Tall Tales of the Track – Not Just Any Buggy Horse

Sometimes we find excellence in the most unexpected places

Roamer, the Hall of Fame sprinter and miler, came from the pairing of a blind mare and a teaser stallion, filling in because Runnymede’s primary stallion was himself blind as well.

John Henry defied the expectations of his own pedigree to win Horse of the Year twice and a slew of stakes races that sealed his place in the Hall of Fame.

For 1876 Kentucky Derby winner Vagrant, the stallion that gave rise to him and two other winners of the country’s most famous race was found not on the racetrack, but between the shafts of a buggy.

From Buggy to Breeding Shed

Virgil has not been an incapable racehorse. His sire, Vandal, had also produced the first Kentucky Oaks winner, Vinaigrette, and the first Preakness Stakes winner, Survivor, and later stood stud for breeder/owner Robert A. Alexander at his Woodburn Stud, where the famed Lexington also resided. Foaled in 1864, the colt was purchased by Milton Sanford, owner of New Jersey’s Preakness Stud, as a yearling and then sold again to Daniel Swigert and then Colonel R. W. Simmons, for whom Virgil raced on the flat and over the hurdles. After his racing career was done, Sanford once again took possession of Virgil and trained him to pull a buggy rather than keep him for stud duty.

Sanford’s lead stallion at Preakness Stud was Baywood, who had taken ill before the start of the 1872 breeding season. Rather than leave the mares, the stallion was to cover barren, Sanford substituted Virgil, a fortuitous decision – but not immediately. In fact, Sanford was so discouraged by the look of the resulting foals that he gave Virgil to turf writer and founder of the Thoroughbred Record, Benjamin Bruce. The writer had issues getting mares for the stallion and tried to sell him for $300 in 1873-1874. Then three of those 1873 foals hit the racetrack. 

Lazy, one of those mares Sanford had bred to Virgil, foaled a dark bay colt with a blazed face and four white stockings. Sold as a yearling to T.J. Nichols for $250, he was named Vagrant and then gelded and sent to the races. At two, he won three stakes at the Kentucky Association racetrack and then two more, the Belle Meade and the Sanford, at Churchill Downs. At three, he started the 1876 season with a win in the nine-furlong Phoenix Hotel Stakes at Lexington, earning him a trip to Louisville for the second edition of Churchill Downs’s newest star stakes, the Kentucky Derby. 

Gelded Greatness

Just two weeks before the 1876 Derby, scheduled for May 15, William Backhouse Astor, Jr., grandson of John Jacob Astor, spent $7,000 for the gelded son of Virgil, sending Vagrant to the post for the twelve-furlong stakes alongside a field of ten others. Included in that list was Parole, owned by Pierre Lorillard, who was considered the best two-year-old in the country on the strength of his stakes victories at Saratoga and Monmouth the year before. However, from the time the flag dropped, the race was all Vagrant.

Carrying only 97 pounds, including jockey Robert Swim, the gelded son of Virgil sat fourth early and then moved to the lead after six furlongs. At the finish line, he was the winner by two lengths, Parole fourth behind him. Second-place Creedmore reversed the order of finish in the Clark Stakes a week later. Vagrant then won the twelve-furlong Grand Exposition Stakes at Point Breeze Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

Vagrant’s later career appears to be bereft of highlights. He raced until age 10, starting 88 times over nine seasons, winning 20 and placing in 24 others. Later in his career, he joined the stable of James J. Blevins, a longtime New York owner of both Standardbreds and Thoroughbreds. Though he was nominated for several stakes over those later years, the 1876 Kentucky Derby winner had a nondescript final few seasons. As a gelding, though, a stud career was not in the cards for him, and aftercare organizations like Old Friends were a century away, so what happened to Vagrant after his racing career was done?

A Unique Finale

For his part, Virgil had a great finale to his life: after Vagrant hit, he also sired two other Kentucky Derby victors, Hindoo (1881) and Ben Ali (1886), and went on to remain part of the Preakness Stud even after Sanford sold the farm to Daniel Swigert, who then named it Elmendorf Farm. Virgil died there in 1886. 

As for Vagrant, rumor had it that he spent part of his post-racing years pulling a vegetable cart in the Lexington area, not unlike his sire’s time between the shafts of a buggy, and then as a riding horse for a Long Island woman, passing away in 1890. His may not have been the final years one might expect for a Derby winner, but certainly Vagrant’s story was a unique one.