Family C-20: Sybil

This family is still active and successful, with two champion New Zealand fillies -- Let's Sgor (1987) and Spring Rain (1997) -- representing it within the last 15 years, both having won some races at Wellington, not far from the roots of their family line.

Like several other colonial families with New Zealand taproot mares, its origin traces back to a mare imported from New South Wales when British regiments were sent to New Zealand to secure land claims by early settlers. Its roots are firmly lodged in the rich farming Wanganui district of New Zealand, where a garrison was established to defend settlement disputed by the Maoris. The unknown imported mare produced a filly to the cover of Aether, the stallion brought to Wanganui by Henry Petre (originally named Petre in his honor as a director of the New Zealand Company, which established the settlement). Henry Petre (see Family C-17) brought both Aether and Riddlesworth to the Wellington area in 1843, the first thoroughbred stallions imported into New Zealand directly from Great Britain. Aether (1836), whose sire, St. Patrick, was a son of Walton, had been a fairly good stayer in England, winning Ascot's Albany Stakes, and second to Euclid in the Grand Duke Michael Stakes and the St. Leger Stakes. He spent a short time in New Zealand before being shipped off to New South Wales, where he did good stud duty, before being returned to New Zealand in the late 1850s.

This unnamed Aether mare was bred to Riddlesworth, who was at stud in Wellington until 1857, and in 1855 dropped Sybil for her breeder, Major William Rawson Trafford. The then-Lieutenant Trafford arrived in New Zealand from Sydney, Australia, with the 65th (2nd Yorkshire North Riding) Regiment of Foot in 1846, which was initially dispersed to Wahapu and Wellington, with headquarters at Auckland. The regiment's companies were dispatched to various locations in the North Island throughout its long service in New Zealand through 1865, notably the Battle of St. John's Wood, near Wanganui (July, 1847), and the Taranaki wars ("Second New Zealand War") of 1860-61. Trafford was at Wanganui in the Battle of St. John's Wood, and by the time the early race meetings were held at Wanganui in 1848-50, he was a captain, reputedly the best horseman of his time, winning races on the gelded Slipper. By 1860 Trafford was a major, commanding a small company consisting mostly of local militia at Wellington, and Sybil had passed into the hand of John Walker who settled at Wanganui and established the Aramoho Hotel north of it. Trafford also had an impact on colonial bloodlines as the owner of Sharkie (Family C - 17).

John Walker kept race meetings at Wanganui alive during the Maori uprisings, laying out a racetrack there and providing prize money. The great stallion Traducer, who changed hands many times, was owned by Walker and L. Daniell in the 1860s, and it was his early thoroughbred foals from the late '60s, such as Envy, Lurline and Defamation, that salvaged him from a life as a sire of half-breds at Wanganui. For Walker, Sybil bred four foals, two, Retribution (1863) and an unnamed chestnut colt (1864) by the Aether son St. Patrick, who had been bred while Aether was in Australia and imported into New Zealand, and two, Mystery Girl (1868) and Glenara (1870) by Peter Flat (1853, by Flatcatcher, imported to New Zealand by the Lee brothers from Great Britain in 1861). In 1874 Sybil dropped her last recorded foal, Young Sybil (1874, by Touchstone son Ravensworth (1860, imported to NZ 1865), brought into the Wairarapa, near Wellington by Richard Collins), for Charles Nairn and his brother, who established Pourerere, the first sheep station in Hawke's Bay and won many horseraces in meetings in the Hutt Valley and Waipureku in the 1850s and '60s.

Mystery Girl, bred by Walker, is the mare through which the family descends. She bred five foals between 1874 and 1880 for J.W. Jackson of Wanganui, a founder of the Taranaki Jockey Club. Jackson's stallion, Opawa, won the first two runnings of the Taranaki Cup (1876 and 1877), after traveling miles from Wanganui to New Plymouth for the race; in 1876 during the two-day meeting Opawa (by Ravensworth) won the Cup and three other races, a total of seven miles and five furlongs worth of racing. Opawa was the sire of Cheshire Lass (1876) and Conundrum (1879) from Mystery Girl, but it was Wairuareka (1880), by the Wanganui-based stallion The Painter (sire of the good race mare Denbigh that was later dam of the outstanding steeplechaser Moifaa), that briefly continued the family line.

After 1880 it was U. Marumaru, a Maori, who bred Mystery Girl's four additional foals. Rangipuhi (1887, by the Lord Clifden son Feve; imported to Auckland in 1875 by R. Fergusson) was a successful runner that won the 1894 Hawke's Bay Cup, and the WRC Handicap and WRC Thompson Handicap. Mystery Girl's daughter Muriwai (1888, by the Musket son Torpedo, imported from Australia by William Douglas to his Te Mahanga station at Hawke's Bay), was the mare that continued the family line, producing Miss Terina (1899), Canterbury Cup winner Apa (1902), and the good race mare and broodmare Equitas (1905, see below).

Notable Descendants