DINWIDDIE LAMPTON, JR.  

	Dinwiddie Lampton, Jr as a cadet at Culver Military Academy
Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. BIRTH 18 Mar 1914 Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky, DEATH 25 Sep 2008 BURIAL Cave Hill Cemetery Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky son of Dinwiddie Lampton and Johanna Kraft

married 1941 Nancy Amanda Houghland BIRTH 22 Jul 1919 Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee DEATH 14 Dec 1991 Oldham County, Kentucky BURIAL Harrods Creek Cemetery Brownsboro, Oldham County, Kentuck. daughter of John Mason Houghland and Sarah Ivy Roark. They divorced.

They had:

Dinwiddie Lampton III married Irene de Boor
Mason H. Lampton married Mary Lucile Hardaway
Nina Lampton

remarried 2004 Elizabeth Whitcomb Brown BIRTH 27 Oct 1933 Vermont DEATH 22 Mar 2008 Fayette County, Kentucky BURIAL Cave Hill Cemetery Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky

LAMPTON, ELIZABETH WHITCOMB, born November 27, 1933, died, Saturday, March 22, 2008, after a carriage accident at Elmendorf Farm.

She and her husband Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. lived at Elmendorf and enjoyed driving horses on their farm. They competed together in many events.

They met in Saratoga Springs, when Elizabeth was driving her beloved horse, Saint and Dinwiddie a Four in Hand. She asked him to hold her horse and he was at her command thereafter.

She graduated from the University of Vermont. Elizabeth was crowned Miss Vermont, which lead her to competing in the Miss Universe Pageant.

Her love for horses came from her father, who was a life long Stander bred Horseman, in New England.

Among her most recent and proud accomplishments, at the age of 72, was the winning of a Ladies Phaeton Carriage Class, at the Indiana State Fair. This was obtained with a pair of Hackney horses, that she personally trained.

She was a director of the American Hackney Horse Foundation and the past director of the Carriage and Coaching Museum of America.

During her career, while living in New York City, Elizabeth was the first woman to sell Mercedes Benz. She was voted top salesperson in the country several times for her Park Avenue Location. She served as the president of the Condominium Association of the Dorchester on 57th and Park, at which time she lived.

Elizabeth also took great pride in the restoration of the Whipton Place Farm, in Lexington, KY.

She is survived by her devoted husband, Dinwiddie Lampton Jr.; brother, Robert Whitcomb, of Vermont; and niece, May Armstrong, of Vermont.

A memorial service will be held at Elmendorf Farm by the Columns at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

The family will gather for a private burial at Cave Hill Cemetery, in Louisville on Wednesday at 1 p.m.

Arrangements under the direction of Pearson's.

In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Kentucky Horse Park Foundation for the Carriage Museum. - Courier-Journal from Mar. 24 to Mar. 25, 2008

Elizabeth Lampton Dies in a Carriage Accident
Monday, March 24, 2008

Elizabeth Whitcomb Brown Lampton, born Nov 27, 1933 in Vermont, died March 22, 2008, after a carriage driving accident at Elmendorf Farm.

She and her husband, Dinwiddie Lampton, Jr., have lived at Elmendorf Farm in Lexington, KY since they were married. They enjoyed driving horses around the fields and on the paved roads through the neighboring farms.

Competing together in many carriage driving events, they won awards at the Junior League Horse Show, the Shelbyville and Harrodsburg Fairs, and the Kentucky State Fair, as well as many events out of state. Her love of horses came from her father who was a lifelong Standardbred horseman.

Elizabeth and Dinwiddie met at Saratoga when Elizabeth was driving her horse "Saint", and he a coach and four. She asked him to hold her horse. He did, and thereafter was at her command.

She graduated from the University of Vermont. The State of Vermont crowned her "Miss Vermont," and she competed for the Miss Universe title. One of the first women to sell Mercedes-Benz, she was voted top salesperson in the country several times from the Park Avenue location. At The Dorchester, she was president of the Association. She began a robust career as a real-estate agent for luxury apartments in New York.

At 57th and Park, in front of the Dorchester, Dinwiddie parked his eighteen-wheeler full of carriage and four horses while she arranged for the Maitre d' of Chantilly Restaurant to watch the rig during the night before the carriage drive down Park Avenue the nest day.

She won many awards for her horsemanship.

At the age of 72 she won the Ladies' Phaeton Class at the Indiana State Fair with a pair of Hackneys she had trained herself. She served as a trustee of the American Hackney Horse Foundation, and the Carriage and Coaching Museum of America.

At the time of her death she was in process of restoring Whipton Place Farm for Mr. And Mrs. Lampton's retirement.

Her brother Robert Whitcomb of Essex Junction, Vermont, and her niece, Meg Armstrong, also of Vermont, survive her. Her husband, Dinwiddie Lampton, Jr. deeply mourns her loss.

A memorial service will be held at Elmendorf Farm next to the columns at two o'clock on Tuesday, March 25.

The family will gather for a private burial at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, KY on Wed, March 26th, 2008, at one o'clock.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations to the Kentucky Horse Park Foundation, for the Carriage Museum.

Kerr Brothers Funeral Home - 463 East Main St. Lexington, KY 40507 is in charge of Lexington arrangements. - - Published in the Lexington Herald-Leader on 3/24/2008 / The SaddleHorse Report, Horse World






---



Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. Passes Away
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Dinwiddie Lampton Jr., a longtime Louisville insurance executive and enthusiast of steeplechase racing and horse-drawn carriages, died Thursday at his home in Lexington, Ky. He was 94.

Lampton also was an unsuccessful candidate in the Democratic primary for governor in 1987.

With a personal motto of "whip and kick and don't give up, you've got an eternity to rest," the wiry-eyebrowed Lampton had a passion for running the insurance company that was founded by his father in 1906 and taking part in the occasional steeplechase, polo event or carriage drive.

He was the longtime president of American Life & Accident Insurance Co., headquartered in downtown Louisville near the riverfront, and was a well-known face around the city who was seen frequently in TV commercials saying, "Be wise, be insured," while he sat atop one of his many elaborately designed carriages.

In contrast to his pleasant disposition on TV, however, Lampton could be a scrappy opponent. He was involved in a series of disputes in the 1970s with developer Al J. Schneider involving Schneider's proposed riverfront project of high-rise offices and apartments.

Lampton tried to block the Urban Renewal Commission from approving Schneider's plans, which would overshadow his own office building.

Lampton also fought against the condemnation of property he owned near Fifth and Main streets for a project. Eventually, a compromise was reached that pleased both sides.

But a few years later the two squared off again, this time involving an elevated, covered "pedway" that Schneider wanted to build. Lampton objected, saying it would obstruct his riverfront view. Outside the office, Lampton focused on horse-related activities at his Hardscuffle farm in Oldham County. He played host to the Hardscuffle Steeplechase, which began in the mid-1970s because he and his son Mason admired the sport. The popular day of steeplechase racing was held just a few weeks after the Kentucky Derby and raised money for the Kentucky Opera Association. The event was a Louisville tradition for about two decades, raising nearly $2 million for the opera.

Lampton also was known for his extensive collection of horse-drawn carriages, buggies and coaches that he would frequently drive around Hardscuffle and in his TV commercials. He also collected horse accessories and equipment, from bridles to top hats.

In 1997, the Lampton family purchased the historic Lexington horse farm Elmendorf for $5 million. Just as he did at Hardscuffle, Lampton planned to drive his carriages there, and he moved to Elmendorf permanently in 2003.

A day after competing in the World's Championship Horse Show at the Kentucky State Fair in 2004, Lampton attended an auction at Hardscuffle where about a third of his carriage and accessories collection was auctioned. The event attracted carriage enthusiasts from Florida to Canada.

During the auction, Lampton told The Courier-Journal, "I'm a growing boy at 90," but fought back tears when he saw his carriages being sold.

"Old friends," he called them. - Reprinted from the September 27, 2008 Louisville Courier Journal / The SaddleHorse Report, Horse World

LAMPTON--Dinwiddie, Jr. lived life with a flourish, particularly when driving his own coach, lines of four horses in hand.

His hard work at American Life, the company his father started in 1906, lasted consistently for 40 years. Many of his employees stayed with the company forty years or more. His longterm thinking has been a benefit to the company. The motto he created, ''Be wise, be insured'' announced by coaching horn, proved beneficial to company identity.

His personal motto was ''whip and kick and don't give up, you've got an eternity to rest.''

He graduated from Culver Military Academy, attended St. John's College in Annapolis, MD. In 1935, his father recalled him to Louisville to work at the company because Dinwiddie Sr. was very ill. He was the first to say he learned on the job. As a boy, he showed saddlebreds, as a young man competed in polo, then raced over jumps in steeplechases, raced on the flat in the original ''Gentlemen'' races at Churchill Downs, and ended with 30 years of driving horses to an array of vehicles, mostly 19th century rolling stock.

He was a member of the American Carriage Association, The Coaching Club, and the Metropolitan Club in NYC. It was there he swung four horses and a carriage through the original coaching turnaround at 60th and Fifth Avenue. Club staff came out protesting, ''You can't do that!'' answered by ''But I just did!'' For 39 years he was married to Nancy Houghland from Nashville, TN. He and his family helped make the Hardscuffle Steeplechase a noteworthy race meet.

His second marriage was to Elizabeth Whitcomb Brown who also drove horses to carriages. She was killed in March 2008 in a driving accident with carriage and four horses.

As a young man, he was initiated into Masonry, and is a 33rd degree member of the Scottish Rite, The Royal Order of Scotland, the Red Cross of Constantine, Kosair Shrine, York Rite Commandery and the Military Order of World Wars. He served on the Regional Board of the Salvation Army and as Director of Citizens Fidelity Bank from 1965-1975. As a believer in saving land, he bought several farms for the company in perpetuity, including ''Elmendorf' in Lexington, KY, ''Beechdale'' in Pennsylvania, and ''Hardscuffle'' in Kentucky.

He is survived by his sons, Dinwiddie Lampton, III, married to Irene de Boor; Mason H. Lampton married to Mary Lucile Hardaway; and a daughter, Nana Lampton; his sister Mary Jane Lampton Peabody married to Royden Peabody, II; grandchildren, Mary Wendell Lampton of Virginia Beach, VA; Mason Hardaway Lampton, married to Suzanna Lott, of Columbus, GA; and Lucile Lampton Cogswell, married to William Cogswell of Charleston, SC; as well as five great-grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held at 1:00pm on Monday, September 29 at The Olmsted at the Masonic Home, 3701 Frankfort Avenue, Louisville, KY with burial to follow in Cave Hill Cemetery. Visitation will be on Monday from 11:30am until time of service. Pearsons, 149 Breckenridge Lane, in charge of services.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Salvation Army, Culver Military Academy, The Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation, or the, Carriage Museum of America at the KY Horse Park. - Published: September 28, 2008 New York Times





---



Found on WikipediA: Elmendorf Farm is a Kentucky Thoroughbred horse farm in Fayette County, Kentucky, and has been involved with horse racing since the early 19th century. Once the North Elkhorn Farm near Lexington, Kentucky, many owners and tenants have occupied the area, even during the American Civil War and was acquired in 1997 for $5 million by Dinwiddie Lampton, Jr. (1914–2008), the president of American Life and Accident Co.. Lampton and his wife were longtime coaching and pleasure driving enthusiasts with a collection of carriages and carriage horses. Lampton's wife, Elizabeth Whitcomb Lampton, died March 22, 2008, from a carriage accident on the property.,. she was 74. Dinwiddie Lampton died six months later on September 25, 2008, at the farm. The Lamptons are buried at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, KY





---



Carriage collector Dinwiddie Lampton Jr.

Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. was a Louisville business leader, insurance magnate, and local celebrity who also dabbled in politics—even running for governor in 1987. At the time we visited in 2001, he was still putting in daily hours at his insurance company at the age of 88. But this profile focuses on another passion in his life: horses.

Lampton was the owner of one of the largest and finest collections of antique horse-drawn carriages in the country. And he put them to use as often as he could, taking the reins himself to cruise around Hardscuffle, his Oldham County farm, in a coach and four. In many ways the picture of an old-fashioned Southern gentleman, he also competed in horse shows, could usually be found on Kentucky Derby Day holding court amid a circle of guests, and for years hosted an annual steeplechase race at Hardscuffle to benefit a local arts organization.





---



Found on "Legacy. com" The following article courtesy of The Wall Street Journal By Stephen Miller

Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. had some sobering advice for the people of Louisville, Ky., in his homey TV commercials: "Be wise. Be insured." In the ads, Mr. Lampton looked like nothing so much as a Dickens character, in a greatcoat and top hat, perched on his coach-and-four, with his long gray eyebrows and wrinkled leonine head. A coaching horn sounded in the background.

From his penthouse office in a building he commissioned from the architect Mies van der Rohe, he could watch the people of Louisville go about their business.

His American Life & Accident Insurance Co. of Kentucky covered many of them against death and dismemberment.

After Mr. Lampton died, on Sept. 25 at age 94, the Louisville Courier-Journal said he might have been the most colorful local character ever, and he was up against the likes of Col. Sanders. Short of temper and long on charm, he spoke with an accent all his own, used archaic words like "my get" to mean his offspring and peppered his speech with folksy apothegms, including, "Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day."

He raised horses and rode well enough to be a nationally rated polo player starting in 1930.

His collection of more than 300 vintage carriages was among the most impressive in the country.

He founded the Hard Scuffle Steeplechase, which featured 14 fences and was the swankiest event on Louisville's social calendar.

He even ran for governor, on an anti-union platform.

The Telegraph of London described him in 2000 as "a more perfect example of an eighteenth-century-style squire than any that could be found the length and breadth of England's shires these days."

But if Mr. Lampton was born to anything, it was the actuarial tables, not the squirearchy. American Life & Accident, founded in 1906 by his grandfather, offered insurance mainly to customers of limited means. The company struggled in the Depression.

In 1935, Mr. Lampton dropped out of college to help his father, who had suffered a heart attack, run the firm.

At one point, the company had as many as 400 agents and did business also in neighboring Indiana and Ohio. "You try to whip the a -- off the adversary, then you help him up," Mr. Lampton told Business-First Louisville in 1985. "My father taught me to hate without malice." The business was small -- with some $13.6 million in premiums and $10.5 million in investment income last year, according to the Kentucky Department of Insurance -- but successful enough to support a number of racing operations and one very expensive divorce.

By the late 1960s, the company was doing well enough that Mr. Lampton could afford to put up a new headquarters in downtown Louisville and, at his daughter Nana's urging, hired Mies van der Rohe, the modernist master, as the architect.

The building stands today as one of Louisville's gems, and Mr. Lampton is credited by some with helping to lead a revival of the downtown area.

An interest in horseflesh ran in the family. Dinwiddie Lampton Sr. had once bought a gelding he found pulling a milk delivery wagon. He paid the astonished milkman $150 on the spot and made the horse, Sporty McGee, into a stakes winner.

But it was not until the 1970s that Mr. Lampton could afford stables of his own.

His reputation grew from Hardscuffle Farm, an 800-acre expanse of bluegrass east of Louisville. (Asked about the name, he explained in 1985, "It was a hard scuffle to get there; it's a hard scuffle to stay.") Later he added two more Kentucky farms and another in Bird-in-Hand, Pa.

The local Amish craftsmen were especially good at keeping his antique carriages in repair.

In 1974, Mr. Lampton established the Hard Scuffle Steeplechase as a fund-raiser for the Kentucky Opera. The event became a highlight of the social year and the nation's top-grossing annual opera fund-raiser. Men in top hats and women in gowns and long white gloves arrived via paddle-wheelers at Hardscuffle Farm, on the Ohio River.

Mr. Lampton once appeared driving a chariot in a production of "Aida." Reality occasionally intruded.

In 1986, police from dry Oldham County raided Hardscuffle Farm on race day and seized $5,000 of liquor, much of it bourbon provided by a local distiller and sponsor. Mr. Lampton denounced the county attorney as a "contemptible tramp," but spirituous beverages were no longer served.

Dinwiddie Lampton Jr. had some sobering advice for the people of Louisville, Ky., in his homey TV commercials: "Be wise. Be insured." In the ads, Mr. Lampton looked like nothing so much as a Dickens character, in a greatcoat and top hat, perched on his coach-and-four, with his long gray eyebrows and wrinkled leonine head. A coaching horn sounded in the background.

When Martha Layne Collins was elected Kentucky's governor in 1983, she enlisted Mr. Lampton to drive her in one of his coaches in the parade to her inauguration. "That day, as we were going up there, the horses began to struggle up the hill," recalls Gov. Collins, the first woman elected governor of Kentucky. "He said, 'Governor, I didn't know it was such a long hard climb to the Capitol.' I said, 'Dinwiddie, you don't know how long or how hard.'"

Hardly confined by the 18th-century technology he embodied, Mr. Lampton traveled to distant coaching events, as well as the annual meet at Saratoga, at the wheel of a Kenworth 18-wheeler. At least once, he featured the semi in an insurance ad, standing in front of it and saying, "You don't want life to run you over." He wrote the scripts.

Mr. Lampton was a generous host and liked to invite crowds to Sunday afternoon bonfires at his farms. He was famed for breakfast spreads of porridge and bacon, followed by eggs and grits and biscuits and marmalade. Mr. Lampton joked that he was writing a cookbook, "He Who Did Not Know Where the Kitchen Was." Asked by a visitor the difference between oatmeal and porridge, he answered, "Attitude, my dear, attitude."

In recent decades, he turned operations of his business, still closely held and still in the same building, over to his daughter, Nana Lampton, who converted it from an insurance retailer to a reinsurer.

Divorced for many years, Mr. Lampton remarried in 2004 to a horse enthusiast and former Miss Vermont, Elizabeth Whitcomb Brown. She was killed in a carriage accident six months ago, and he never fully recovered from the shock, Nana Lampton says. Of their courtship, he wrote, "She asked him to hold her horse, and he was at her command thereafter."



At his funeral, a coaching horn sounded the note for his departure.

1883-1893 ~ ~ 1894-1899 ~~ 1899-1919 ~~ 1920-1944 ~~ 1945-1969. ~~ 1970-present