A youthful Joseph B. Thomas at Huntland / Courtesy of Karen L. MyersJoseph B. Thomas, MFH came to Middleburg, Virginia via Boston and New York in the early part of the twentieth century and built Huntland—house, stables, and kennels. Thomas was a founding member of the American Foxhound Club, Master of the Piedmont Fox Hounds, and author of Hounds and Hunting Through the Ages, the first comprehensive book on hunting with hounds ever written by an American.
Thomas became the largest breeder of foxhounds for mounted packs in North America and helped to define the American foxhound breed. He has been a subject of great interest to all serious scholars of North American foxhunting, and much has been written about him. However, available images of Thomas (and his famous huntsman Charlie Carver) to grace all that published text have been sparse.
Now, just in time for the present owner and restorer of Huntland, Dr. Betsee Parker, to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of her famous home, we have a treasure trove of recently discovered old photographs of Thomas, Carver, hounds, and kennels.
The photographs will assist Parker in her restoration work, they give us a good look at the Thomas hounds, and they bring Thomas and Carver to life for those that admire their contributions to foxhunting in America. I keep thinking how excited my old friend, the late scholar/historian Alexander Mackay-Smith, would have been to see them.
Courtesy of Karen L. MyersThe photographs were uncovered by David Zincavage, longtime collector of sporting books and ephemera. Zincavage is the husband of photographer Karen Myers. (Click to see the entire photo essay on Karen’s website.) Through Ebay, Zincavage makes it a practice to arrange for automated daily searches of geographic localities of interest to him and Karen. When the couple moved to Virginia, David added a variety of local Virginia-oriented searches. One of those searches turned up a seller offering photographs from old newspaper archives that he was selling individually.
“I arranged to buy all the photos on the basis that the seller would be obliged to furnish all available information as well,” recalled Zincavage. “Many of the photos had some sort of caption, often identifying one of more persons.
“Just think how many similar groups of pictures of the famous sportsmen of the days of yore...are probably still lurking around out there yet to be discovered!” said Zincavage.
Posted September 11, 2011
Joseph B. Thomas’s book, Hounds and Hunting Through the Ages is available in the FHL Bookstore.
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