In a little work published in London, 1646, entitled “A Perfect Description of Virginia,” the author says that “There are in Virginia, of an excellent raise (race), about two hundred horses and mares.” It is evident that this statement is a mere estimate, and I am disposed to think it a very wild estimate from what follows in a very few years. It is true that horses do not propagate and increase as fast as any other variety of domestic animals, but under the circumstances every effort would be made to increase the stock, and from what follows, I think my criticism will be sustained.
In the legislation of the colony we find no mention of horses, till the year 1657, when the exportation of mares was prohibited. Eleven years after this (1668) this restriction was removed and the exportation of both mares and horses permitted. The very next year, 1669, the importation of more horses was prohibited by legislative enactment. From this it would seem that there were already too many horses in the colony, or possibly some horse breeder had begun to realize that there were better horses in some of the other colonies that were finding a market in Virginia, and they thus sought “protection” for their own stock.
This prohibition could not have been aimed at the mother country, for the prices obtained would not justify the cost and risk of a sea voyage. We must, therefore, conclude that it was intended to shut out the New England colonies, which were already shipping horses to all the settlements on the seaboard, as well as to some of the West India Islands. In this we see at what an early date commenced the interchange of commodities among the colonies. As early as 1647 the Dutch authorities at New Amsterdam authorized Isaac Allerton to sell twenty or twenty-five horses to Virginia.
The court records of Henrico County, Virginia, for the year 1677 contain three distinct trials growing out of horse races for that year. In one case the contest was for three hundred pounds of tobacco; in another the winner was to take both horses; in the third the amount at issue does not appear. From the readiness at sharp practice and from the cunning dodges to get clear of paying a bet it is very evident that the principals and the witnesses were well up in all the tricks of racing as it was practiced at that early day. How long before 1677 racing was practiced in Virginia I have no means of determining, but the next year and the next, continuing to the end of that century, the records of the court speak for themselves. In these trials I find the names of Thomas Jefferson, Jr., grandfather of President Jefferson, and also the name of Benjamin Harrison, the ancestor of two presidents, although they were not principals in any of the cases.