Dove Crag in the rugged Lake District of Cumbria, England

A sheep trod wove its way up the steep fell side, gaining height with an ease unmatched by any route a human could devise. Following it and climbing all the time I skirted small outcrops of rock, crossed a stream full of melt-snow water at the best point to do so, and finally arrived on the ridge. Stopping to catch my breath, for although the route to a sheep would have been easy this human was very unfit, I gazed at the view in front of me. My horizon was filled with snow covered peaks under a bright blue sky. Warm sunlight bathed the ridge and gave a small crag to my left a sharpness normally unseen.

The Coniston foxhounds had disappeared to god knows where, and had been gone for some time. I’d watched them climb the fell side I now stood on. It had been a beautiful sight as they climbed, in a line, like as someone put it “a hound trail.” Their music had carried down the valley, growing fainter as they crested the ridge and then as they dropped into the next valley it disappeared altogether, leaving an eerie silence.

Here is a concise history of foxhunting in North America from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, tracing the sport from its Colonial beginnings to organized foxhunting as we know it today. The work constitutes part of the first chapter in A Centennial View, published by the MFHA to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Association.

George Washington and Lord Fairfax hunting in the Shenandoah Valley

Hunting in the Colonies (1600s to 1775)
If you were a second son to a family of landed gentry living in the English countryside during the seventeenth or eighteenth century, you would have found your prospects considerably dimmer than those of your elder brother. Precluded, through the laws of primogeniture, from inheriting your father’s estate, you might have been tempted by land grants offered by the Colonial governors of Maryland or Virginia to emigrate, settle in the New World, and make your fortune there.

If you had an adventurous soul, you might have packed up your family, children, furniture, and, of course, a few of your foxhounds, and embarked on the voyage. Along with those tangible items, you would have brought your rural culture and a hunting heritage to these Provinces. By carrying on your habitual pursuits, you would make Maryland and Virginia the cradle of North American foxhunting.

It began with a subscriber’s question. Vicki Reeves wrote, “A friend inherited some hunt buttons which have a hunting horn on them and "M.B.H. 1881." How can I find out what hunt they represent or any additional information about the buttons?”

Foxhunting Life was able to identify the buttons as those of the Meadow Brook Hunt (NY). Once that was established, the owner of the buttons, Connie Rhodes West from Tampa, Florida was able to surmise the likely provenance of the buttons back through family history. Her story was so interesting, and the chronicle of the fabled Meadow Brook Hunt is so extravagant, we thought our readers would enjoy a trip back to those bygone days.

A thick mist descended upon Red ScreesAs reported by The Westmorland Gazette, April 14, 1900

On Monday the meeting of the Coniston Foxhounds was at Grove farm. Hounds got upon a drag close to the farm and carried it up Martindale Pasture, by Hind Cove, to Troutbeck Hundreds. Here a fox was unkennelled, which went across Woundale Bottoms, crossed the Kirkstone Road, and climbed up Brow End Allotment. Climbing along the top to Woundale Head, he made a sharp turn to the left, and came down behind Kirkstone House. He now crossed the road at the Ullswater side of the Pass, near the Kirk Stones, and scrambled up the sides of Red Screes.