1.Blueface Hatch story by: J.D Perry
Lum Gilmore got a cock from Ted McClean it was a smallstationed cock ran around Gilmore place for some time and there
Madigin's Texas Rangers did not contain any of the Joe Wingate brown Red blood. The Rangers do not come Brown Red, but dark black-reds with an iridescent green sheen and luster to the feathers on their backs when the sun shines on them. The hens are some crow black, some crow black with dark reddish hackles. All dark legs, all 100% straight combs. Modern BB Red Game. The Old English Game fowl have their origins almost with the beginnings of history. With the outlawing of cockfighting in England, the Pit Game was bred for exhibition. Modern Games were developed from the Old English and have an extremely high station with a rather peculiar style and carriage as a result. Brown Red games trace their lineage to rural Alabama in the 1870s, where a local “cocker” imported a pure line of game fowl from Northern Ireland. Of the years he crossed these Irish birds into American game fowl strains and produced what is now known at the Brown Red games.
where no hens with him. He was said to be a hard hitter, andwhen cockers stooped by they sparred him to show how hard he could hit. Whensparred or exerted in any way he turned blue in the face, hence the name blueface. Sweater McGinnis was around Gilmore's place at Bay City, TX at the time,he finally brought over one of his Madigan regular grey hens as company for thecock. Some stags and pullets were raised from that mating. Sometime before thattwo hens where stolen from Hatch on Long Island and given to Sweater. And notlong after that Sweater was inducted into the service. He put the two hatchhens with E.W. Law to keep for him until he returned, when he got out, heimmediately got in touch with Law to get the hens. Law told him one had died,but he sent Sweater the other one. One of the 1/2 grey 1/2 blue face cock wasbread to the stolen Hatch hen and the progeny of that mating where known as theblue face fowl.
(The blue face is a genetic trait from the Brown Red andBlack Sid Taylor)
2.The following is told byHarry Parr whom Ted McLean gave all of his fowl.
In the spring of 1949, Ted Mclean had two beautifully bred'straight' (being McLean Hatch) stags, one of which he wanted tobreed. They were full brothers, well made, green legged, weighted about 4:10,and you could not have told them apart except one was a roundhead. His wingclip was 40-90; the square comb, 48-96. Ted decided to heel them up and fight themwhich they did in his pit in the barn. The square comb proved to be the betterfighter and cutter, and when he blinded the roundhead, Ted said he had seenenough to cut the head off the roundhead. Well Harry had handled the roundheadand when he was on his hands he could tell all the roundhead wanted to do wasget at the other stag. After being pitted, he would search and as soon ascontact was made, explode. so Harry said he would take him home and see what hecould do. After a couple of weeks he regained the sight of one eye and was soonback in good health. He bred this stag two years and one day Ted asked Harry ifhe would mind sending him to Lun Gilmore. Lun wanted a cock and at the time,Ted did not have a really good one to spare. Harry shipped the cock and laterlearned that Lun and Pete Frost bred him to a hen that Ted had previously givento Pete. The hen was 47-65, by Green Leg cock number 2, the'straight' stuff out of hen number 81 which was a Morgan Whitehacklefrom Heinie Mathesius (none of the 'straight' stuff on the hen sideever got out) Prior to this Ted had given Pete Frost, Green Leg cock number 53which became the sire of the 'Frost Cherries' They had also bred thiscock to hen 47-65 and sent Harry and Ted a stag from that mating, which wascalled , after Lun, the 'Alligator Cock' Sweater McGinnis wasinvolved in their fighting activities at this time, and it was from these threebirds that the Blueface emerged. (Hen 47-65, Cock 53, Cock 48-90) The next timeHarry saw Sweater
was January 1958 in Orlando. He told Harry, these 'BlueFace' were the gamest chickens he had ever seen and that he kept the seedstock pure just make battle crosses. He asked Harry if he would let him haveanother cock and Harry sent him cock 57-340 (Harry was fortunate to get thiscock back after Sweaters death thanks to Willis Holking) He also told Harry notto worry, that he didn't let the 'straight' one go but they allfought under the name of 'Blue Face' At the time, his favorite wereone quarter Blue face, one quarter Regular Grey and one half Leiper, bred invarious combinations. Like all of them, Willis experimented with many crossesand blend in an effort to produce superior battle cocks but recognized thevalue of keeping the seed stock pure.
3.Here's an article by ArtHefner written on the April issue of the Gamecock 1985.
'I have read several articles about the BLUEFACEcontaining CHET blood.
About 1956 or 1957 I was visiting at Pineville Farms with BigRed Sweater McGinnis and naturally, we were only talking chickens. On thisparticular day Big Red Sweater was in a wonderful mood. On asking why he was sojolly, he told me he got one of his pure Blueface cocks off a walk, of whichthey had walks by the hundreds. this particular Blueface weighed slightly over4-08 pound. Sweater was elated. This was the biggest, pure Blueface he hadraised in years. So you see, they were intensely inbreed. I asked him if thecocks weren't any larger, how small were the pure hens? He got a bucket of feedan called the chickens up. He showed me two hens and told me they were thepurest and only two of the pure. And if they had showed up on my yardunknowingly, I would have killed them, never expecting to see anything likethem as Blueface. They may have weighed 2 or 2 1/2 pounds. And behold! theywere black with brown spots on their breast. Like a Seabright Bantam, with legsa couple of inches long. He never told me what kind of black blood was in them,but by their color, they were heavy in some kind. Ever what kind, they were thehardest hitting cocks I've ever seen.
Nearly ever successful cockfighter and breeder today has someof this blood. But most have only a small amount. As to the pure, there wasprecious few let out, (Including me). When breeders have 'pure'Blueface cocks that go 6 pounds, or even 5 pounds, they can do more with themthan the old master breeder, himself, could do. Later I'll tell more aboutthis.
This article was not written to create any controversy. Justtelling you the facts as it was told to me by one of the GREATEST BREEDERS andcockfighters of our times. I was proud and honored to know this man personally.SO BE IT.
4.The Blueface story by LouElliott (1977)
For you folks who never knew Sweater, a brief backgroundsketch might be of interest. He was born southwest of Oklahoma City nearChickasha about 1905. For much of his early life, he stayed with his uncle,Dave Lane, a druggist in Oklahoma City. Dave Lane was one of the best of theold time chicken fighters. In the early 1920's while Sweater was still ateenager, he handled a main of cocks from Frank Perry and Sap Barrett againstthe legendary Henry Wortham - and won with his last four cocks to win the main.This was at the old Shell Creek Pit near Sand Springs, Oklahoma.
Sweater was a professional cocker in every sense of the word.Except for a short hitch in the military service in World War II, he spent hislifetime working with game fowl. He was in great demand as a feeder andhandler, and he spent considerable time with
John Madigan, Walter Kelso, Jack Walton, etc. With hisconditioning method, he could build stronger thighs on a cock than any feeder Iever knew - they would be as hard and big around as the average man's wrist.They were so strong that his cocks frequently broke their own legs. As ahandler, Sweater never missed a trick, legal or otherwise. It is fitting thathe died in the pit with a gamecock in his arm - at the Boxwood Pit in Virginiaon 19 December 1959.
Sweater had hundreds of chickens raised for him each year butuntil he moved to North Carolina in 1954 to work for Percy
Flowers at Pineville Farms, none of them were specificallycalled the Blueface family. That is, no particular combination of
bloodlines could be pointed out as Blueface to the exclusionof all others. They were all simply referred to as McGinnis Reds or Grays,depending on the color. Sweater never advertised his fowl, didn't like to sellthem and almost never did, but he gave most of them away. His usual breedingmethod was to place a cock and six hens on a farm walk where they could reproducefreely. In the fall, Sweater would pick up what stags he wanted and tell thefarmer to eat the rest of them. Thus a great deal of Sweater's stock wasavailable to anyone who knew where he walked his fowl. Many so-called Bluefacefamilies today are based on fowl obtained from these farm walks and contain nota touch of the McLean hatch usually associated with the name Blueface.
The bloodlines that Sweater used in various combinations andwhich appear in some of the modern Blueface lines include the Madigan TexasRangers, which I believe are primarily the old Joe Wingate Brown Reds. WhenSweater was in charge of
Madigan's brood yards in Houston in the late 1930's, a greatmany of the cocks and hens were carrying a fourth or more of this Texas Rangerbreeding. When Madigan died in 1942, Kelso and Japhet inherited his fowl whichwere all shipped to Kelso's place in Galveston. Sweater set up the variousbrood yards and Kelso and Japhet alternated in choosing which ones they wanted.But Kelso didn't like the Clarets not to mention the Rangers - so Sweater tookwhat he wanted of those.
Sometime later, Sweater decided he needed more speed in hisfowl and someone sold him a family of Three Spurs from
Washington State. These cocks had a normal spur plus arudimentary spur above and below it. I know of at least one modern family ofBlueface that show this trait and some of the cocks cannot be heeled properlyuntil these small spurs are clipped off. I understand the black Sumatra JungleFowl and their descendants have this odd spur formation.
Sweater fought a lot of the Sam Bigham fowl - a MarshButcher/Claret cross. This is one of the sources for the rare white leg thatshows up in some Blueface. He also had some Kearney stock he got from up North.A particular favorite of Sweater's was his Jim Thompson Mahoganies, as bred byBob Lang of Long Island, New York. Sweater called these Thompsons his secretweapon and left them in Oklahoma when he went of North Carolina. He didn't knowhow the deal with Percy Flowers would work out, and he was hedging his bets byleaving the Thompsons and several other yards of his 'seed stock'with friends he trusted. He left some of his McLean speed stock with an oldOkie friend in Arizona and most of the Thompsons with Billy 'TheBarber' Atchley of Oklahoma City, who in turn supplied Sweater with somereally good Butcher fowl. After Sweater died, the brood yards he left atPineville deteriorated and much of the reason could be a lack of access tothese Oklahoma seed stock fowl.
In addition to these red fowl, Sweater raised a lot of grays- primarily Madigan Regular Grays but also some from Frost and Kelso. Thesewere frequently combined with various red fowl, and the resulting offspringwere either McGinnis Reds or McGinnis Grays even though they were full brothersbut different colors. I have a picture I made of a full plumaged gray cock in1949 while visiting
Sweater and Lun Gilmore at Jack Walton's place in Dallas.Sweater told me that all his battle cocks that year were carrying some of thiscock's bloodlines. Incidentally, note that this is Lun, not Lum Gilmore, whichis the way it is normally spelled. Much of the material this article is basedon came out of that meeting. I believe that Gilmore was Jack Walton's brother-in-lawand I will discuss his role in the Blueface story later on.
Until now, I haven't discussed the 'real' Blueface.The fowl I have mentioned in the previous paragraphs do appear in many of themodern Blueface lines, but Sweater wouldn't have considered them the realthing. To properly describe the evolution of the Blueface, I first have toestablish the historical perspective. To do this, I have to mention two otherprofessional cockers: J.D. Perry of Oklahoma City and the inimitable MaxThaggard who is still pitting them around Guthrie, Oklahoma.
In the early 1940's, the team of J.D. Perry and Karl Basharawas the 'class' entry at all the Oklahoma Pit's. Karl's Shufflers andJ.D.'s ability as a feeder and handler made a combination that was hard tobeat. When C.C. Cooke of Oklahoma City bought 'all' of the SandyHatch fowl for $2,500 and then joined forces with E.W. Law in Florida, theyhired J.D. to run their show. J.D. crossed Cooke's Hatch with Law's Clarets tomake the now famous Hatch-Clarets that revolutionized long heel cocking. 'Power/SpeedBlends' became a household word - at least in the cockhouse.
About the same time, Max Thaggard bred an old one-eyed FrostGray cock (that Bobby Manziel had given him) over some brown red hens. Theresulting offspring became the 'Vibrators,' the greatest infighters(cutting to the breast) that I or most likely any man ever saw. For a too briefperiod, they were unstoppable. After losing all too many fights to theHatch-Clarets and those speckle-bellied Vibrators, Sweater started out to gothem one better. He came up with the bright idea of combining the Hatch-Clarettype fowl with the Gray-Brown Reds and beat everybody. Sweater's friend LunGilmore had a sickly looking, pale headed old buff hen that normally world havebeen killed, but she was supposed to be one of the very few good Hatch chickensto ever leave Ted McLean's place. Presumably she was carrying some MorganWhitehackle breeding, as many of the McLean fowl did, because on rare occasionsshe would produce some spangled looking offspring. However the Jim Thompsonfowl on which the original Hatch were based also produce about 10 percentspangles and sometimes even a pure white. In fact I have seen White Hatch fowlthat their breeder was reluctant to claim as Hatch for fear others would accusehim of poor record keeping. Lun may have got this hen from Pete Frost but theyboth shared her so to speak. Frost got McLean to send them a Hatch cock to mate
to this old hen. McLean owed Frost a favor but he wasn't toohappy to see his bloodlines scattered around. So he sent them a cock all right- a little 4:02 blinker pea comb bird he intended to kill anyway.
When this little runty little cock was sparred, he really puton a show. He could hit as hard as a shake. These south Texas boys were used toseeing the shotgun type cocks, and one that that could hit so hard wassomething new. They bred him to the old pale headed hen just to see what thepair would produce. That first year they raised about 20 chicks and fought thestags with mediocre success. One of the few that won was rattled and would turndark in the face when he was sparred. Sweater took this 'OldBlueface' cock to breed to some hens he liked that were a mixture ofMadigan Gray and Leiper Hatch. Thus was started the first attempt to breed afamily of Blueface, although they were not really called by that name.
It was that first old pale headed hen that really startedthings. It so happened that most of her chicks also showed that sickly paleface. Somebody told Sweater that the old hen was a disease carrier (Leukosis)and that he ought to kill her and all her offspring. Sweater didn't like those'damned blue faced chickens' but he wasn't ready to give up on them.They all had well rounded bodies and felt good in his hands, they just lookedpale - even the cocks in good condition.
History Of Brown Red Gamefowl Pictures
Sweater took some of the 'damned blue facedchickens' to the poultry experts at Texas A&M College to see what waswrong. After some tests, they told him the chickens were perfectly healthy. Thepale head was caused by an inherited genetic abnormality. To get rid of it,Sweater would have to raise a lot of young stock and keep the red faced onesfor his future brood stock. That year, Sweater and his friends hatched over 500chickens from the old hen and her daughters. They only produced two red facedpullets - no stags.
When J.D. Perry left Cooke's employ in 1948 to go to work forG.A.C. Halff at Queen Saber Ranch near San Antonio, he took the best of theHatch fowl with him. These Hatch were primarily the Jim Thompson/J.W.E.Clarke/Kearney bloodlines with an added touch of this and that. The McLean fowlwere the same basic bloodlines but showed less of the yellow leg breeding. Thepea combs came from the old Boston Roundhead that was in the Duryea fowl whichappears in the pedigrees of both Clarke and Kearney families. The Kearney stockat that time was a combination of his Irish Brown Reds and Whitehackles, plusthe Duryea and Joe Wingate stock. So this was the source of the green legs. Atany rate, Sweater and J.D. traded some Hatch fowl, and in 1958, J.D. wasadvertising Blueface for sale.
The pure McLean's were comparatively slow, single stroke,ground fighters. They had the suicidal tendency of sticking their necks outwhile reaching for a billhold. A cock like that just doesn't win many fights infirst class long heel competition. So Sweater tried various crosses with those'damned blue face chickens.' Most of the crosses produced justaverage fighting cocks. A few showed promise but wouldn't pass their goodqualities onto the next generation. The one cross he tried though that seemedto add just the edge he was looking for was with Karl Bashara's Shufflers. Healso got some Brown Reds from 'old Man' Starnes of Konowa, Oklahoma.I had always heard this was and old Irish family of Brown Reds but my buddy for40 years - Old Lunch Money, himself - recently published an article quoting Mr.Starnes as saying his fowl were just the Bashara Shufflers with a touch ofMadigan Gray. Sweater also got the D.H. Pierce Wisconsin Red Shufflers fromvarious other breeders. By trying out many different combinations, he developedjust the right combination of Hatch/Shuffler and his other bloodlines that hecould win with.
And win he did. He set a fantastic record in the five shortyears he was working for Percy Flowers in North Carolina. In 1957, he enteredthe Lally Memorial Stag Derby in Pennsylvania. This was the premier short heel(1-1/4' gaffs) event of each year. This was the first time Sweater everconditioned cocks for a short heel event and the first time he ever conditioneda full show of stags for a major event. (None of the major pits in the southever scheduled stag derbies or tournaments. So Sweater had always fought twoyear old cocks.) He won nine, lost one to take first money. The one loss was toa Jim Thompson stag owned by Bob Lang, who was responsible for one of Sweater'sseed stock lines.
The short heel men said the 1957 win was a fluke and thatSweater wouldn't have a chance next time. So he entered the Lally in 1958 andwon it by the same identical score, nine wins and one loss. Now the boys wereconvinced that this Okie was pretty foxy so they decided to keep their and notenter the event in 1959. The pit management finally got an entry list togetherthough, and sure enough Sweater didn't win this time - he only took second witheight wins and two losses.
As a final tribute to a real 'chicken man' I canthink of nothing more appropriate than the words 'Spectator' used indescribing Sweater's stags at the 1957 Lally Memorial Derby. Remember thatthese stags were the direct descendants of those 'damned blue facedchickens' produced by a sickly face, pale headed old hen and a runtylittle 4:02 cock that had been destined for the chopping block.
History Of Brown Red Gamefowl Vs
'The best the north and the east could produce was linedup against them, and they made a runaway of the show. They were fast, terrificbucklers, hard hitters, god cutters, aggressive finishers. Their legs reachedout a mile with every stroke, they delivered their blows with a snap, andusually every punch landed where it counted. The only fight they lost was aquick one shot affair to the brain in the first few seconds, which sort ofthing can and will happen to everybody who is meeting top grade fowl.'(written by Spectator,
5.The Blueface story by Gus Firthiof, Sr. (1977)
I read with interest 'The Blue Face Story' by LouElliott. Someone has misinformed him about some of the data contained in thearticle. Here is an example:
History Of Brown Red Gamefowl Birds
Madigin's Texas Rangers did not contain any of the JoeWingate brown Red blood. The Rangers do not come Brown Red, but dark black-redswith an iridescent green sheen and luster to the feathers on their backs whenthe sun shines on them. The hens are some crow black, some crow black with darkreddish hackles. All dark legs, all 100% straight combs.
Sweater McGinnis never was in charge of any brood yards ofCol. Madigin's at Houston, Texas because Madigan did not breed any of his fowlthere. His fowl were raised in Canada, at Niagara Farm, where he had caretakersto look after them the year round.
After over 35 years of research I have come to the conclusionthat the Duryea Whitehackles did not contain any Boston
History Of Wingate Brown Red Gamefowl
Roundhead blood. Many of the Duryea cocks are golden yellowbirchen in color, with yellow legs.