By Betsy Burke Parker

Owner of Derry Meeting Farm in Pennsylvania and the co-breeder of Danzig, Marshall Jenney died in 2000 at age 60. (Photo of Jenney and Top Bid: Peter Winants Collection / Maryland Horse Library)

Jenney left a legacy as large as the thoroughbred dynasties he’d created over decades in the thoroughbred world, using what friends remember as “a Midas touch.”

He'll be remembered at Willowdale Saturday: the Marshall Jenney Memorial for apprentice riders over timber is the last race of the day. It is supported by godson Stewart Strawbridge. 

Jenney, a Delaware native, was born in 1940 and grew up in the mid-Atlantic horse country. He was immersed in the foxhunting and racing worlds, riding jump races as an amateur in his early 20s.

He rode his father’s Ba-Sic in the 1962 Maryland Grand National – third, and Maryland Hunt Cup – second, both times finishing behind the legendary Mountain Dew.

After graduating from Princeton in 1963 and a stint as an investment banker in New York, Jenney in 1967 purchased the land which he’d build up as Derry Meeting Farm, which became a world-renowned thoroughbred nursery and sales barn.

Derry Meeting Farm bred timber champion Miles Ahead in partnership with Jonathan Sheppard's Ashwell Stable. 

Other standouts raised at Derry Meeting include 1994 Breeders' Cup Turf winner Tikkanen, grade 1 winner Unaccounted For and graded stakes winner Alice Springs.

Homebred headliners include Mrs. Jenney, a daughter of Mrs. Penny who later produced Unaccounted For.

Jenney was several times Pennsylvania's leading breeder, and he became an accomplished four-in-hand coach driver, an avid fly fisherman and a skilled marksman.

Jenney actively operated Derry Meeting and worked as a sales consignor until he died after a short illness in 2000.

Second wife Bettina Jenney (Jim Graham photo) ran the farm after he was gone; among horses bred by her was Mrs. Lindsay, named for her mother. Bettina Jenney inherited a little of Marshall's Midas touch - the filly no-saled for $95,000 at the Keeneland yearling sale in 2005 but went on to win $1.2 million for Bettina Jenney.

Bettina died at 86 in 2019.

For certain, the obituary-style information yields a view into *what* Marshall Jenney did with his life.

But to understand *who* Jenney was, get the insider information from three people who knew him best, a few of so many that light up when asked to recall the love and laughter they shared over the decades with Marshall Jenney. 

I moved to Derry Meeting Farm when I was 15. To me, it was absolutely like Nirvana, this beautiful horse farm. 

I remember Marshall saying to me, ‘just go out, just go ride.’ That was just amazing to think about doing.

What an incredible place, right next to the Strawbridge land. So open, vast.

I grew up hunting with Cheshire, and Marshall hunted with Cheshire and Andrews Bridge over the years. The farm was in Cheshire’s ‘Tuesday country.’

I remember Marshall was up at 5 a.m. every day. He worked very hard. He enjoyed life, just like people always say about him.

But, he was always very busy, very active.

I worked the sales for Marshall, and worked in the office. He’d be there for most of the foalings on the farm. There wasn’t any part of the farm he wasn’t involved with.

And good luck keeping up with him. From my bedroom in the house, I could hear him on the telephone in the mornings. ‘Oh, I hope I didn’t wake you up,’ he’d say to people he was calling at 5:30 in the morning. Sometimes they’d say yes, sometimes they’d say no, I guess. But, somehow, everybody always wanted to talk to him, no matter what time it was.

Marshall enjoyed people. He was a very kind and thoughtful person, and he knew everybody from the grooms to the owners.

Sometimes he’d surprise people with how hands-on he was in the business. One year, he’d sold a horse to Claiborne, and he shipped down with the horse to deliver it himself. When the top owner saw him leading the horse off the van himself, they couldn’t believe it.

He was just like that.

He ended up going to Claiborne Farm and staying there in Lexington, Kentucky to learn how they ran their operations. Bull Hancock was a big influence on him. (photo of Bull Hancock courtesy of Claiborne Farm)

He wanted to know how that farm worked to make Derry Meeting better. They’d wean the foals and turn them out all winter, two pastures - one for fillies, one for colts, big groups in what they'd call ‘shed raised.’ It made for a tough young horse.

And it worked – Marshall had an incredible percentage of horses he raised at Derry Meeting that ended up being major winners.

Marshall Jenney was a neighbor, and a friend, and a fellow Princetonian.

And a whole lot more.

Marshall was in a class with (the late) Paddy Neilson, I think, and Jay Griswold. They were about eight years behind me.

Dixie and I met through horses – I was doing show horses, she was doing three-day eventing. I was Radnor Pony Club, she was Rose Tree Pony Club.

First we lived near the Radnor Hunt club, but in 1980, we bought the farm previously owned by Doug and Susan Small, three miles from Derry Meeting.

The first time I met Marshall was through the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders Association. There wasn’t flat racing in Pennsylvania until the 1970s, and until then, the PHBA was involved with showing as well as racing. Once racing came to Pennsylvania, there were two groups, but, before that, there was just one.

And that’s how I transitioned from showing to racing.

I wanted to get involved in bloodstock, and I knew a good way to get into the sales business was to call Marshall Jenney. They hired me to work the Saratoga sales for them.

The sales provide so many of my ‘quintessential Marshall Jenney’ stories.

One year we were both selling at Keeneland in November (1980.) They’d made this split sale – Friday at Keeneland, the weekend at Fasig-Tipton, then back at Keeneland for the (better book horses.)

Well, of course, Marshall is bitching all week, because they of course put us in the Friday sale, and they’d put his stalls all the way in the back in barn 42. He had this little weanling he was selling and he was like ‘blah, blah, blah. They put us back here because we’re from Pennsylvania, not from Kentucky. They’re doing this on purpose. Blah, blah, blah.’

‘They hate us.’

He was convinced it was a conspiracy.

So the Friday sale comes, and Marshall leads his weanling down to the ring.

It brings $850,000.

So the very next day, we of course go over to the Fasig sale, and there’s Annie Jones’ mother’s Christiana consignment, selling some nice fillies as broodmare prospects.

Here goes this (unraced homebred) Nimble Folly, and she hammers down at about $300,000 ($285,000.)

I look up just in time to see there’s Marshall signing the ticket. (Lydia Williams photo of Rick Abbott)

Later on, I find him in the bar – that’s where you’d usually find him. I said, ‘Jesus Christ Marshall, you couldn’t keep that money in your pocket for 24 hours!’

He just smiled.

He bred her to Danzig – the first one, Contredance, was sold (for $175,000) to Henryk De Kwiatkowski, and she turned out to be a grade 1 winner and a great producer.

Marshall took her next Danzig filly to Saratoga, and she sold for $350,000.

Marshall amortized the mare already, but then here comes English bloodstock agent James Delahooke saying Prince Abdullah wants to buy your mare for Juddmonte.

Marshall of course invites them to come up from Lexington where they’re there for the sales, to Derry Meeting. (Longtime Juddmonte USA president Dr. John) Chandler and Delahooke get fed lunch and Marshall makes the sale for $2 million.

Well, the ink on that check wasn’t dry and all the fences were freshly painted at Derry Meeting, new blacktop on the driveway.

Marshall had an extravagant appetite, but he always knew to put it back into the farm.

Marshall was one of those guys who came off as hail-fellow-well-met, jocular, but he was very, very smart, and he did great things in the thoroughbred breeding business. He boarded many of the mares going to Windfields (in Cecil County, Maryland, where Northern Dancer and other stallions stood) because they didn’t board outside mares.

I’d take a mare myself over there to Windfields and Marshall’s van would be there. I’d say, ‘oh, where is Marshall’ and somebody would say he’s in Scotland, or somewhere or other, shooting grouse.

I’d think to myself, well, hell, that’s no way to run a business, Marshall, good grief.

Turns out he was off on that trip with Robert Sangster.

Marshall was a networking genius.

I think about him a lot, and I quote him often. But, you know, a lot of the quotes, you couldn’t actually print.

Marshall Jenney and I were friends since we were 8, 9 years old. It was a case of we were ‘in the same place at the same time’ – he grew up quite near us in Delaware. We were in Pennsylvania, but we were going all the same places.

Tennis lessons, golf, horses, riding, hunting, jump racing. All that and more. (photo, below, of Strawbridge hunting with Andrews Bridge, courtesy of Fran Loftus)

Even back then, he was very enthusiastic about everything. He was superb at everything he tried, and I’m pretty sure that’s because he just took an enormous amount of pleasure in doing everything.

We were at St. Mark’s at the same time, Marshall was in the class below me.

(St. Mark’s is a prep school in Southborough, Massachusetts, a half-hour west of Boston. It was boys-only from its founding in 1865 to 1978.)

Oh my god did he get in trouble a lot. One of the rules at St. Mark’s was that you had to go to bed at a certain time. Well, of course, Marshall did not obey that rule.

After curfew, he’d be out doing things like trying to trap animals around campus – he was completely oblivious, didn’t care, that there were a lot of people even back then around suburban Massachusetts.

He of course eventually was kicked out of St. Mark’s.

My father, who was very well connected with Princeton (class of ‘33), called in some favors and got Marshall in at the Hun School.

(Strawbridge, Sr. was a Hun alum – the Hun School is a college prep school in Princeton, New Jersey.)

Everybody was betting Marshall would get kicked out of there, too. But I guess that was a little turning point, and he reformed because he decided he wanted to go to Princeton (like his father) and he’d better straighten up.

He also decided (around the same time) that what he really wanted to do was win the Maryland Hunt Cup. If you ever knew Marshall, you’d know he was a big guy, well overweight, so he had to starve himself to make even the amateur timber weights.

But he was determined.

The chart for the 1962 Maryland Hunt Cup, where Jenney finished second.

As much as Marshall loved steeplechasing, he loved living more.

And a big part of living is, well, is eating. Not long after that, he decided he was not going to sacrifice eating for racing.

That unmitigated enthusiasm didn’t leave him though. I remember him calling me up when he found his land (that became Derry Meeting Farm.) He was just beside himself. ‘I’ve found the best land,’ he said. I said, ‘well, Marshall, how do you know it’s the best land? What do you mean?’ And he’s like, ‘it’s got rolling hills. It’s got these flowing streams, these big fields. This is the best place to raise a really good horse.’

And, turns out, he was right.

Marshall really did raise some superb horses at Derry Meeting. One day I remember going over to see a young horse (the yearling that became Danzig.) The colt was lying down in his stall and Marshall was saying, ‘hey, watch this. I’m going to ‘get on’ this colt to prove his (quiet, gentle) disposition.

And of course he did. And of course the colt just laid there.

Everything was an adventure to him.

Oh my goodness, I remember another time, much later, when there was a blizzard one winter afternoon. Marshall called us up and said ‘you’ve gotta come over. I have the best brandy you’ve ever heard of, and I promise Bettina will cook you the most marvelous meal.’

My former wife and I put on our boots and hiked across the field to Marshall’s house. We couldn’t drive, of course, because the roads weren’t passable.

We had a helluva party.

The problem, of course, was afterwards, because we then had to walk home in a foot of snow.

In the pitch dark.

We did have a flashlight, but it was still snowing like mad. But that's how it always was with Jenney - an adventure we'd talk about later. 

Another time, I remember being with them in Chantilly, France to see some horses. Marshall went to this party one night, and the story goes that he got home at 4 a.m., and god only knows how much he had to drink.

Well, the next morning we were due at 6:30 a.m. at (trainer) Jonathan Pease’s to see some horses work. I assumed since Jenney was at that party ‘til 4 a.m., I wouldn’t see him at all, but there he was at the appointed hour at the appointed place.

That was the thing about him. He was always chasing this enormous amount of joy in his life, but he was also conscientious enough to know when he had to be there, to see some promising horses work.

I think about him once a day, I swear I do. I see something amazing, or amusing, and I wonder, ‘what would Jenney think about that?’

Bettina Jenney bred and raced the talented racehorse Mrs. Lindsay (named after her mother), winner of top-level races in 2007 in France and Canada—respectively the Prix Vermeille Lucien Barriere (G1) and E. P. Taylor Stakes (G1). (Michael Burns photo via BloodHorse)