John Sanford (1851-1939)

He was born at Amsterdam, New York, and educated at Yale (1872). His grandfather moved from Connecticut to Amsterdam where he established a carpet mill. As a carpet manufacturer, his father established Stephen Sanford & Sons in 1840.  In 1929, John sold the family carpet company to Connecticut's Bigelow-Hartford Company for $20 million which then became known as Bigelow-Sanford of which he was a director. John continued in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather when he was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1889. In 1913, he inherited his father's stock farm in Kentucky (Sanford Stud Farms) and in 1923 his horse, Sergeant Murphy, became the first American-owned horse to win the prestigious English Grand National. His horses also won the Kentucky Derby (1916) and the American Grand National (1923). The Sanford Stakes run annually at the Saratoga Race Course is named for his family. In 1892, he married his cousin Ethel Sanford, daughter of the founder of Sanford, Florida, and they had 3-children. They lived at the Henry T. Sloane House.