Abraham Crum Speck

Jockey at the Saratoga Springs Race Track.

George’s father, Abraham Speck, was “a well known deformed colored man,” injured in a childhood riding accident.

But that injury didn’t stop Abraham from getting into a lot of fights. From 1830 on, he was convicted of assault and battery a dozen times. The worst incident came in 1844, when it sounds as though he actually took a shot at a local tax assessor who had put a school tax levy on Abraham’s property. The incident got him sent to Sing-Sing Prison for a ten-year sentence (where he appears in the 1850 Census), but in 1851, he was pardoned by the Governor.