----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Thomas Katheder" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 7:41 PM
Subject: [VA-HIST] Book Announcement: "The Baylors of Newmarket: The Decline 
and Fall of a Virginia Planter Family"


> Following is a shameless self-promotion for my book, "The Baylors of
> Newmarket: The Decline and Fall of a Virginia Planter Family," which is
> available from www.amazon.com <http://www.amazon.com/> .
>
>
>
> In June 1764, a British merchant ship stuffed with luxury goods sailed up
> the muddy Rappahannock River to deliver its precious cargo to Virginia
> planters. None was more anxious for the ship's arrival than Col. John 
> Baylor
> III (1705-1772), the proud owner of the most expensive and fragile 
> property
> on board: Fearnought, a strikingly beautiful bay thoroughbred that had 
> cost
> him 1,000 guineas-a staggering sum that was twice what he told his tobacco
> merchant to spend. No one in colonial America had ever paid anything close
> to that amount for a horse.
>
>
>
> Col. Baylor, the son of Virginia's largest slave trader, fell in love with
> thoroughbreds at Newmarket, England's fabled racing center, while he
> attended nearby Cambridge University. Returning to Virginia in the 1720s,
> Baylor named his 12,000-acre estate "Newmarket" after the racing course
> where he had spent so much of his time and money. Though he was 
> politically
> active in the House of Burgesses and in Caroline County where he lived,
> Baylor's dominant passion remained elite horseflesh, and he became one of
> the most important turfmen in eighteenth-century America. Col. Baylor's
> close friend and former military commander, George Washington, sent his
> mares to Baylor's legendary stud farm, and Thomas Jefferson's favorite 
> mount
> was a grandsire of Fearnought.
>
>
>
> Col. Baylor's bright but dreamy-headed son, John IV (1750-1808), also
> attended Cambridge, but was forced to end his studies early and return to
> Newmarket as his father lay dying in April 1772. Unhappy in Virginia, John
> Baylor IV returned to England to court his cousin Frances Norton, daughter
> of one of London's most successful tobacco merchants, and then embarked on 
> a
> mysterious sojourn in France, where he cavorted with American diplomats 
> and
> foreign spies-all while buying trunk loads of fine books that would become
> one of the largest and most important personal libraries in the 
> Chesapeake.
> Despite crushing debts, toward the end of his life John Baylor IV launched 
> a
> quixotic scheme to replace his home at Newmarket with what would have been
> the largest and most elegant private residence in America, which his
> detractors soon called "Baylor's Folly." Baylor's edifice of sublime 
> madness
> was never completed, and he died, a beaten and broken man, in the same
> debtor's prison his father helped build.
>
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
> Thomas Katheder
>
> P.O. Box 22671
>
> Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>
>
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