“I convinced the ownership, I said look, you really ought to keep her. She was a really good filly, I mean she was solid, sound. She was a tryer. And don’t be scared to breed her. If you breed her, you ought to breed her to something a little faster than her, because she was a good filly, but wasn’t next level, right?” said McPeek. 

“So, I recommended the mating to Goldencents, and the mare foaled in that stall right there with the brass plate on it,” said McPeek, looking at Mystik Dan’s stall. 

Magdalena’s Beginning

Magdalena Farm was originally a land grant back in the late 1700s when a gentleman named Captain David Shely received a 2,000-acre parcel for his service in the Revolutionary War. 

He came to Kentucky from Virginia with his wife Mary. Their son John later married a girl who would be considered the matriarch of the property for more than 40 years. Her name? Magdalena. Magdalena married John Shely just nine days shy of her 16th birthday, and died during the Civil War. She is buried on the farm in a family cemetery at the back of the property. 

When McPeek purchased the property in 2006, the farm was abandoned. The electric was out, fences down, and water was out. As McPeek began his renovations on the farm, they were working in the fields and realized they had uncovered the historic cemetery. 

After researching the ancestry and the back story, McPeek decided to name the farm after Magdalena.

“It’s kind of the right thing to do for the family, the Shely family was here, from what we could tell, 130 years. They kept the property intact. On the hill are sons who died in the Civil War. From what we can tell, maybe a couple of the sons were Confederates, and a couple sons were Union,” said McPeek. 

In the early 1800s, the Shely family stood their English-bred stallion Crawler on the farm. Shely wanted to improve the pedigrees of Kentucky mares by importing English-bred and -raced stallions. Crawler was the first stallion they publicly advertised in 1810.

In the 1930s, the Shely family sold about 900 of their 2,000 acres to a gentleman named Lou Doherty. He established a stallion operation. He filled the stalls with stallions that were racing at a high level, and he would market them in such publications as the BloodHorse and Thoroughbred Times. 

“I actually found an old, a hardback version of the BloodHorse in the (University of Kentucky) library when I was a freshman. These advertisements for horses like Tomy Lee, Kentucky Derby winner, stood here. A long list of champions stood here,” said McPeek.

McPeek visited the property as a young boy with his father, having no idea he would someday own it. Lou Doherty owned one of the first commercial stallion operations in central Kentucky, known as the “Stallion Station”.

Many notable horses called this farm home, including Tomy Lee, winner of the 1959 Kentucky Derby; Venetian Way winner of the 1960 Kentucky Derby; 1970 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Sassafras; and Devil Diver, 1943 and 1944 American Champion Older Male Horse. 

The dams of 1977 Triple Crown hero Seattle Slew and 1997 dual classic winner Silver Charm were both conceived at the Stallion Station. They were both by a stallion called Poker. 

There is still a barn called “The Poker Barn” at Magdalena. Poker was known for his vicious personality, and they built a barn specifically for him. 

“An old groom told me this when I first bought the property, they had to build that corner stall for him, because he would attack people. He was that mean,” McPeek said. 

Tours of Magdalena Farm give guests a behind-the-scenes look at the rich history of a successful operation, ranging from mares, foals, and yearlings, to some of his star racehorses in training.