We at the Antebellum Turf Times wish our readers the most blessed of Thanksgiving holidays.

 

We are thankful for the wealth of thoroughbred racing tales that keep our publication in existence — and eternally grateful to our predecessors at the local newspapers and turf journals, who painstakingly recorded these histories for posterity.

Thank you, John Stuart Skinner, for being the first to recognize the importance of “a repository in this country, like the English Sporting Magazine, to serve as an authentic record of the performances and pedigrees of the bred horse,” through the launch of your American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine in 1829.  The Turf Register was an expansion of Skinner’s popular “Sporting Olio” column on racing and other field sports that was featured in his first publication, American Farmer.

And as we sit down to enjoy our holiday feasts, we can recall the following trivia unearthed from the archives of the New Orleans Picayune; who else might be guilty of the same error as the “greedy Yankee” mentioned below?

Pumpkins.

The seeds of the pumpkin were first brought to this country from the Mediterranean, and planted at Rowley, Massachusetts.

Many a greedy Yankee has taken a good sized pumpkin pie in his hands, and walked straight through it the first snap he made, leaving nothing but the ends sticking out in his claws — and all without knowing or caring whether his favorite fruit was indigenous to the soil or no.

– The Picayune, 23 March 1837

Thank you, George Wilkins Kendall, founder & editor of The Picayune, for this newsworthy item — and for your spirited coverage of the New Orleans races.

 

Quote pertaining to the American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine from its first issue, v. 1, no. 1 (September 1829): 1.