[1] Longfellow was owned, bred, and trained by "Uncle" John Harper of Nantura Stock Farm in Midway, Kentucky.
Harper was estimated to be worth one million dollars (a very great sum in the 1850s), yet he lived in a simple cottage on his 1,000 acres (4 km²) adjacent to Robert A. Alexander's famed Woodburn Stud in Woodford County, Kentucky.
On the night before the race, Harper slept at Longfellow's head in a barn at the old Kentucky Association track.
Early the next morning came the news that Harper's sister Betsy and his brother Jacob, also both elderly, had been murdered in John's small cottage at Nantura.
Thah's a hoss 'At I des p'nounce The Boss...nuthin' like him anywhere, Skims the earth or flies the air!"
Called "King of the Turf," Longfellow was America's most popular horse in the decade after the American Civil War.
His final season was noted for his rivalry with the eastern champion Harry Bassett, winner of the 1871 Travers Stakes in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Coming around the first turn, it was obvious something was wrong with him, but his rider stood up in his stirrups and whipped the four-year-old colt for the first time in his career.
As a three-year-old, and within a period of 49 days, Leonatus won ten stakes races, all in Kentucky and Illinois.
A leading sire in 1891, Longfellow produced progeny that included the racemare Thora, champion three-year-old female in 1881 and herself dam of Yorkville Belle (born in Tennessee in 1889, who made 37 starts, and came in the money 30 times with 21 victories).
"[8] New Jersey's Monmouth Park runs the $60,000 5+1⁄2-furlong Longfellow Stakes for three-year-olds and up each year in June.
Longfellow was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1971.