track during that year’s Aiken Trials. “William, a black gelding by Wilwyn out of Hyperamnesia is held by Peter Green, 76, who has probably seen more horses trained in Aiken than any other person,” reads the caption. Personally, Peter Green was similar to Thomas Hitchcock in that he was a man of few words. He did not bet on horses himself, and if he were asked for a tip in a race, he would tell the prospective bettor that the best thing to do with your money was to keep it in your pocket. If asked if he thought a horse he trained would win or lose, he would reply “He should go mighty well.” And that is all you could get out of him. After age finally caught up with him and he could no longer withstand the physical rigors of working at the track, Peter retired in Aiken with Rosa, moving into their home on Newberry Street near the Hitchcock Woods. Horses remained in his blood, and he always went to the Aiken Trials and the Steeplechase, and often made his way to the Aiken Training Track to watch the horses work in the mornings. He died in 1972 at the age of 89, taking with him a lifetime of memories of a world that is no more.
Lewis Martin on the left and Peter Green on the right in a photo taken for Harry Worcester Smith’s book Life and Sport in Aiken
