Washington Winter Show 2013

“THE ENCHANTING ELIXIR OF SPORTING LIFE” T he colonial planters of Tidewater Virginia and Maryland in the eighteenth century, tied as they were to England by heritage and commerce, embraced the Cavalier traditions of equestrian sport—horseracing and riding to the hounds. (By contrast, New England and Pennsylvania—settled by Puritans, Germans, Swedes and Dutch of modest means—did not share these sporting traditions of aristocratic England.) Accomplished horsemen, the tobacco and grain planters of Virginia and Maryland, kept private packs of hounds on their plantations. Horse Racing and Foxhunting in Washington, D.C. 48 This page is sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. Edward Symes III Even before the seat of national government moved from Philadelphia to the new capital of Washington, D.C. in 1800, horseracing and fox hunting were popular and well-established sports in the region. Horse lovers and avid sportsmen, planters and farmers in the young nation took personal pride in their mounts and bred fine horses for hunting, driving, racing and working. George Washington—planter, general, statesman—embodied this generation of early Americans who found sport and pleasure by William B. Bushong in horseracing and foxhunting. Washington regularly attended horse races throughout his life, stood noted stallions at Mount Vernon, and maintained his own pack of foxhounds. HORSERACING IN WASHINGTON In 1798—the same year that Scottish stonemasons finished erecting the walls of the President’s House and whitewashed the building to seal the stone from the elements—a mile track was Woodcut scene of a race meeting in 1834. The “carriage folk” paid a toll to look on from the covered stands for spectators, especially for the ladies. Standees watched the races for free outside the rails. National Sporting Library, Middleburg, Va.