Samuel Clay Hildreth was an American racehorse trainer. He was ranked as one of the greatest trainers of race horses of America for many years.
Background
Samuel Clay Hildreth was born on May 16, 1866 in Independence, Missouri, United States. He was the son of Vincent Hildreth, a roving owner of "quarter-horses" who traveled about with his family in a covered wagon in Missouri and adjacent states, making match races and sometimes wagering almost everything he possessed on one of his runners.
Education
Acting as rider and groom of his father's horses and living with horses as intimately as Arabs do, Hildreth learned the art and mysteries of horsemanship in the diamond-cut-diamond school of frontier horse racing, where cunning and strategy usually formed the groundwork of success.
Career
In 1883 Hildreth began to train for a Mr. Paris at Parsons, Kansas, at the same time working at the bar of his employer's hotel. Later in Parsons he turned to blacksmithing in the belief that he could earn more money by shoeing horses than by training and racing them.
As a blacksmith he went to New York in 1887, but on seeing the golden opportunities there which racing offered, he soon abandoned the forge. His knowledge of farriery standing him in good stead, he soon had conspicuous success as a trainer. Operating chiefly on minor tracks where speculation was active, Hildreth's ability in 1895 attracted the attention of E. J. Baldwin, who engaged him to campaign a stable of superior horses on metropolitan tracks. Thereafter, his services were utilized by William C. Whitney, Elmer E. Smathers, Charles Kohler, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, August Belmont, and Harry F. Sinclair, all of whom raced on a grand scale.
When not employed by others Hildreth raced in his own colors, and in 1909, 1910, and 1911 headed the list of winning owners on the American turf. Under his management Sinclair's Rancocas Stable repeated this rare achievement by leading the list three years in succession, ending in 1923. That year its earnings were $438, 849, then the largest amount ever credited to any American stable in a single campaign. Zev accounted for $272, 008 of this amount. He was officially chosen as the best three-year-old in America to meet the English Derby winner Papyrus in an international race at Belmont Park, New York, in 1923, for a purse of $80, 000, which Zev won.
Hildreth, however, rated Purchase and Grey Lag first and second respectively in worth among all the horses he had trained. His success in bringing the latter back to winning form after he was ten years old and had been retired to the stud as a broken-down race horse was one of many brilliant feats which attested the seeming wizardry of Hildreth's horsemanship. Another was the transforming of Ocean Bound from a filly thought to be hopelessly lame into a winner of the Spinaway Stakes at Saratog, within three weeks. Knowledge of the horse's foot and how to shoe it accounted for this memorable triumph.
Infinite pains on the part of the trainer and his helpers in caring for Grey Lag had much to do with his return to the turf. Credit for this and for the splendid campaigns of Fitz Herbert, McChesney, King James, Hourless, Novelty, Stromboli, Mad Hatter, Lucullite, Friar Rock, and Dalmatian Hildreth always freely shared with his carefully chosen and well-paid grooms. His eternal vigilance and his rare ability accurately to appraise the racing capacity of his own horses and those competing with them were among the secrets of his unsurpassed success.
He died at the Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York after a surgical operation.
Swarthy of complexion, and always with the sharp, alert expression of a sentry on guard in the enemy's country, yet genial and kindly in countenance and manner when not aroused, Hildreth on the race track looked the part of a twentieth-century quarterhorse turfman.
Connections
Hildreth married, in 1892, Mary Ellen Cook, of Saratoga Springs, New York.