Family C-12: Contessa

The Contessa family had a burst of brilliance at the beginning of the twentieth century, and then subsided into quiescence, producing minor winners for almost one hundred years until AJC Newmarket Handicap winner Swiftly Ann (1972, by Swiftly Morgan), emerged to win eighteen races and the goodly sum of Au$77,130 in her turf career. Her grandson, Hobartville Stakes winner Swiftly Carson (1985, by Luskin Star) and the offspring of his two unraced sisters, Pride of Tahnee (1984, by Best Western) and Traffic Watch (1991 by Salieri) have revitalized the family with high-class runners, one of which, the good racemare Lashed, recently began her career as a broodmare.

The family extends back to a mare by Herald, who arrived in Australia in 1827, imported by the Australian Agricultural Company. The A.A. Company was formed to encourage development and investment in New South Wales, in which shareholders were granted a million acres of land by the British government for a nominal 1s.6d/acre fee and would invest in imported livestock. Herald was used as a stallion at the company's leased property, The Retreat, at South Creek, and died a year after his arrival, so his unnamed daughter in this pedigree would date to 1828. The Herald mare, was bred to the important early stallion Rous' Emigrant, who stood at the Bungarribee stud near The Retreat. It is probable the Herald mare was sold, in foal, at the short-lived A.A. company's dispersal sale in 1834, to Captain John Macarthur, a military officer who had a significant influence on the economic development of New South Wales and on the bloodstock industry. Iris, by Rous' Emigrant, was born in 1834 at Macarthur's Camden Park Stud at Camden, likely the most significant thoroughbred nursery in the country at the time; ultimately Macarthur's holdings at Camden encompassed over 60,000 acres in grants and purchases.

Macarthur died the year Iris was born, and Camden Park's operations were assumed by his sons, James, William and Edward. The brothers imported thoroughbreds and purchased high-class native-bred and imported horses for Camden Park Stud; the arabian Satellite, that had been imported from Madras (India) in 1822, stood at Camden Park for some years, where he got Iris' daughter, Messenger (1845). Both Iris and Messenger were sold in March of 1858 in an unreserved sale at Camden Park. Messenger became the property of J. King Lethbridge, whose colonist father, Robert, settled at Werrington, near Sydney, while her daughter, an unnamed filly by Euclid, born around 1857 at Camden Park, was bought by Charles Grant Tindal, who had purchased the Clarence River station Ramornie, at Copmanhurst in 1852 (over a decade after the notorious massacre of Aborigines there).

Imported Pitsford, a winner of the 2,000 Guineas, stood at Ramornie, where he got some good racehorses and proved to be an excellent broodmare sire; taproot mare Beatrice (Family C-24) was one of his daughters. When the Euclid filly was put to the native-born Gemma-di-Vergy (imported in utero in 1863, later also dam's sire of Heris (Family C-14) and Myrtle (Family C -15)) , she dropped Contessa (1869), for whom this family is named.

Contessa became a broodmare in the Biraganbil stud of Richard Rouse, Jr., located on the vast acreage of Biraganbil station at Mudgee, near Gulgong. There she produced eight colts and three fillies. Her daughter, Marvelette (1886, by Marvellous), bred at Biraganbil, was the mare to establish the racing excellence of the family at the turn of the twentieth century, with four superior stakes winners. The family recently re-emerged from relative obscurity in Western Central NSW with such horses as the popular Australian gelding Shogun Lodge (1996) and his half-brothers, and the good Australian-bred/New Zealand-owned mare Lashed (1999).

Notable Descendants