Charles Reed is Now a Pigeon Fancier: Famous Fairview Farm from Which Came Fleet Foaled Horses the Nesting Place of Birds, Daily Racing Form, 1906-01-16

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CHARLES REED IS NOW A PIGEON FANCIER. Famous Fairviow Farm From Which Came Fleet Foaled Horses the Nesting Place of Birds. "Fnlrvicw, with Its ninny memories of ante-bellum racing, and later the home of St. Blaise, Exile, Highlander, etc., after a few years of quiet, has taken on new life," writes a correspondent from Gallatin, Tonn., to the Morning Telegraph. "Near the paddocks, where Yorkville Belle and Dobbins spent their early days, are heard the sound of the hammer and the curt orders of the Master of Fair-view to a large force of artisans. The sounds would cause one to think that again the roomy Ileitis of Idue grass were to he occupied by the light-footed, clean-limbed thoroughbred matron, whose duty would lie to send her offspring to the great races of the cast, hut not so. "The writer fears it may lie some time liefore such horses may people the three hundred big box stalls, thatthe hundreds of acres of luxuriant Idue grass will go untouched by the descendants of the Dycrly Tuck and the Godolphln Arab. Instead, Charles Heed is going in for pigeons, those in the lirst light, too, of course carriers. The old, big, circular sales ring, near the massive granite tomb of the befo the wah racing man, Isaac Franklin, is. being rapidly transformed from its original shape into the largest bird cage we of .Sumner County have ever seen. In each of lis forty stalls is being put thirty small boxes for nests, and the work does not stop there, for the roomy loft is having its partitions of wire screens put up to give an equal number of rooms and nests above. Over the open center a covering of wire netting is being put In position, and when this is done the cage will be complete, save for the birds. ".Mr. Iieed leaves soon for Brussels, where he proposes to get some twenty-live hundred pigeons for this corking big house. While in Belgium he also proposes to procure a stock of the rabbit of that country, which outclasses quite a bit our native cottontail. "Then, too, 200 acres of these, paddocks of blue grass are to lc put into tobacco, paddocks which we older natives have held a bit sacred to the memory of Trouble and Disturbance, those chasers of an ohler- day. "When asked about horses now the old gentleman replies that he knows nothing of such stupid beasts, that for- him there is no other life than that of the rollicking farmer bold. "On the day we saw all these changes in this good old stud farm we also saw the varnished and -embalmed lower foreleg and foot of Mr. Pickwick, as it stands on the mantel of the billiard room. Our fancy may be wrong, but we thought we noticed a beginning of decay, a turning of that good, fast foot to dust, so much does this remnant of the son of Hermit resent the sacrilege of present changes."


Persistent Link: https://drf.uky.edu/catalog/1900s/drf1906011601/drf1906011601_4_1
Local Identifier: drf1906011601_4_1
Library of Congress Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/unk82075800