Albert Poe was huntsman of the Middleburg Hunt (VA) for 15 years before retiring from an illustrious career breeding and hunting old Virgnia Bywaters type foxhounds. / Douglas Lees photo
Albert Poe died on Saturday night, May 18, 2019. He was arguably the finest American-born professional breeder of foxhounds of our time. Along with his brother, Melvin, the pair have to be considered the two most storied American-born professional huntsmen that any foxhunter living today could have followed across the country.
Melvin might have been considered the more gregarious personality, but Albert, in his quiet way, was extremely articulate. He could put into words the hunting wisdom which developed perhaps instinctively.
Born into a Virginia country family that raised its own hounds for hunting, Albert, his father, and his brothers all hunted for sport and for the table. The children of the family all had farm chores. Albert showed an early aptitude for horses, and was breaking and training ponies for his neighbors from an early age. There was no tractor, just horse power. Albert had to feed the cattle before school, and if he was running late he would jump onto his father’s horse and gallop to the bus stop, pat the horse on the rump, and send him home.
He began his professional career at the age of fifteen, whipping-in to his older brother, Melvin, at the Old Dominion Hounds (VA). Eight years later, at the age of twenty-three, Albert became the youngest professional huntsman in North America when he accepted an offer from Joint-Masters Mrs. A.C. Randolph and Paul Mellon to be the huntsman for the Piedmont Fox Hounds (VA). It was 1954, and the bloodlines Albert started breeding at Piedmont from the old Virginia Bywaters foxhound strain are the same bloodlines being bred at that hunt to this day. And countless American hunts breeding and hunting Crossbred packs today are still using the same Piedmont lines that Albert began developing in the mid-twentieth century.
“We certainly have a good many hounds in our kennel who come from old Piedmont lines that Albert developed from Bywater type hounds,” said Piedmont MFH Tad Zimmerman. “Interestingly, [current Piedmont huntsman] Jordan [Hicks] was weaned on this blood at Greenville County, where a lot of hounds were drafted over the years.”
Piedmont, then as now, was considered one of the finest packs in the world. For twenty-one years, Albert show the best of sport to a national and international Who’s Who of visitors. During Albert’s tenure as huntsman, the Piedmont Fox Hounds went from hunting two days a week to three days a week.
Piedmont only hunted on weekdays during the two-day-a-week period, which meant that Albert’s sons couldn’t hunt their ponies with him. He had beagles at home, so he invited all the kids in the neighborhood to bring their ponies and join him and his sons hunting rabbits on the weekend. The formidable Mrs. Randolph heard what Albert was up to, and told him she’d like to hunt with the beagles, too! He said he’d be happy to have her if she would be his Field Master, and Mrs. Randolph agreed.
Albert rated Mrs. Randolph, a transplanted New Englander, as the best Master he ever worked for. Unfortunately, their parting of the ways came over racehorses in 1974. He was spending more time training racehorses and she wasn’t happy about that. Everyone knew Mrs. Randolph was strong-willed, and, in his own way, Albert must have possessed some of that same iron. Here were two individuals with enormous talent and resources—each of a vastly different nature and position—but neither would bend to the other.
Huntsman Albert Poe and the MIddleburg hounds moveoff from a meet at Snake Hill. / Douglas Lees photo
After the parting from Piedmont, Albert concentrated on training race horses, but soon returned to the hunting field to hunt hounds for Randy Rouse, MFH, at Fairfax Hunt (VA) for a few years, thence to the Middleburg Hunt (VA) in 1980. He remade the pack at Middleburg and carried the horn for fifteen years before closing his professional hunting career. He wasn’t through foxhunting, though.
After Melvin retired as huntsman at the Orange County Hunt (VA), Melvin maintained and hunted a private pack of foxhounds, the Bath County Hounds, for George Ohrstrom. With Albert’s help, the pack was ultimately filled with Albert’s foxhounds, and the two brothers continued to hunt. Perhaps they’re back together again and hunting now.
Funeral services will be in Middleburg, Virginia, at the Royston Funeral Home on Friday, May 24, at 1 o’clock. A private interment will take place in Leeds Cemetery at Markham, Virginia. In lieu of flowers, the family asks for donations to the MFHA’s Hunt Staff Benefit Foundatrion (HSBF).
Posted May 21, 2019
1973: Albert Poe (right) and the Piedmont Fox Hounds with Warrenton huntsman Fred Duncan, at a joint meet from Atoka in the Paul Mellon country. / Douglas Lees photo