Stable Boy to Star

I always loved harness racing and much admired Billy Haughton, one of the greatest drivers and trainers of all time.

He was born in the same town as I was and worked down here in Fonda and Fultonville as a boy.....went to the same school as the kids too.

 "For Haughton himself—a onetime $7-a-week stableboy from Fultonville, N.Y.—it is the good life: "..From An Emperor in Harness...

And from a 1986 Hoofbeats, "Billy Haughton was born November 2, 1923, in Gloversville, NY, the son of William F. and Edith Greene Haughton, and grew up in the nearby, small community of Fultonville. His love for horses was said to have come from one of his ancestors who emigrated to the United States from Ireland. Unofficially, Haughton's love affair with horses began with a pony named Betty which his father bought when Billy was five years old. Betty was hitched to a makeshift sulky fabricated from a basket cart, with Mrs. Haughton's pantry-shelf brackets serving as stirrups.

A few years later, Mr. Haughton bought a used, standard sulky, enabling Billy and his pony to imitate the full-sized horses and drivers racing at the Fonda, NY Fair, across the Mohawk River from Fultonville. In his early teens, Haughton groomed horses at the fairgrounds. Ironically, however, his first racing experience was as a thoroughbred jockey at the Fonda Fair. During his high school years, Haughton continued to work as a groom, then entered Cobleskill Agricultural College near Schenectady, NY, where he obtained a degree in animal husbandry."

He went on to do great things. A lot of them. Nice to think that this area produced such a great horseman.

The boss remembers him coming back to town to visit his mother, and has a plethora of stories about him growing up as his mom and dad knew him then.