Horses that are raised specifically for racing today lead pretty pampered lives. They practice, are well-fed and groomed and get the kind of health care many of us humans might be envious of.

Lady Upton was not a pampered racehorse. She was owned by Caldwell Chamberlain and lived on his farm in the hamlet of Mount Upton. She was named after the hamlet.

Lady Upton led an interesting life, not to mention a very long one, as she died at 43 in 1907. According to the Circle R Ranch website, an average lifespan of a horse is 20 to 25 years.

What was unusual about Lady Upton is she wasn’t meant to be a racehorse. Chamberlain worked her all day in the field, at first. It wasn’t until a chance race on the frozen Unadilla River around the time of the Civil War that her speed was viewed with any kind of interest.

Lady Upton could easily beat all local horses, so Chamberlain began thinking of her possibilities as a racehorse.

So there were many days she would work all day in the field and then was driven to Morris, where she would be entered in races and win or be highly competitive with the professional racers.

As she won more and aged a bit, she was used only for lighter farm work and to pull carriages. Records showed that at age 15, while many horses were being put out to pasture, Lady Upton won at the Whitney Point Fair, in a time of 2:16.

Lady Upton had no pedigree. The day she was taken from a farmer to redeem a note, Chamberlain thought he had purchased a farm colt. He knew that she had been foaled in Guilford, and that her sire was a little-known Canadian horse named General Grant. Her mother was a farm mare named Nancy and was of obscure antecedents.

Walter Jewell eventually became Lady Upton’s trainer. By reading local historians’ accounts, Jewell said there was always a day’s work on a hayrake before a race. "She wasn’t pampered, and before a race she would be loaded into a box car (railroad) and taken perhaps 500 miles to some track, where she would make her 2:16 speed. She was a great horse," Jewell said.

"And that speed was made with a high-wheeled sulky," Jewell added. "Lady Upton was never hitched to one of those bicycle-wheeled carts in her life." [an error occurred while processing this directive]