MINEOLA FARM HISTORY AND GENEALOGY

Mineola Farm is currently owned and operated by Mineola Farm II, LLC, whose managing member is Jack G. Jones, Jr.  Jack is a fourth generation horseman whose maternal great grandfather was John Smith Barbee, who began breeding and raising thoroughbred horses prior to 1900, in 1902 acquired  Caveland Farm in Clark County, Kentucky, and later began Glen Helen Stud in Lexington, Kentucky.

Glen Helen Stud was located, in its heyday, about eight miles from Lexington on the Iron Works Pike between the Newtown and Georgetown Pikes and just opposite what was then Walnut Hall farm.  Presently what was previously Glen Helen Stud is encompassed by Spindletop.  Glen Helen Stud was owned by John Smith and Kate Haymaker Barbee.

John Smith Barbee was born on December 14, 1865 in Scott County, Kentucky.  He was the son of George L. Barbee.  John S. Barbee had a brother, Richard Carroll Barbee, who was a Fayette County horseman.  John S. Barbee had a second brother, William H. Barbee, who was, for 20 some odd years, a member of the Georgetown city council.  Mr. John Smith Barbee was once described as having been “one of the most widely known breeders of thoroughbred race horses in America.”

On January 11, 1888 John S. Barbee married Kate Haymaker.  John S. Barbee was the great-grandson of Fielding Bradford of Lexington and then, subsequently, of Georgetown, Kentucky through Fielding Bradford’s son, Nathaniel Barbee and his wife, Katherine Bradford Barbee, both of Georgetown, Scott County, Kentucky.  Nathaniel and Katherine Barbee’s son, George Lewis Barbee, and his wife, Eleanor F. Poindexter Barbee, of Georgetown, Scott County, Kentucky were John S. Barbee’s parents.  Fielding Bradford and his brother, John Bradford were Kentucky’s first newspaper editors and printers.

John Bradford, who was born in 1749 in Fauquier County, Virginia, published, in Lexington, with his brother, Fielding Bradford, the state’s first newspaper, The Kentucky Gazette.  The Kentucky Gazette was the only record of early Lexington and Kentucky history for the area west of the Alleghenies.  In 1786 Fielding and John Bradford sent to Philadelphia for a printing press and supplies.  Some think it was Fielding who actually carried the first press and supplies back to Kentucky.  On August 11, 1787 the first issue of The Kentucky Gazette was distributed to Bluegrass pioneers.  It was published until 1837 and again from about 1890 until 1902.  The site of the first printing house was at what is now the intersection of Main Street and Broadway in Lexington.  (It is noted that “The Gazette”, the first newspaper in New York, was printed by William Bradford who came to America from Yorkshire with Penn on the ship “Welcome”). 

William Bradford also printed the first book in New York.  Andrew Bradford, possibly a relative of William Bradford, was, in 1735, both a publisher and the postmaster in Philadelphia.

John Bradford

Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Bradford were competitors in the publishing business and reportedly Bradford refused to permit Franklin to mail his publications.  Thus, the name Bradford was very prominent in early journalistic endeavors in America.

The ancestry of Fielding and John Bradford begins, in America, with John Bradford (born in 1688 probably in Scotland and died in 1748 in Prince William County, Virginia) who came to America.  John Bradford married about 1710 to Mary Marr (born in Lancaster, Virginia) who was the daughter of John Marr from Prince William County, Virginia, and his wife, Elizabeth Nector.  John Bradford and Mary Marr produced Daniel Bradford (born 1723 and died April 25, 1800).  Daniel Bradford married Alice Morgan, daughter of Charles Morgan.  Daniel Bradford and Alice Morgan were the parents of the John Bradford and Fielding Bradford the original publishers of The Kentucky Gazette.

est American trotting horses.  Later, Barbee increased the size of Glen Helen Stud when he purchased from Mr. R. K. Lewis, at $135 per acre, approximately 100 additional adjoining acres on the Ironworks Pike.

On January 12, 1921 John and Kate Haymaker Barbee’s daughter, Helen Barbee, married E. Gay Drake.  That union produced Helen Barbee Drake Jones (Mrs. Jack Goble Jones, Sr.), who was born in 1923.  In 1929, E. Gay Drake purchased the present continuous site of Mineola Farm on the Bryan Station Road, which was part of the rich grass lands of over a thousand acres previously owned by Hon. S. L. Van Meter.  The paramount feature of this property was not its stock, but the blue grass itself.  Nine tenths of the blue grass seed raised in the world came from the original thousand acre tract.  Mineola Farm was named for Mr. Drake’s foundation mare, Mineola, who was given the name of a Native American Indian princess.  Mr. and Mrs. Drake spent nearly four years until 1933, restoring the property before moving onto and operating Mineola Farm.

and 25 “sucklings” valued at $50,000.  During that same evaluation 400 of the farm’s 433 acres were valued at $200,000. Barbee and Chinn also had property in Florida.  At the time Chinn acquired Glen Helen Stud he had about 2,400 Bluegrass acres under his supervision.  Subsequently, title to the former Glen Helen Stud was acquired by W.R. Coe and his wife, Caroline of Cody, Wyoming. The Ironworks Pike Glen Helen Stud farm was sold to W. R. Coe and renamed Shoshone Stud.  On September 7, probably about 1925 but this date is unsure,  Mrs. Miles Frank (Pansie) Yount of Beaumont, Texas paid $400,000 for W. R. Coe’s Shoshone Stud farm.  The farm was purchased in nine tracts. The purchase price of the 836.28 total acres constituted $478.30 per acre.  Glen Helen Stud’s home site and land eventually became Spindeltop Hall and farm.

Sweep died in 1936 at the age of 24.  He was considered the second of the greatest progenitors of the Ben Brush-Bonnie Scotland line.  Broomstick was considered the first greatest progenitor of the Ben Brush-Bonnie Scotland line.

Sweep had only been sold once at public auction, that having happened on September 2, 1913 in New York’s Madison Square Garden at the Kentucky Sale Company estate dispersal of the Castleton (now Castleton-Lyons) Farm horses owned by the late Mr. Jas. R. Keene whose Castleton Farm was closely located on the Ironworks Pike to Glen Helen Stud.  Sweep was then purchased for  $17,500 by John S. Barbee, Dr. Carrick (his home was what is now Carrick Place on North Limestone in Lexington, Kentucky), Kinsey Stone and Charles W. Moore.  Later Stone and Moore sold their interests in Sweep to Barbee and Carrick.  Sweep won stakes purses totaling $63,498.  Sweep was considered to have almost perfect conformation.  He always ran in the money, having started fourteen times, winning nine races, running second twice and third three times.  He was very successful at stud and in 1928 was the leading sire of the year.  In 1922 he sired the highest priced yearling at the Saratoga yearling sales.  A colt by Sweep out of Ballet Girl brought $21,000 and was purchased by J. S. Cosden.  Sweep, who was foaled in 1907 had won the 1910 Belmont Stakes in 2:22 against his sole competitor, Duke of Ormonde.  Sweep who had been foaled and raised on Glen Helen Stud was sired by Kentucky Derby Winner Ben Brush and was out of a Domino mare, Pink Domino.  Sweep sired three daughters each of whom foaled a Kentucky Derby winner.  Those Kentucky Derby winners were Bubbling Over, War Admiral and Whirlaway.  War Admiral and Whirlaway were Triple Crown winners.  The pedigrees of Forward Pass, Alydar, Princess Turia and T.V. Lark trace back to Sweep’s daughter Washoe Bell.  The pedigrees of Grey Flight and Native Dancer trace back to Sweep’s daughter LaChica.  The lines of Mr. Prospector and Northern Dancer come from Native Dancer.

Lightning struck a barn on Glen Helen Stud and instantly killed Brummel, a famous English racing sire who was valued at $40,000 to $50,000.  Two stalls away, Sweep, the top sire of 1928 and for which $100,000 had been refused, had not even been shocked.  Brummel was owned by John S. Barbee and Brownell Combs.  Brummel, who Barbee had imported from England, had won 8 of 21 races and had placed second 6 times.  At one point the stallions Sweep, Belloc, Granite, Imp Frizzle and Tea Caddy who reportedly “won fame and fortune on the turf” successfully stood at stud at Glen Helen.  Sweep was especially highly regarded.

Glen Helen Stud was not immune to tragedy.  Once a barn fire of undetermined origin claimed the lives of seven thoroughbred weanlings.  Approximately forty tons of hay and straw fueled the flames.  The fire was discovered by passing motorists and the farm employees, who were at dinner when the fire was first seen, managed to save nine colts who had also been in the ill-fated barn.  The seven horses that perished were valued at $40,000.

In his career Barbee had traveled extensively.  He traveled to Berlin, Germany and shipped sixty-two horses belonging to President Catesby Woodford of the Kentucky Association there with him to be sold at Hoppergarten.  Phil Chinn and Peter Wimmer traveled with him.  In a post card he described Berlin as being “a beautiful city of two and a half million and the best dressed crowd you ever saw at the races.”  He reported having dinner with Gene Leigh whose horse had won “the principal steeplechase of the day Sunday, worth $7,500.”  After having sold horses at Saratoga he traveled to Wisconsin to fish.  Mr. Barbee and R. L. Carrick, another Bluegrass horse breeder, and A. L. Ashe of New York, the owner of Ten Point who ran second in the 1913 Kentucky Derby, traveled to Havana, Cuba.

At Saratoga Barbee sold the highest priced horse of the evening when his Sweep out of Iridescence colt was sold to S.C. Hildreth for $7,000.  That evening 35 yearlings sold for a total amount of $60,200 for an average of $1,720 a head.  Barbee’s eight consigned horses that evening sold for $17,150 or over $2,143 a head.

Barbee’s Glenn Helen Stud once sold seven head at the Powers-Hunter sale at Sheepshead Bay, New York for $9,350 or for an average of $1,335 per head.  This was extraordinary because the average price for the sale was $733.  During this sale of 57 horses total, John Oliver Keene (a cousin of John Smith Barbee), the trainer and founder of Keeneland, partnered with John E. Madden of Hamburg Place to purchase, using Madden’s capital, Hon. Johnson N. Camden’s entire string of horses in training, which Keene had previously trained.  Barbee also sold the top-priced yearling at this sale when his bay colt by Peep o’ Day out of My Gyps sold for $3,000.

Barbee was the first prominent breeder to choose not to sell his yearlings at Saratoga, but instead, to sell them in Kentucky through a local sales company during the spring meeting of the Kentucky Racing Association.  He believed that the revival of racing in Kentucky would create a renewed yearling market here, would relieve yearlings of having to endure the long, dangerous and often injuring journey to Saratoga and would lure Eastern buyers to Lexington for the sale.

The old Kentucky Association, which operated from 1826 until 1933, ran the John S. Barbee dedicated Kentucky Derby prep race at one mile and seventy yards.  Apparently this was a highly regarded race because when Jefferson Livingston’s English colt Royal II won the race reportedly many persons believed they had just seen the winner of the Kentucky Derby which was scheduled to be run in two weeks after the Barbee prep race.  John S. Barbee gifted and presented a cup to Livingston in commemoration of Royal II’s win.

 The Barbees eventually owned 458.9 acres on the Russell Cave Pike which they called Glen Helen Stud.  Harry B. Scott managed this farm.  Eventually, about 1930, John Barbee, being in ill health, decided to retire after approximately 40 years in the thoroughbred business. In early January of 1930, Harry B. Scott and John S. Barbee entered into an agreement whereby Scott assumed complete control of Glen Helen Stud.  Scott had previously been associated with Col. Phil Chinn.  Scott’s father, Dan W. Scott, had owned and operated Arrow Point Stock Farm at Pine Grove.  Scott had charge of more than a hundred horses quartered on Glen Helen.  Barbee reportedly intended to take a long rest and spend the remainder of the winter in Florida.

Barbee sold 258.9 acres of the 458.9 acres of Glen Helen Stud and an eight room residence on the Russell Cave Pike to Covington, Kentucky dentist Dr. E. R. Plunkett .  Horse trainer Joe Chinn acted as agent for Dr. Plunkett in the transaction.  Mr. Joe Houston would continue operation of the remaining 200 acres of Glen Helen Stud.  Ultimately,  the remaining 201.791 acres of  the Barbee Russell Cave Road farm were sold to W. E. Penn and Frank Penn, two of the largest Fayette County tobacco growers generally conducting their operations in the Jack’s Creek Pike area.  The Penn brothers paid $32,285.65 or $160 per acre for the land.  The previous year the Penn Brothers had sold the largest single consignment of burley ever sold on a loose leaf market when they sold nearly 141,000 pounds of tobacco for approximately $28,000.  At some point allegedly Douglas Davis owned and moved his Bourbon County High Hope Farm (the High Hope Steeplechase was named for this farm) operation to what had previously been the Glen-Helen land on Russell Cave Pike.

In August of 1932 the Thoroughbred Club and its guests and founders were photographed at Thomas Piatt’s Brookdale Farm.  Those photographed included, John S. Barbee, E. Gay Drake, Charles E. Thompson, Arthur Shutts, Fred A. Forsythe, Horace N. Davis, J. C. Milam, Sanford C. Lyne, Thomas Piatt, Howard Oots, Julius Bauer, Eugene B. Gorham, W. H. Young, Thomas B. Cromwell, Tom B. Young, Frank B. Jones, Robert M. Young, Jack G. Young, Dr. Charles E. Hagyard, H. Skillman Gorham, Andrew G. Leonard, Charles T. Asbury, Ken Walker, Neville Dunn, Steve Vaught, J. Berry Davis, Sam H. McCormick, Turner Milam, “Dud” Keiser, R. D. Prewitt, Jr., Robert Piatt, Samuel Look, Willie Lee Nutter, John W. Willmott, Harrie B. Scott, Thomas B. Carr, Harold Fallon, Brownie Leach, Richard Jones, Piatt Steele, Nat Pettit, and Thomas Carr Piatt.

John S. Barbee, 72, died of a heart attack on February 23, 1938 at his home in Lexington, Kentucky.  He had been retired due to suffering from heart ailments.  He was survived by his wife, Kate Haymaker Barbee, a daughter Mrs. Ernest Gay (Helen Barbee) Drake and two granddaughters, (1) then Mrs. Ray (Catherine) Robinson of Louisville, Kentucky to become Mrs. Andrew (Catherine) Shaver (later had a daughter Jeannie Shaver Hyers Johnson who had two sons, Mark and Steve Hyers and four grandchildren, Dylan, Audrey, Page and Andrew Hyers); (2) Miss Helen Drake (eventually Mrs. Jack G. Jones, Sr. mother of Jack G. Jones, Jr., who has two children, Christopher William Drake Jones and Jamie Jones Culbreth, and has two grandchildren, Robert Drake Jones and William Howell Jones).

Kate Haymaker Barbee, widow of John S. Barbee, died in 1942 at the age of 82, at Mineola Farm in the home of her daughter, Mrs. E. Gay Drake in Lexington, Kentucky.   She was survived by her daughter (Mrs. E. Gay [Helen Barbee] Drake) and two granddaughters, Mrs. Andrew (Catherine Sheriff) Shaver and Mrs. Jack G.(Helen Barbee Drake) Jones, Sr.; and one great-granddaughter, Jeanne Barbee Shaver Hyers Johnson.

On October 16, 1941 Catherine Elizabeth Sheriff married, for a second time,  David Andrew Shaver, son of Mrs. Maud Shaver of Greenville, Kentucky.  The wedding took place at the home of the bride’s mother, Helen Barbee Sheriff Drake and step-father, E. Gay Drake, at Mineola Farm on the Bryan Station Road.  Mrs. Helen Barbee Drake (eventually, Mrs. Jack G. Jones, Sr.) was her ½ sister’s attendant.  The new couple resided at 1333 Castlewood Avenue in Louisville, Ky. where the groom was affiliated with the General Baking Company of Louisville.  Mr. Shaver later would move with his family to Mineola Farm in 1948 and manage Mineola Farm for Mr. Drake until 1964.

This custom built horse van for Mineola Stud is one of the first horse vans ever used.  (Year unknown.)

On April 12, 1942 Helen Barbee Drake married Jack G. Jones, Sr. at Mineola Farm on the Bryan Station Road in Lexington, Kentucky.  Helen was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E. Gay (Helen Barbee) Drake.  Mr. Jones was the son of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Jones of Prestonsburg, Kentucky. Mr. Jones and his family would move to Mineola Farm in 1964 where he managed Mineola Farm until his death in 2002.

On July 18, 1942 Jeanne Barbee Shaver Hyers Johnson was born at Baptist Hospital in Louisville, Ky. to Mr. and Mrs. David Andrew (Catharine Elizabeth Sheriff) Shaver.  On September 29, 1945, Jack G. Jones, Jr. was born at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky to Mr. and Mrs. Jack G. (Helen Barbee Drake) Jones, Sr.

Mr. Drake’s operation of Mineola Farm produced a number of top stakes horses, including War Censor (winner of 23 races and $519,660), Quick Swoon, Swoonland, Quick Fare, Swoonaway, Swoonalong, Dog Classic, Air Sailor, Sweep Like, Susceptible, Roman Numerals, Social Registry, Maribold, Courtesy Title, Kaye’s Commander, Cape Ludtke, Bold Roman, Lynn Davis, Imp Society, Dumtadumtadum, to name just a few.  Besides Swoon’s Son and Dogoon which stood at stud at Mineola Farm, so did Air Sailor and Sweep Like, who both tragically were killed by lightning and are buried on Mineola Farm.

The Epsom Derby - 1980

After 1974, when Mrs. Jack G. Jones, Sr. took over the reins, she continued to breed, raise and race top thoroughbred horses.  Probably one of  the best horses bred and raised by Mrs. Jones was Henbit, a son of *Hawaii out of Chateaucreek, born in 1977.  Henbit was purchased as a yearling in 1978 by George Blackwell for Madame Plesch, who sent him to Dick Hern in England to be trained and raced.  Henbit became the champion 3-year-old in England in 1980 where he won the Epsom Derby (the race after which the Kentucky Derby was patterned and named).  Henbit also won the Chester Vase and the Classic Trial Stakes prior to winning the Epsom Derby in 1980.  Henbit was retired to stud in Ireland in 1981.  Mrs. Jones also bred among other notable graded, group and stakes winners, Fantastic Fellow, Dazzle Me, Social Registry, Two Ninety Jones, and Tudor Velvet (which she bred, raised and raced before retiring her to the broodmare band at Mineola Farm).