Host, Guests, Locale: A Memorable Spa Dinner Party
[From the Fall 2023 Showcase of Homes Magazine]
Written by Bill Orzell
Saratoga Springs had achieved a fine reputation as a health resort long before the Civil War.
In fiction, the Scarlett O’Hara of the silver-screen, recalled her visit to the Spa before the War began. Following the bloody engagement which stretched for nearly four years, the upstate community provided a salve for the mental wounds created by the conflict, through the gathering of those with an interest in Thoroughbred racing. The Confederate States had been mostly shut-out of competing during the conflict, but at Saratoga where racing commenced just weeks after the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, a common ground was established for former foes. Saratoga Race Course proved a place where President Lincoln’s vision of “malice toward none” could be practiced.
Governor Oden Bowie was one individual who turned to the Spa for solace and horse racing. The first Governor elected in Maryland following the War, he had long been a committed breeder of Thoroughbred horses. His operation in the Old Line State was known as Fairview Plantation, and had been operated with enslaved persons before the clash of ideologies. His own US Army experience came in the 1840s during the Mexican Conflict, enlisting as a private and rising through the ranks, emerging a decorated Captain. Oden Bowie served concurrently as Maryland’s Governor and Maryland Jockey Club President. He reorganized and revived the oldest Jockey Club in the country, which had colonial roots, and George Washington and Andrew Jackson as participants in MJC events. Maryland Jockey Club members to this day use a distinctive logo created in 1830, crafted from the group’s initials with the “M” made by a combination of two stirrups and webbing, the “J” by a riding crop and the “C” by a spur, forming a distinctive design. At Saratoga, Oden Bowie raced some of the best horses in competition under his red and white silks, and also acted as a track steward. Governor Bowie developed a reputation of being excessively severe in his rulings, to the degree fellow owners would craft negative connotations of his “O. B.” initials.
Several sources agree that the word “Preakness” is derived from a Native American word describing a productive hunting ground near the New York – New Jersey border. Like many terms in use today for geographic locations, which had their origin in the tongues of native speakers, it is highly corrupted in pronunciation. Textile merchant Milton H. Sanford operated a Thoroughbred stock farm in Passaic County and adopted the Preakness name for his operation. He had a second Thoroughbred breeding center near Lexington, Kentucky which shared the Preakness name, which would evolve into the famous Elmendorf Farm. Mr. Sanford was also a liberal purchaser of Thoroughbred stock, setting some auction records for yearlings bred by Colonel Robert Atchison Alexander, noted owner of Woodburn Farm near Lexington. Milton Sanford had traveled to English tracks, where he met William Hayward and convinced him to come to the United States. Billy Hayward acted as both trainer and rider for Mr. Sanford’s stable and they enjoyed success, winning the 1868 edition of the Saratoga Cup with the bay horse Lancaster.
An elated Milton Sanford threw a celebratory dinner party at the Leland Brother’s Union Hall on Broadway, which under subsequent ownership would become the Grand Union Hotel. Mr. Sanford certainly spared no expense for Lancaster’s Cup winning gala, as Union Hall was the Spa’s premier banquet facility. The Lelands lent greatly to the postwar atmosphere in Saratoga, having recently built an Opera House succursal to the Union Hall, which was inaugurated by none less than General Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1865, or the Independence Day after the Union was preserved. The Saratogian of this time would publish a rhyming jaunt about local accommodations by an author known simply as “Jacket,” which allows us to appreciate the sentiments of the time:
“The Union, known throughout the land, From Maine to Texan plains, And o'er the sea its praises come, where Lelands hold the reins. 'Tis in the splendid dancing-room, that fairy footsteps fall, but where the guests delight to meet, is in the dining hall.”
The triumphant dinner party was attended by the foremost turfmen in the country, including the flamboyant Charlie Reed and plunger H. Price McGrath, who seven years hence would furnish the very first Kentucky Derby winner. Under the generous effects of the fine wine and good food, it was unanimously resolved by those in the hall -recently divided by civil war- to make a positive contribution to further racing and renewed social gatherings. John Hunter of New York, whose orange with crimson sash silks were familiar to all in the room, made a novel suggestion. Mr. Hunter’s astute views were sought, as he along with John Morrissey, William R. Travers, John McBain Davidson and other sportsmen had been the original incorporators of Saratoga Race Track a few years earlier. John Hunter suggested during conversation that those at dinner subscribe $1,000 apiece for their best current yearlings, with a race to be run in two years, between the then three-year-olds. Mr. Hunter’s sweepstakes suggestion was strongly seconded by those effused with more than a certain warmth of burgundy at the dinner party.
Governor Bowie offered a caveat to the proposed high-stakes race: the Maryland Jockey Club would add $15,000 if the race were run there. This track had yet to be built, but he had until 1870 to complete the new venue at what was sometimes referred to as the Pimlyco or Pemblicoe section of Baltimore. This generous offer to stage a major three-year-old event, south of the Mason-Dixon Line in what was now termed “The Free State,” would be a new spectacle in Thoroughbred racing. The guests of Mr. Sanford that summer evening at the Spa, designated their newly formulated futurity contest the Dinner Party Stakes.
The founder of the feast at Union Hall was very pleased with what he had fostered. He also had some quality yearlings in his barn which had just come his way from Colonel Alexander, and Woodburn Farm in Kentucky. One of his hopefuls was a bay colt, son of the immortal sire Lexington out of Bay Leaf, whom Mr. Sanford would name Preakness.
Interestingly, the same Col. Robert A. Alexander, breeder of Preakness, several years before and just prior to the eruption of hostilities at Fort Sumter, commissioned Tiffany & Company in New York to create a race trophy. This was awarded for the first time in 1861 at a Louisville, Kentucky track known as Woodlawn Park, and the special Tiffany creation was termed the Woodlawn Vase. The elaborate competition cup was topped by the figure of his star sire, Lexington. During the Civil War the Woodlawn Vase was buried under the bluegrass, to prevent its interception by Federal Troops.
Word of the Dinner Party Stakes spread around Saratoga Springs -and the racing world- which proved extremely intriguing to other owners. Participation in the Dinner Party Stakes was expanded to accommodate other interested owners, who were not fortunate enough to have been at the imaginative banquet. The brand new Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore was ready in 1870 as Governor Bowie had attested that famous evening at Saratoga’s Union Hall. Milton Sanford’s Preakness was an entry, however still a maiden; his large and gawky form prevented his competing as a two-year-old. Preakness was readily identifiable going to post for the inaugural event by his owner’s all-blue silks. As only luck and fate would have it, Preakness won the Dinner Party Stakes under jockey Billy Hayward before an enormous crowd. The following year, 1871, the race was repeated as the Reunion Stakes, and in 1872 the name was revised again to the Dixie Stakes. In 1873 the Maryland Jockey Club decided to add a feature race for three-year-olds, and they named the event after the first stakes winner on the Pimlico track, Preakness. The Woodlawn Vase had been won by Thomas Clyde, founder of the Clyde-Mallory Shipping Lines in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1917, Mr. Clyde gifted the Vase to the Maryland Jockey Club, of which he was a director and stockholder, to be used as a continual prize for the Preakness Stakes.
The healing waters of Saratoga Springs and the spirited racing competition there, engendered a reunion of divided peoples in that unique locale, while furthering Thoroughbred breeding and cultivating a new facility in a former slaveholding state, which has perpetuated to our time. Governor Oden Bowie’s influence continued at the Saratoga Race Course well beyond his death in 1894, and he figures into one of those charming “only-in-Saratoga” tales. The many barns at Horse Haven, north of Union Avenue, all carry a sequential number designation, for directional information and differentiation. With superstition naturally high on a race track, triskaidekaphobia is a powerful component, and no one wanted to be assigned Barn #13. Some whose memories stretched back into the previous century, recalled that the structure which would be thirteenth in ordinal progression, was during an earlier time occupied by Oden Bowie and later his son Ogden Bowie. Instead of a numeral designation this barn became listed as “Barn O. B.”
The Daily Racing Form March 4, 1919, reported on a similar situation in the track clubhouse:
“One of the boxes at Saratoga, instead of being numbered, is known as "box O. B.” Secretary McL. Earlocker says the box was originally No. 13 but no one wanted that number, and as the stable in Horse Haven that would naturally be No. 13 was named O. B., so the same symbol was used for the box.”