LAND of PLENTY

Toroughbreds at anything close to the levels breeders, owners, buyers, and sellers had been operating upon.

Haggin had begun cutting back as this scenario began to develop. Bouyea wrote that in 1905, “he sold 20 stallions and more than 500 mares, yearlings, and 2-year-old fllies at Rancho del Paso.” Tis was in contrast to his practice of sending large consignments to sell in the East. Bouyea continued that “in the next few years, he sold 33 more stallions and 483 mares from Elmendorf to interests throughout the world.” He had reached out to other countries in gathering his vast holdings in bloodstock, and now he sent horses to be sold in England, Argentina, and Germany, as well as in America.

As set out in “Te Jockey Club’s Illustrated History of Toroughbred Racing in America” (Little, Brown & Co., 2004) by 1908, “only 25 tracks in the United States and six in Canada were recognized … Chicago racing was curtailed afer 1904. Te most telling blow came in 1908, when New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes pushed through the Hart-Agnew Bill, making gambling illegal. Court action forestalled the shutdown for several years, but fnally, in 1911 and 1912, there was no racing on the nation’s primary circuit.” Some owners of top stables, unwilling to move to lesser circuits, sent horses to campaign in England, but the underpinning of American racing and breeding was shattered.

When amended New York laws allowed racing’s return in 1913, Haggin had been dispersing stock at a loss, and as it turned out, had only a year to live. During his later years he also had developed a strong dairy herd and fulflled the desire to produce milk of the highest quality and high volume. Tat operation, too, had to be dispersed.

Elmendorf was far from the only casualty among the top Kentucky farms. In “Te Kentucky Toroughbred” (University Press of Kentucky, 2009), author Hollingsworth lamented that “Kentucky’s most prominent commercial breeders also dispersed their studs,” and he identifed them as Col. Milton Young’s McGrathiana Stud and Col. E.F. Clay’s and Col. Catesby Woodford’s Runnymede Stud. “Mares worth $20,000 before racing was outlawed in New York brought $300,” he lamented.

Afer Haggin’s death at 91 in Newport, Rhode Island, another prominent Kentucky breeder, John E. Madden — encouraged then by the return of New York racing — purchased 2,500 acres of Elmendorf from the Haggin estate. Tis included the original 544 acres purchased by Haggin. Various publications estimated Haggin’s estate at fgures ranging from $50 million to $100 million, according to the BBR. Te actual value when the estate was fled for probate, that publication reported, however, was $15 million.

Hall Of Fame

Almost exactly a century afer Haggin’s death, the old sportsman’s career was the subject of a thesis at the University of Kentucky. Te 2012 scholarly dissertation was compiled by Amber Fogle Sergent and accepted by her adviser, Ronald D. Eller, Ph.D., and by the director of graduate studies, David Hamilton, Ph.D. Te title is “Te Pastime of Millions—James B. Haggin’s Elmendorf Farm and the Commercialization of Pedigree Animal Breeding, 1897-1920.”

Sergent took the tack that “Haggin changed the style and substance of modern pedigree breeding in America, and these changes signifcantly afected dramatic costs and consequences for Kentucky and beyond.” (Te “beyond” presumably accounts for the title reaching out over several years beyond Haggin’s death.) Further, she described the marble columns standing alone “in a lush Bluegrass feld” as representing “one of the most spectacular failures in modern agricultural history.”

In 2022, Haggin’s career was viewed through the context of the Pillars of the Turf selection committee of the National Museum of Racing. Notwithstanding the dragging down of Haggin’s enterprise by the interruption of New York racing, the committee found a career worthy of high acclaim. Te Pillars of the Turf category was added to the Hall of Fame in 2013. Haggin is among 41 individuals who have been so honored in an exercise involving both the distant past and contemporary leadership.

In using the phrase “transformational breeder,” the Hall of Fame plaque, of course, emphasized the positive connotation of that phrase, inasmuch as he produced a litany of important successes over many years. KM