A successful owner and breeder, among William Ziegler Jr. successful horses, he owned
El Chico, the 1938
American Champion Two-Year-Old Male Horse, and
Esposa who was the
American Champion Older Female Horse of both 1937 and 1938. Another of his runners,
Bounding Home, won the 1944
Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the
U.S. Triple Crown series. Ziegler Jr. purchased the
Burrland Farm facility in
Middleburg, Virginia in 1926 for $70,000. He then had Bottomley design and build a mansion on it by 1927. He attempted to sell Burrland in 1938, but it didn't sell until
Eleonora Sears purchased it in 1955. On his death in 1958 at the 55th Street mansion,
Helen Keller wrote a tribute about him in the
New York Times. Keller called his death an "irreparable loss" to the American Foundation for the Blind. ==References==