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] ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html