Yo Tambien - California Background

California Background

Theodore Winters was one of the foremost horsemen who founded Thoroughbred racing and breeding in California. Like almost everyone, Winters had gone west because of the California Gold Rush. Once there, he made his money as a businessman and by dealing in gold mining stock. Besides owning a huge spread near the present town of Winters in Yolo County, California, called Rancho del Arroyo, he also owned another California farm on the banks of the Sacramento River near Sacramento called Rancho del Rio. On Rancho del Rio, he kept his best stallion, Norfolk, by the great stallion Lexington.

Meanwhile, in the 1870s, the founder of California's first sporting paper, the "Breeder and Sportsman" Joseph Cairn Simpson had also come west, bringing a few horses with him. The best one was his homebred Illinois mare called Marian. To help finance his newspaper venture, Simpson sold Marian to "Black T" Winters. (Simpson eventually organized the Pacific Coast Blood Horse Association as well as becoming a founding member of the National Trotting Association.) For years, Winters bred Norfolk to Marian, and almost every one of their ten foals proved exceptional, two among them in particular, Emperor of Norfolk and El Rio Rey. But when Norfolk grew too old, Winters put Marian to a California-bred horse he owned called Joe Hooker, also a tail-line descendent of Lexington. Joe Hooker had, as well, the distinction of being a half-brother to the racing mare Mollie McCarty.