Adele Paxon's husband inherited Elm Grove Farm on Old York Road in
Holicong,
Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Near the community of
Lahaska, Elm Grove is an original
Colonial Province of Pennsylvania property, it was
granted to Henry Paxson's family in 1680 by Governor
William Penn. An avid horsewoman, Adele Paxson began riding while still a young girl. As an adult, she rode frequently and was a competitor in the
Devon Horse Show. At Elm Grove Farm, the Paxsons bred
field hunter horses as well as
Thoroughbreds for
flat racing. She and her husband served as
Masters of Foxhounds at the
Huntingdon Valley Hunt Club. While Adele Paxson owned many champion hunter horses, she gained national recognition with her flat-racing Thoroughbreds. In addition to the Elm Grove Farm breeding operation, Adele Paxson maintained a racing stable in Florida and a barn at the Aiken Training Track in
Aiken, South Carolina. Of her numerous successful racehorses, the best known is the 1978
American Co-Champion Two-Year-Old Filly,
Candy Éclair. Adele Paxson was the breeder of
Heavenly Cause who was voted the 1980 American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly. That year she received the Thoroughbred racing industry's highest honor, the
Eclipse Award for Outstanding Breeder. In an interview following Adele Paxon's death, Rick Abbott, who managed her racing and breeding operation during the 1990s said of her: "the welfare of the horses always came first," and that "money was not a concern. Working with her was the most gratifying thing I have ever done." In failing health, during the latter part of the 1990s Adele Paxson began selling off her racehorses and in early December 2000 Rick Abbott oversaw the sale of her remaining bloodstock at the
Fasig-Tipton Midlantic mixed auction in
Timonium, Maryland. Confined to a nursing home for the better part of 2000, Adele Paxson died on December 27 at age eighty-seven from complications of
pneumonia at a hospital in
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, hospital. ==References==