Virginia Kraft Payson

When She Feels Pretty (Karakontie {Jpn}) first burst onto the scene, Christian Erickson received several substantial offers for her dam, Summer Sweet (More Than Ready). The first calls came in after She Feels Pretty's debut win and the numbers grew after her victory in the GI Natalma Stakes. Still relatively new to the sport, having taken on the role of trustee for the Virginia Kraft Payson Children's Trust earlier that year, Erickson reached out to his new acquaintance Brian Graves of Gainesway Farm for advice. "We were being offered basically...

Items from the estate of the late Virginia Kraft Payson, proprietor of Payson Stud in Lexington and Payson Park Training Center in Florida, will be offered over the course of five auctions via Bluegrass Auction, Appraisal & Realty in June. Showcasing Payson's extensive collections of fine jewelry, rare antiques, and numerous paintings and prints--some numbered and from limited runs--over 1,200 items will be put on offer June 15-22. Said works are by renown sporting artists like Henry Stull, Jenness Cortez, Fred Stone, and Peter Howell, and include topics such as...

Virginia Kraft Payson, a pioneer with a buoyant spirit who often referred to her life as "a magic carpet ride" woven from a whirlwind of adventure travel, a passion for outdoors journalism, and a mid-life immersion into the world of Thoroughbred racing and breeding, died Jan. 9 at age 92 at her Payson Stud farm in Lexington, Kentucky. The cause of death was complications from Parkinson's disease, as confirmed by Christian Erickson, a decades-long family friend and the trustee of the Payson estate. Payson's entry into Thoroughbred ownership was the...