Thoroughbred Bloodlines

Reel (USA)

Reel

Sire Line

Glencoe, the sire of both Reel and Pocahontas
(b f 1837), won the Two Thousand Guineas Stakes
and Ascot Gold Cup before his export to America.
He was a Leading Sire in 1847, 1849, 1850 and
from 1854 to 1858, inclusive.

Lecomte, by Boston

Prioress, by Sovereign

Starke, by Wagner

War Dance, by Lexington

An advertisement for Stafford

An advertisement for War Dance

Reel gr f 1838 (Glencoe - Gallopade, by Catton). Sire Line Selim. Family 23-b.

Reel was bred by James Jackson Sr (1782-1840) and foaled at his Forks of Cypress plantation in northwest Alabama. Her sire and dam were both bred in England. She was the third recorded foal out of Jackson's imported mare Gallopade (GB) and from the first North American crop of the great Glencoe (GB) who was purchased by Jackson in 1835 and brought to Alabama the following year. When Reel was a yearling, Louisiana turfman T J Wells purchased a half interest in her (eventually also adding her half-sister Fandango to his stable). After her breeder died but before Reel began racing the Jackson estate had divested their remaining half interest in her, ostensibly in total to T J Wells per most sources. However, his brother Montfort Wells may have had a share since the first few times Reel raced it was for both M and T J Wells.

Reel made her racing debut at Opelousas, Louisiana, Nov 12, 1841, defeating the then unnamed Earl of Margrave (br c 1838 Margrave - Margaret May, by Pacific) in consecutive two-mile heats. Taken to New Orleans (Louisiana Course) in December, she was again victorious running two-mile heats, this time in the company of older horses. There, in her third and last race of 1841, Reel won in consecutive four-mile heats, again in open company, a rather remarkable achievement at the time for a three year old filly.

Reel and her stablemate Torchlight (ch f 1837 Glencoe – Waxlight, by Leviathan) were at New Orleans for the spring meetings in 1842 but were sidelined by temporary lameness and sent back upriver to Wells' training center at "Dentley", south of Alexandria, Louisiana, for rest and recuperation. Back in form that fall, Reel was in Opelousas to take the Jockey Club Purse in a walkover. Her last race of 1842 was one that had been long anticipated.

The same spring that Reel was foaled a bay filly hit the ground, not far to the east of Forks of Cypress, at Elijah H Boardman's "Boardman's Mill" near Huntsville, Alabama. She would eventually be christened "Miss Foote" and her name and Reel’s frequently uttered in the same breath. Like Reel, both of Miss Foote’s parents were bred in England. Her sire was Boardman's imported Consol (b c 1829 Lottery - Mare, by Cerberus - Miss Newton, family 8), her dam was Boardman's imported Gabrielle (ch f 1820 Partisan - Coquette, by Dick Andrews - Mother Western, branch of family 12). First raced in the spring of 1841 the petite (14.2) Miss Foote had, by December, 1842, accumulated 11 victories from 12 starts in 4 states, running one to four-mile heats in open competition, besting many of the same competitors as Reel.

Inevitably, speculation ran high in regard to an eventual meeting of the two accomplished fillies. On the last day of 1842 they finally stepped onto the track together for a $1000 purse race, four-mile heats, at the Metarie course in New Orleans. Reel emerged the victor over her more seasoned rival in consecutive heats (7:51, 7:56-1/2), acquiring her "Louisiana Champion" title. The temporarily vanquished Miss Foote went on to resume and maintain for a few more years her habit of defeating the top cracks.

Reel apparently came out of the race with Miss Foote a bit sore, the problem first reported in the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine (ATR) as in the foot and possibly attributable to the whisper-thin racing plates used in Louisiana at the time. She appeared to be back in form winning consecutive four-mile heats in a $1000 purse race on March 18, 1843, at the Metarie course. Eleven days later, however, at the Louisiana Course she went onto the track for what would be the last time. Approaching the finish line in the first four-mile heat, which was run at a pace approaching that set by Fashion's four-mile record, Reel broke down near the finish after coming nearly even with Fergus Duplantier's George Martin (b c 1837 Garrison's Zinganee – Gabriella, by Sir Archy). She was led "with difficulty" back to her stall, and memorialized at this abrupt sad end to her career on the turf as a mare whose name would "go down through all time as that of one of the most remarkable performers that ever figured on the American turf".

Further glory awaited Reel in the breeding shed. Between 1844 and 1860 she produced 10 colts and 3 fillies, most of whom would perform well on the turf, one of whom would become a principle in one of the legendary rivalries of the ante-bellum American turf. Taken first to the Tennessee court of the aging Leviathan, sire of her older half-sisters Fandango and Cotillion, Reel produced two sons by him and was in foal with another when she departed permanently for the Kentucky pastures of J R Gross, east of Lexington, where Wells boarded his broodmares under the supervision of James A Grinstead of Walnut Hill Farm. There she produced three daughters by Sovereign (GB) and seven more sons, two by Wagner, two by Yorkshire (GB), one by Ambassador, and the best known among them, Lecomte 1850 by Boston and War Dance 1860 by Lexington.

Wells' seeming reluctance to send mares to Lexington may have been due to what Hervey would later refer to as a "a bitter hatred, a deep, smouldering animosity" for the horse that developed during the Lecomte - Lexington rivalry. In time pragmatism apparently prevailed. In 1857 Wells' Edith by Sovereign (GB) made the short trip to Woodburn, followed in 1859 by Reel for the cover that produced War Dance in 1860. She may have been carrying him when last painted (1859) for Wells by Troye. Wells bequeathed that portrait (shown here) to Keene Richards, who sold or gave it to Major Barak Thomas of Dixiana Farm, from whose estate it was acquired by the Jockey Club. It was not properly dated until many decades later when Alexander Mackay-Smith was allowed to examine the back of it.

Only when taken to Sovereign (GB) did Reel produce fillies. The first, Ann Dunn, died while in training at New Orleans in 1852. The second, Prioress, was sold along with Starke and Lecomte in a partial dispersal of Wells' stock. All were taken to England. There, after acquitting herself commendably on the track, Prioress produced a couple of foals but is long extinct in tail female. Her youngest daughter, Fanny Wells, is the sole tail female conduit of her dam in the modern Thoroughbred. There she has to her credit modern classic winners in several countries.

Strangely, for a mare of great renown, no obituary of Reel was ever published. Before his death in 1863 most or all of her owner T J Wells' Kentucky breeding stock had been transferred to other owners, possibly due to the fact that Wells was a resident of one of the states then in rebellion, therefore his property was vulnerable to seizure by federal authority. If Reel had died foaling War Dance or soon afterward in 1860 that fact would probably have been preserved in the historic record but the utter lack of contemporaneous references to her afterward suggest that she died before the war began in 1861.

Pedigree

Reel	Glencoe	Sultan	Selim
			Bacchante
		Trampoline	Tramp
			Web
	Gallopade	Catton	Golumpus
			Lucy Gray
		Camellina	Camillus
			Smolensko Mare

Notable Offspring

Lecomte (USA)
ch c 1850 (Boston - Reel, by Glencoe). Sire Line King Herod. Family 23-b. Bred by General Thomas Jefferson Wells of Louisiana and named for Wells' friend and fellow Louisiana turfman Ambrose Lecomte. Raced by Wells in the US through 1856, he won 11 of his 17 starts, defeating Lexington, another son of the great Boston, while lowering Fashion's world record for four miles by more than 6 seconds. Lecomte covered a few mares in 1855 and 1856 before Wells sold him to Richard Ten Broeck who sent the horse to race in England. There he was beset by leg problems that had surfaced during his last year on the American turf. He died in England of colic in 1857. Sired some capable runners, notably Umpire (ch c 1857) who raced successfully in England. Most often seen in the back pedigree of modern Thoroughbreds as damsire of Lizzy G. 1867 by War Dance from whose female family came such influential sires as Domino and Hamburg.

Prioress (USA)
b f 1853 (Sovereign - Reel, by Glencoe). Sire Line Beningbrough. Family 23-b. She was the first American-bred and American-owned horse to win a race in England. As a two year old at Metairie, Louisiana, she ran record successive 1-mile heats in 1:46 1/4 and 1:45. She went to England as part of Richard Ten Broeck's string and there won the run off of the famous triple dead heat of the 1857 Cesarewitch. She also won the Great Yorkshire Handicap and Queen's Plates at Newmarket and Epsom. She produced six foals in the stud for Sir Lydston Newman and died while foaling in 1868.

Stafford (USA)
gr c 1845 (Leviathan - Reel, by Glencoe) Sire Line Eclipse. Family 23-b. Sold to Texas where he was a popular sire although few of his foals were ever known to Sanders D. Bruce, compiler of the American Stud Book. Thoroughbreds with Stafford in their back pedigree are rare, but he appears as ninth damsire of 'blue hen' matriarch (in the Quarter Horse), Otro Mambo (ch f 1951 Three Bars – Verna H., by Howden, family a86), a thoroughbred mare. Thus Stafford can be found in the pedigrees of QH Champions Denim N' Diamonds and Prankster CF as well as a bevy of other stellar performers and producers. Stafford's Texas advertisements are a testimony to his dam's renown, invoking her name before that of Leviathan.

Starke (USA)
ch c 1855 (Wagner - Reel, by Glencoe). Sire Line King Herod. Family 23-b. Described as a mealy chestnut standing about 15.3 hands, he was purchased by Mr Ten Broeck for $7500 after his first race at Metairie and sent to England to join his stable there. Over a three year period he won the Goodwood Stakes, the Warwick Cup, the Bentinck Memorial Plate "in a canter by 6 lengths," the Goodwood Cup, the Brighton Stakes "in a walk," and finished 2nd for the Ebor Handicap. In November of 1861 he was sold for $7000 to go to Prussia. He was sent to Austria-Hungary in 1864 where he entered the stud.

War Dance (USA)
ch c 1859 (Lexington - Reel, by Glencoe). Sire Line King Herod. Family 23-b. The son of the most accomplished American stallion and mare of the mid 19th century was bred by Thos. J. Wells of Louisiana and later owned by A. Keene Richards. Foaled in Kentucky, the yearling War Dance was brought to Wells 'Dentley' estate in Louisiana to be trained but his planned career was suspended by the Civil War (1861-1865). During the war, in February, 1863, Wells agreed to sell War Dance to Richards, the sale to be funded once the war was over. Until then Wells and later his estate (he died in Hempstead, Texas, July 15, 1863) maintained ownership and possession of the horse. Along with the rest of Wells's bloodstock then stabled in Louisiana, as well as some of Keene Richards' horses, War Dance was moved to Texas for safer keeping before February, 1864, when the US Army's Red River campaign commenced in Louisiana. In Texas he entered stud as an unnamed son of Lexington - Reel by Glencoe*, property of M[ontfort] Wells (brother of T J), at the Travis county stable of Thomas F. McKinney. His earliest recorded foals dropped from McKinney mares in Texas in 1865. He covered a few mares there in early 1866 before being returned to Louisiana by April 17, the date of his only known start, Crescent Course, New Orleans, racing as "General Westmore" for Wells' associate J M Reif. Richards arrived in New Orleans on the day of the race, funded the sale and took him back to Kentucky where War Dance resumed stud duty at Richards' Blue Grass Park.

War Dance sired such outstanding daughters as Blue Grass Belle (ch f 1880), Brademante (ch f 1874), Buff-And-Blue (b f 1873), Vega (b f 1876), War Reel (b f 1870), War Song (ch f 1867) and his major conduit in the modern Thoroughbred, the aforementioned Lizzy G. (b f 1867).

Produce Record

Year of Birth		Name, Sire	Owner or Breeder
1844	ch c	Lincoln, by Leviathan	Gen Thos J Wells
1845	gr c	Stafford, by Leviathan (Texas)	Gen Thos J Wells
1846	gr c	Capt. Elgee, by Leviathan (Kentucky)	Gen Thos J Wells
1847	gr g	Bob Green, by Ambassador (Gelded)	Gen Thos J Wells
1848	gr f	Ann Dunn, by Sovereign (Killed at New Orleans)	Gen Thos J Wells
1850	ch c	Lecomte, by Boston (Died in England)	Gen Thos J Wells
1851	gr c	Ashland, by Wagner (Dead)	Gen Thos J Wells
1853	b f	Prioress, by Sovereign	Gen Thos J Wells
1854	gr c	Calvit, by Yorkshire	Gen Thos J Wells
1855	ch c	Starke, by Wagner	Gen Thos J Wells
1856	gr c	Dentley, by Yorkshire	Gen Thos J Wells
1858	gr f	Fanny Wells, by Sovereign (M. Kelley)	Gen Thos J Wells
1859	ch c	War Dance, by Lexington	Gen Thos J Wells