BY AUDREY PAVIA
SHELLEY PAULSON
One day in 1849, in the tiny hamlet of Sugar Loaf, N.Y., a very special colt was born. The great-grandson of an imported Thoroughbred stallion named Messenger, the colt so impressed William Rysdyk, the farm hand in charge of caring for him, that Ryskdyk used $125 of his meager earnings to buy both the colt and his dam from his boss. The colt’s dam, known as the Charles Kent Mare, had the British breeds of Norfolk Trotter and Hackney in her pedigree.