Dr. Elisha Warfield

Dr. Elisha Warfield. His name having wafted down through history as The Father of the Kentucky Turf, Dr. Elisha Warfield had the overriding distinction of having been the breeder of the stallion Lexington. Depicted elsewhere in this park, Lexington was a bellwether individual among 18th Century American Thoroughbreds. A champion on the race track, first racing for Dr. Warfield and afterward for new owner Richard Ten Broeck, Lexington proceeded to lead the national list of sires a record 16 times. Dr. Warfield's family had come to Kentucky from Maryland and settled in Lexington when he was a child. He received a medical degree from Transylvania University in this city and before he was 30 had become a professor of surgery. He was a race horse owner as well by that time, and his blue and white silks were seen in Kentucky racing for more than a half-century. He was among charter members and a trustee of the Kentucky Association, which constructed a track in downtown Lexington in 1828. Racing was held at the track until its demise more than a century later, in 1933.