Essay: Jack Bentley on Brooke foxhounds, undated

The history of the Maryland Fox hunt would be incomplete without some notice of the great work done by Dr Wm Hardey & his brother who at the age of 79 still rides on an all day fox hunt. These gentlemen who reside a few miles from the Carrollton Manner & the Gosnell plantation from their earliest childhood have kept the best hounds. Mr Gosnell bred to the Hardey dogs & Mr Hardeys to the Gosnell's dogs visa versa. Mr John Hardey's dogs are perhaps the most carefully bred & more resemble the Gosnell dogs than any Maryland dogs. The Griffiths father & son life long fox hunt enthusiasts & carefull fox hound breeders The father although seventy five years is still intensely interested in hounds. The hound Bille who bred by Thomas Griffith Sr has an ancient & honorable lineage was the Dam of Brookes Barney whose sire Roger Brookes Sport was a most beautiful hound. with the confirmation of the best race horse was the

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The Maryland hound like most satisfactory things has been the result of Evolution. The hound of to day in this state is the only hound which can sucessffully hunt the Maryland fox in his chosen ground. The counties of Harford, Baltimore Howard Montgomery & Carroll are preeminently the natural home of the red fox. these counties have a network of rivers cutting their way to the sea through rocky bluffs whose banks are densely covered with Ivy the outer timber above the bluffs being often Heavy Falls and a majority of the river country is still heavy woodland. These rocky bluffs abound in deep dens in which his foxship is safe from hound or hunter. The Ivy Creeks as they are called require a high wirey dog

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a tail & at last with [Exaflu...] a dead loss. About 1812 Mr Bolton Jackson a former fox hunter of Maryland sent to Ireland and in fact a pr of hounds & after a few years they fell into the hands of Col Stuart Ridgely a fine old Maryland gentleman whose far reaching hospitality and great horsemanship are still characteristics of his decendants in this state. These hounds Mountain & Muse were given to Governor Ogle of Bell Air bred to the Irish stock about 1832 who was impressed with their excellence he bred them pure & from his pack came the great hounds Old Mountain & Sofey she was such a noted hound it is said her portrait was published in the Turf Register of that day. So Old Mountain was presented to Mr Carroll of Carrollton Superior were these hounds for chasing the red fox that every fox hunter in this part of Maryland promptly bred their bitches to the Ogle

Hounds have been kept in the Brooke family nearly up to the present time Roger Brookes hounds in 1824 had a national reputation as sires as proved by this account taken from the Maryland Farmer of 1824.

The Brooke pack produced some magnificent hounds probably the most noted was a hound afterwards known as Brookes' Barney. This hound was bred to by more than 10 masters of packs and was given to Admiral James E Jouett a devoted fox hunter to be sent to [Rentechey] at the grand age of 12 years.

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pack and other Irish hounds were unfotted but none equaled that particular in [] These Irish dogs (whose ancestors had hunted the red fox in very much such a country as Maryland & in very much the same fashion of hunting by their master in Ireland as was practied by thie Old Maryland fox hunters.) could get upon even terms with the heretofore impossible red fox at once, not so much by their speed as by their fox sense, Especially Exemplified in this tremendous casting ahead at losses frequently going more on a loss than had they continued in the line. They had shrill choppy note short Ears as compaired to the old Irish fox hound large prominent dark Eyes were Dapled in color & her rough course heavy coats which helpped them greatly in the dense Cover they often had to go through in the race! Among a number of hunters who had used descendants of old Mountain can be noted such familys as the Hardeys of Howard Co. The Brookes & Griffiths of Montgomery