Derby Saturday

*Originally posted in 2023

In 1735, Christian Schreyack (soon to be spelled Shryock) was baptized at Christ Lutheran Church in York, Pennsylvania. His father, Johannes, had immigrated to Pennsylvania from Germany. Christian would eventually marry and move to Frederick County, Maryland, where he and his new bride started their young family. One of their children was John Frederick Shryock (1763). John Frederick’s older brother George served in the Continental Line, at least according to the List of Soldiers provided by the Maryland Revolutionary Records. Thanks to George’s efforts—no matter how glorious or common—the younger Shryock siblings were set to chart their own path in America’s now open vistas.

Following the Revolution John Frederick headed west, buying 800-acres of land on the side of a rolling hill in Lexington, Kentucky. He built a home on the acreage and raised his children there. Eventually, John Frederick gave this home in Lexington to his daughter, Adah Shryock, who had recently married a man named Noah Low. Noah is my great-great-great grandfather. He was a Kentuckian.

This (somewhat tangled) story of my ancestors’ Kentucky roots is what always triggers my interest in the Derby.

The Derby, hosted by the Louisville Jockey Club, is about 75 miles from the former Low(e) estate in Lexington. The first Derby occurred on May 17, 1875, in Louisville. (Almost twenty years after Noah Low moved into his new digs in Lexington.) The racetrack that would eventually become known as “Churchill Downs” was created in order to show off some of Kentucky’s finest horses. An idea that was originally funded by local members to support the development of an elite racetrack in Louisville, has now become a spectacle attended by around 150,000 patrons a year. As was likely intended from the beginning when the track was laid, the Derby is no longer home to just Kentuckians—or just horse lovers—but celebrities and bourbon enthusiasts nationwide.

Let me be clear, I have no issue with how big the Derby has become—with crowds come financial success for the area (Capitalism at work!). There may be racing aficionados who feel differently, but I’m hardly in that category. Like many of you, and likely most of the modern-day Derby attendees, I only think about the race the week, if not the day of it taking place. This is the exact reason I’ve always struggled with whether or not I would ever want to go in person. There’s always a part of me that wants to experience it. The pageantry of it all.

A part of me wants to attend the Derby one year and sit at the very top, as high as the bleachers will allow. Hell, maybe sneak into one of those iconic spires and look out toward the east, to catch a glimpse of the rolling hills near Lexington and wonder what my great-great-great grandfather would have been doing there around the time of the first Kentucky Derby. Perhaps then I would look south, toward Perryville, where fellow Shryocks came from Indiana to go to battle in Kentucky in support of the Union. I could even peek around closer to the grandstands, right there in Louisville, where Gideon Shryock architected the Old Bank and the Metro Hall.

This, I suppose, is one of the points I’m attempting to make…how many people who attend the Derby are truly concerned with horse racing? And how many, like me, are just there with their own personal agenda? (Although, I think my agenda would at least be more noble than simply drinking and galivanting. Not to say that there’s anything wrong with drinking, nor galivanting!)

I don’t know, I guess I’m still on the fence on if I’d ever go to the Derby. I will say It’d be hard to say no to the most exciting two minutes in sports, wouldn’t it? Even if you don’t know a thing about horse racing…