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In Jackie's honor, since we've had the Kentucky Derby and are coming up Saturday on the Preakness, second jewel in the American racing crown, some interesting (or so I thought) info. I heard this afternoon on NPR.
The Preakness is named for a horse. (Only horse race I ever heard of named for a horse, of all things.) Maryland governor Oden Bowie was attending the races at Saratoga (New York) in the early 1860's and enjoyed himself so much he thought it would be a good idea to have a big race in Maryland. A couple years later the Maryland Jockey Club (consisting not of jockeys, but by wealthy gentlemen who rode in foxhunts and steeplechases for fun) bought an estate with a horse racing track north of Baltimore. The estate was named Pimlico by its owner, who was from London. (Since Baltimore expanded its boundaries in 1918, Pimlico has been within the city limits.) They started a race in 1866 which they named the Dinner Party Stakes. After Preakness won in 1867, they named the race for him.
One of the original investors in Pimlico was Peter Lorillard, a wealthy New Yorker, who, incidentally, was the inventor of the tuxedo. In 1870, the U.S. Congress adjourned for the day and got on the train to Baltimore to attend the Preakness. There were a number of horses entered by Kentucky owners, and Lorrilard brought down from New Jersey a really sorry looking plug which everyone laughed at. He took all bets which anyone offered. Of course, his horse won, he made another fortune, and the Kentuckians lost their shirts. [Sorry, Jackie.]
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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Whoa (wordplay intended), I didn't know that Preakness was a horse, byb--thank you! Was that the Lorillard family of tobacco barons?
Kentucky's big race is of course named after the British one. But we have a dERby, not a dARby. Bill Bryson, in "The Mother Tongue" (thank you-all for cluing me in on this delightful book!), says that the Elizabethans said a lot of er- words as ar-words, and that some still survive today, mostly as proper nouns: Berkeley, Berkshire. It is still heard in only a few common words, notably derby and clerk, though not in jerk, serve, herd, etc. The spelling variations this brings is noticeable in Hartford, Connecticut: it used to be Hertford. I love this guy--here's one reason why: And then of course there's that favorite word of Yosemite Sam's, varmint, which is simply a variant of vermin.
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
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Yes, Jackie, tobacco barons.. with money from their NY (bronx) tobacco farms.. in the Bronx Botanical gardens today, you can eat lunch at the Mill, now a small food court. the Mill was a snuff mill, not a flour or saw mill!and the lorillard family sold some, donated the rest of the land to the city for the park.. some part of the land, owned since early colonial times was left as is, so the bronx has a small (100 acre or so) patch of native, virgin hemlocks (the same trees called Canadian hemlocks--that came up in the Canada/canadian thread)
the bronx river valley (a small river) and the connecticut river valley were big tobacco growing areas. connecticut still had lots of tobacco farms when i was i kid, some in the early seventies, but almost none now. (but canny NE farmers made a second forture selling off the dark smoke dried and stained barn boards from the tobacco farms!)
the family also had holdings (or married into) one of the southern tobacco families.. and now is mostly in the Carolinas.
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