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Miss Woodford
“Of all the race-mares that have obtained celebrity in the past fifty years Miss Woodford is entitled to rank first.” Walter Vosburgh’s opinion of Miss Woodford was high indeed, but it was shared by noted trainers John Rogers, Green Morris, A. J. Joyner, Tom Healey, “Sunny Jim” Fitzsimmons, and James Rowe, Sr. . A rather masculine-looking brown filly with an even temperament, Miss Woodford was bred by the partnership of Colonel E. F. Clay and Colonel Catesby Woodford, who had acquired her dam Fancy Jane in exchange for a barrel of Kentucky whiskey early in 1880 while the mare was in foal to *Billet. Perhaps because he was occupied in sampling Fancy Jane’s purchase price, however, the mare’s original owner, George Bowen, did not get around to officially recording Fancy Jane’s sale until November 1880 and is thus officially listed as the breeder of Miss Woodford. In any event, Clay and Woodford were the legal owners of the filly, who was named after Colonel Woodford’s sister. In yet another twist of her breeding and ownership, Miss Woodford began her racing career under the colors of George Bowen and Co. before being traded to the Dwyer Brothers for the newly retired Hindoo and the fillies Red and White and Francesca. The package of Hindoo and the fillies was valued at $15,000 and Miss Woodford came with $9,000 cash in the deal, so she was initially valued at $6,000. The price was a good one for a two-year-old filly but may not have looked so good when Miss Woodford was taken ill immediately following the sale. Colonel Clay immediately offered to repurchase her for $4,000, but Miss Woodford began to recover and the Dwyers declined the offer. At the time of her sale, Miss Woodford had won five her of eight races, placing in her other three efforts, and was generally reckoned the best juvenile filly of 1882. Trained by J. Hannigan during her juvenile campaign, she had won the Ladies’ Stakes at the Chicago Driving Park, the Spinaway and Misses’ stakes at Saratoga, and the Filly Stakes and Colt and Filly Stakes at Lexington. The fact that her full sister, Belle of Runnymede, won the 1882 Alabama Stakes cannot have hurt her value either. Nonetheless, she proved a great bargain, for over the next four years she was to win thirty-two races and over $110,000. Moving to the barn of James Rowe, Sr., Miss Woodford made her 1883 debut in the one and one-half mile Ladies’ Stakes at Jerome Park, winning by four lengths. She then proceeded to maul rather ordinary opposition in the Mermaid Stakes, Monmouth Oaks, and Alabama Stakes before running into the good filly Empress in the Pocahontas Stakes at Saratoga. Miss Woodford was not quite up to conceding Empress eight pounds, running second, but rebounded to win the West End Hotel Stakes. She then started in the Monmouth Stakes but apparently was not quite right, for her regular jockey, James McLaughlin, asked for the mount on another Dwyer runner, George Kinney, for the race. His judgment proved correct as George Kinney won the race while Miss Woodford faded back to last of five. It was one of only two lifetime starts in which Miss Woodford would not bring back a piece of the purse. Brought back to the races on September 13, Miss Woodford began a sixteen-race winning streak that would extend throughout her four-year-old season and into the next one. She opened up by winning the Great Eastern Handicap by ten lengths, avenging her defeat to Empress into the bargain, crushed her field by twenty lengths in the Lorillard Champion Stallion Stakes, and rounded out the year with wins in the Hunter, District of Columbia, and Pimlico stakes. In the last-named race she turned the tables on George Kinney, and the 1881 Epsom Derby and St. Leger winner Iroquois was also in the beaten field. Miss Woodford had thus won ten of twelve starts at three, and her seasonal earnings of $51,230 helped put her sire *Billet at the top of the general sire list for 1883. She was better still at four, however, winning nine of nine starts. Not only was she undefeated during the season, but nothing else even got close. She warmed up with two wins in overnight races at Jerome Park and then swept through four consecutive stakes races and another overnight event before trouncing Pierre Lorillard’s good campaigner Drake Carter by ten lengths in a $5,000 a side match race over two and one-half miles. Two days later, Miss Woodford added the Great Long Island Stakes to her score in two consecutive two-mile heats, easily defeating Drake Carter and the good filly Modesty, winner of that year’s Kentucky Oaks and the inaugural American Derby. The great mare won an overnight race and defeated the excellent filly Wanda in the Coney Island Stakes to open her five-year-old season, but her winning streak was ended by Thackeray in her next start, the Farewell Stakes. Miss Woodford lost no stature by her effort as she had been conceding Thackeray nine pounds, and she came back to win three straight stakes races before running fourth in the Eatontown Stakes. Four days later, she began an epic series of four races with the excellent gelding Freeland, the only horse who could ever be said to have had her number. The pair first met in the one and one-half mile Champion Stakes at Monmouth Park, Freeland winning by a length. Eight days later, the two locked horns in a Special Stakes at one and one-quarter miles, in which Miss Woodford was passed in the stretch and came again. She lost by a short head but covered herself with glory for the effort, and the Dwyers promptly challeged Freeland’s owner, Ed Corrigan, to a one and one-quarter mile match race at $2,500 a side. Corrigan accepted, and two days later Miss Woodford led all the way to win by a head. Two hard efforts in three days had taken a great deal from the courageous mare, and James Rowe told the Dwyers she needed to be put away for the season. The Dwyers never believed in anything but racing hard and often, however, and they entered Miss Woodford for a sweepstakes at Brighton Beach to be run three weeks after the match race. Rowe quit and was replaced by his foreman Frank McCabe, who saw Miss Woodford beaten by Freeland by an easy four lengths. The margin was not a true reflection of the difference between the rivals when both were at their best. Five days later, Miss Woodford won the Great Long Island Stakes in straight heats from an indifferent field, ending her season with seven wins and four seconds from twelve starts. Miss Woodford returned for a relatively brief campaign at six, winning six of her seven starts and finishing second in the other. Never lacking for work, she even pulled a cart between race meetings in Kentucky and Chicago, the Dwyers apparently figuring that as long as she was making the trip anyway, she might as well be doing something useful. Her biggest score was in the Eclipse Stakes at St. Louis; a large purse had been put up to attract both her and Freeland, but the gelding was ailing and Miss Woodford was left to demolish a good field that included the American Derby winners Modesty and Volante. Her only loss of the season was by three-quarters of a length to the Suburban Handicap winner, Troubadour, in a match race; it was the last start of the year for Troubadour, so Miss Woodford never got the chance to avenge this defeat. The great mare ended her career on a winning note in the First Sweepstakes at Saratoga on July 24, 1886, defeating a good field that included Joe Cotton and Katrina. She was lame after the race, however, and was sold to James Haggin as a broodmare prospect. Although she has been commonly described as a failure as a producer, this was not quite the case. Five of her nine foals made it to the races and all five won, including the juvenile stakes winners George Kessler (by Salvator) and Sombre (by *Midlothian). Neither of her stakes-winning foals were up to her standard, but then very few horses were. Miss Woodford left racing having won thirty-seven of forty-eight starts, with seven seconds and two thirds. She was the world’s leading money winner at the time of her retirement, having earned $118,270, and remained the leader for her sex until dethroned by Princess Doreen over thirty years later. Her final honors came in 1967 when she was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame. © 2005 by Avalyn Hunter |
