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Horses were just a normal part of Josephine Abercrombie's life growing up in Texas. At the age of seven, she was introduced to American Saddle Horses and as a young woman would become a record holder at Madison Square Garden for prizes won in a single season. The horse show circuit led her to major competitions in Louisville and Lexington, captivating her on her first visit to the Bluegrass in the 1940's. In 1949, she took an interest in thoroughbred racing and set up a racing syndicate involving her father, the late Houston oilman J. S. Abercrombie, an uncle and a couple of friends to purchase sales yearlings for training and racing. Doing quite well in racing, she and her father acquired a 1,348 acre farm in Woodford County, Versailles in 1952, establishing a thoroughbred-breeding farm and calling it "Pin Oak". This farm was the former Hartland Farm that had been owned by U. S. Senator Johnson Camden. Over the next 23 years the farm expanded to 3,100 acres, also becoming a farming operation, raising Simmental cattle, and growing tobacco, corn, hay, straw and asparagus. But horses were its mainstay. |
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