Background
Chenery was born in Richmond, and raised in Ashland, Virginia.
Chenery was born in Richmond, and raised in Ashland, Virginia.
He studied at Randolph-Macon College and Washington and Lee University, graduating in 1909 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering.
He was the brother of William L. Chenery, Editor-Publisher of Colliers Magazine. Chenery"s sister was Blanche Chenery Perrin, a writer of children"s books centered on horse racing, such as Born To Race. He then went to work in the United States. Pacific Northwest and Alaska, but his career was interrupted with service in the United States Army Corps of Engineers during World War I. After the war, Chenery established Chenery Corporation, which became the controlling shareholder of the Federal Water Service Company.
He served as the water, gas, and pipeline company"s president
Chenery was involved in two cases before the Supreme Court of the United States that are considered landmark cases of United States administrative law. After disbanding the Federal Water Service Company, he founded and served as president and chairman of the board of another utility, the Southern Natural Gas Company later Sonat, eventually purchased by the El Paso Corporation
In the 1950s, he purchased Danziger Oil and used it to create the Offshore Production Corporation one of the first offshore drilling companies. One of the founders of the New York Racing Association, Chenery made his home in the village of Pelham Manor, New York, for nearly fifty years.
However, he is best known for his 1936 purchase of The Meadow, an ancestral property in Caroline County near his boyhood home in Ashland, Virginia.
lieutenant was there that he founded stud which bred and raced Thoroughbreds. Chenery operated Meadow Study, Incorporated. as a breeding business and, Incorporated. as the owner for the horses he kept for racing. In the mid-1950s, Chenery was one of three men appointed by the Jockey Club to restructure and restore integrity to New York Racing.
Along with John West. Hanes and Harry Guggenheim Chenery organized the non-profit Greater New York Racing Authority with the novel idea of funneling proceeds to the state.
However it was Chenery who personally obtained the $30 million loan necessary to renovate the New York race tracks after banks balked at financing "an enterprise based on gambling."
Chenery was admitted to the New Rochelle, New York Hospital in late February 1968. He remained there until his death on January 3, 1973, before Secretariat"s Triple Crown victory occurred.
While she recorded her father as breeder of Secretariat, it was Penny Chenery who made the decision to send Meadow Study"s mare Somethingroyal to be bred to Bold Ruler twice. The first mating in 1968 produced the filly The Bride.
The second breeding, in 1969, resulted in Secretariat.
Now known as Meadow Event Park, the former farm became the home of the Virginia State Fair in 2009.