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As often happens, with strong business influence comes strong political influence. Laurence Tierney followed in his father’s footsteps making alliances politically that could further boost his business enterprises. He served as the WV Delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960 when he became friends with John F. Kennedy (a fellow Irish Catholic) while he was running for President. Ann Tierney Smith recalls Kennedy even visited her father’s home, where he took a brief nap during the busy campaigning he was doing in the coal fields. Later, Laurence Tierney was able to stand-in for Kennedy during one of The Geneva Conventions when Kennedy couldn’t attend. After Kennedy’s assassination, Ann Tierney Smith, answered her call to service by accompanying former First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt as she travelled the country making campaign speeches for Kennedy’s Presidential Campaign. She continued her White House service by helping Jaqueline Kennedy in her office after the President’s assassination. Smith’spassionwasalwaysthehorses,however,andthatishowshe would rather be remembered. She received Leatherwood Farm as a lifetime gift from her parents when she turned 21, raising ponies and teaching lessons just to pay the taxes and pay her one farmhand (Lewis Tierney sold his interest in the farm to his brother, Laurence in the 1950s). At age 78, Smith still likes to keep a hands-on approach to the running of the farm and now lives on the new farm surrounded by her mares and foals. If you find your way into Paris, you probably won’t stumble upon Leatherwood by happenstance, and that’s just how the family wanted it. Escondida Road is off-the-beaten-path; a small one-and-a-half lane road that doesn’t really get many visitors unless they know someone who lives there. Leatherwood was originally located on the border of Bluefield, VA and WV in what used to be known as the capital of the coal fields. The family operated their premier breeding facility nestled at the base of the picturesque East River Mountain for 66 years before re-locating it to Paris. The reason for the move was urban sprawl and development. In the mid-70s the front of the farm was sliced off by a four-lane highway, making raising horses there increasingly more dangerous. “We began looking for a place in Kentucky in 1999 and finally found the one in Paris five years later. It was important to us that we not be in the way of urban sprawl again. We did not take the move lightly, since there was so much history and so many memories on the old farm. The new place we found had to be really special in order to justify leaving the one we had.” Smith recalls. “The stone barns and rolling fields of the new farm really spoke to me.” And so it was in 2004 that they undertook the daunting task of packing up over 55 head of horses and 66 years of memories and moved to Kentucky (the new farm encompasses half of what
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used to be Evergreen Farm). Not long after the move, Smith realized that it was perhaps fate that moved them to Bourbon County after all. Ann Tierney Smith knew all along that her faLeatherwood King Foundation Sire ther and uncle had been on a shopping trip to Kentucky to improve their bloodstock back in the 1940s, but she didn’t know where. At that time they found a young stallion (a grandson of the famed Bourbon King) at Robert Jones’ farm that they simply could not live without. They finally convinced Jones to sell the colt, however, on one condition: the Tierney brothers had to buy every single one of Jones’ broodmares in order to get the colt! They did just that and in so doing, procured some of the most noteworthy breeding stock in the whole country. That young stallion the Tierneys simply couldn’t live without became Leatherwood King, the foundation sire for Leatherwood Farm and still found on many of the best Saddlebred pedigrees. What Smith realized 60 years later was that Robert Jones’ farm was located in Bourbon County, Kentucky. The Leatherwood horses had come home! As a direct result of her family’s dedication to procuring such noteworthy breeding stock as well as her own single-minded attitude toward betterment of the Saddlebred breed, in 2002, Ann Tierney Smith was awarded the coveted American Saddlebred Association’s Lurline Roth Sportsmanship Award. Then in 2008 Smith was inducted into the American Saddlebred Horse Association’s Breeders Hall of Fame. Some of the incomparable horses of yesteryear that are associated with the Leatherwood Farm name include the unbeatable five-gaited show horse WC Golden Sensation, such immortal sires as Sensation Rex, WC Leatherwood King, Dynasty, and Clarma. Add such Hall of Fame broodmares as Kate Haines, Reverie’s Desdemona, Pennypack’s Pride, and Parading Promise to the list and it makes it hard not to find a Leatherwood horse somewhere on the pedigrees of any of the good show horses of today.