no wonder. This horse died in Vermont in 1820, and not until nearly
thirty years after was there any systematic effort made to trace his
pedigree. During his life he was known only in his own neighborhood
where, notwithstanding his acknowledged value as a stallion, he was used
the greater part of every year as a common work horse. My own belief is
that this horse was very rich in Arab and Barb blood, but not an English
Thoroughbred. He had, so far as his history has been told, none of the
Thoroughbred characteristics. Nor had his descendants. But whence his
ancestors came and where he was born or when are not matters of so much
importance as the indisputable fact that his progeny now for a hundred
years have had similar excellent characteristics and have remained a
fixed type, through good and evil repute, so that we know by what we can
see to-day that the old stories and songs of our grandfathers as to the
strength, the speed, the beauty and the courage of Morgan horses were
more than mere songs and stories—they were the truth put into pleasing
form.
This founder of the type, when the property of Justin Morgan, who, after
he gave up tavern keeping in Massachusetts, became a schoolteacher, a
drawing and music master in Vermont, was called Figure. When the produce
of his sons began achieving fame, and the family and type needed a
distinctive name, he was called after his old owner (maybe his breeder,
for all that I can say to the contrary), Justin Morgan. His most famous
son was Sherman Morgan, though there were eight or ten others of his
colts kept entire, and the progeny of them have found place in the
Morgan Register. Mr. Linsley’s description of the first Morgan is worthy
of transcription:
“The original, or Justin Morgan, was about 14 hands high and weighed
about 950 pounds. His color was dark bay, with black legs, mane and
tail. His mane and tail were coarse and heavy, but not so massive as has
sometimes been described; the hair of both was straight and not inclined
to curl. His head was good, not extremely small, but lean and bony, the
face straight, forehead broad, ears small and very fine, but set very
wide apart. His eyes were medium size, very dark and prominent, with a
spirited but pleasant expression, and showed no white round the edge of
the lid. His nostrils were very large, the muzzle small and the lips
close and firm. His back and legs were perhaps his most noticeable
point. The former was very short, the shoulder blades and hip bones
being very long and oblique, and the loins extremely long and muscular.
His body was rather round, long and deep, close ribbed up; chest deep
and wide, with the breast bone projecting a good deal in front. His legs
were short, close jointed, thin, but very wide, hard and free from meat,
with muscles that were remarkably large for a horse of his size, and
this superabundance of muscle exhibited itself at every step. His hair
was short and at almost all seasons soft and glossy. He had a little
long hair about the fetlocks and for two or three inches above the
fetlocks on the back sides of the legs; the rest of the limbs were
entirely free from it. His feet were small but well shaped, and he was
in every respect perfectly sound and free from every sort of blemish. He
was a very fast walker. In trotting his gait was low and smooth, and his
step short and nervous; he was not what in these days (1857) would be
called fast, and we think it doubtful if he could trot a mile much, if
any, within four minutes, though it is claimed by many that he could
trot it in three.”
So we see that the founder of this great type was, whatever his
breeding, a pony of most admirable conformation. In his performances he
was the most remarkable horse in the neighborhood of his owner. He won
against all comers in the various contests that were indulged in by the
somewhat primitive sportsmen of the Green Mountain State. He won at
walking, trotting, and running and also at pulling. Besides he was in
great demand on muster day as the mount of the commanding officer, who
would make a great show on this elegant, graceful, and intelligent
horse. So we see the founder was exactly what the Morgans have been and
are to-day, a good all-round, general utility horse. And his progeny
have been like him. Many of them, however, have been much larger and
much faster as trotters, and, as we shall presently see, a breeder of
Morgans stands as much chance to produce a very fast trotter as he who
breeds with speed alone as his ultimate object.
[Illustration:
DUKE OF ALBANY (MORGAN)
Bred by Joseph Battell
]
Justin Morgan was in the stud for more than twenty years in Vermont, and
became the father of many sons and daughters. How many sons were kept
entire is not known. Mr. Linsley mentions only six, but Colonel Battell
accounts for twelve or fourteen on “information more or less reliable.”
Of the daughters we have very little direct information, but that there
were many and that they had a great influence on the stock of New
England, and particularly of Vermont, is inevitable. The records of most
of the sons as sires have not been kept with either fullness or
certainty, and the evidence is usually speculative rather than exact.
This as a rule; sometimes, however, it is exact. This is the case with
some of the progeny of Sherman Morgan, Bulrush and Woodbury Morgan. As
to the others—Brutus, Weasel or Fenton Horse, Young Traveler or Hawkins
Horse, Revenge, the Gordon Horse, the Randolph Horse, and one or two
that went to the neighborhood of Boston—the records are not
satisfactory. For instance, here is the kind of story that was once
current. Revenge was in the stud at Surrey, New Hampshire, in 1823. The
dam of the famous Henry Clay by Andrew Jackson was the noted mare Lady
Surrey, foaled about 1824. She was said by some to be sired by Revenge.
Mr. Randolph Huntington, the historian of the Clay family of horses and
the staunchest advocate of their merits, does not endorse this, as he
says that Lady Surrey was a Kanuck, and brought to New York with twelve
other horses from the neighborhood of Quebec. Had she been the
granddaughter of the original Morgan, the fact would hardly have escaped
Mr. Huntington, who has also always been a believer in the Morgan blood.
But there is very little profit in discussing or analyzing these old
stories. There is no mortal way of getting at the truth, and we can do
little more than grant that many of them are not impossible. What is
important is that in the course of three horse generations the Morgan
was a fixed and reproducing type in Vermont, a type which had attracted
the attention of breeders and horsemen all over the country to such an
extent that commissioners were sent, even from Kentucky, to examine and
report upon the stock.
Sherman Morgan was foaled in 1808, his dam being a Rhode Island mare
taken to Vermont in 1799. Of her pedigree nothing is certainly known,
but Mr. Sherman, her owner, spoke of her as of Spanish breed, which
means that she was, in all probability, a Barb. Her high quality,
docility, speed, spirit and stamina have been testified to in unusually
trustworthy fashion. She was taller than Justin Morgan, but her colt,
Sherman Morgan, was not so tall even as his sire, being only 13¾ hands
high, and weighing only 925 pounds. He was worked hard as a young horse
on a farm, and for many years also driven in a stage from Lyndon,
Vermont, to Portland, Maine. His team mate was another son of Justin
Morgan, and the “little team” was famous at every inn between the two
ends of the route. In that section Sherman Morgan was the champion
runner in the matches at short distances then frequent in the locality.
This horse was also known for a time as “Lord North,” but there was no
effort to disguise the facts as to his correct lineage. The change of
name indicates that in 1823 the true value of the horse as a sire was
not fully recognized. He died in 1835, some twenty of his sons being
kept entire. As in the case of Justin Morgan we have no records of the
females that sprung from Sherman Morgan. His sons averaged 14¾ hands,
the average weight being 1020 pounds. Here was distinct improvement in
the third generation, and clear evidence also of the prepotency of the
blood, together with the value in breeding of the Arab blood when
transplanted.
Sherman Morgan’s most famous son was Black Hawk, foaled in 1833, his dam
being a large black mare of unknown breeding, but fast and superior in
quality. Those who had owned the mare said that she was from New
Brunswick or Nova Scotia and of English stock. The pedigree
manufacturers—Wallace, particularly—insist that she was a Narragansett
pacer, with the evident idea of bolstering up their contention that all
fast trotters owe their capacity to trot to the pacing capacity of their
ancestors. As not two per cent of Morgans ever pace, including the
descendants of Black Hawk, this contention is preposterous, to say the
least. Black Hawk’s son, Ethan Allen, was a magnificent roadster, and
his great speed in trotting matches did harm, I think, to the
perpetuation of the Morgan type, for the Morgan breeders began making
efforts to get fast trotters rather than to preserve the type, with the
result that there was, in the course of twenty or thirty years, a
distinct falling off in the interest that was felt in these very
superior horses. Ethan Allen was foaled in 1849 at Ticonderoga, New
York, and his dam was said to be an inbred Morgan. The colt certainly
had all the Morgan characteristics, and was the fastest stallion of his
day, trotting three heats with a running mate when he was eighteen years
old in 2.15, 2.16, and 2.19. He was also the most popular public
performer of his day; and at that time trotting was more attractive to
the people in America than running. “No one has ever raised a doubt as
to Ethan Allen being the handsomest, finest-styled and most
perfectly-gaited trotter than had ever been produced,” was said by the
“American Cultivator,” in 1873. He was a bright bay, a trifle less than
15 hands, and weighed 1000 pounds. He was the sire of a great many colts
and fillies, but being kept in training the better part of his life he
never had so good a chance as some other horses to become famous as an
ancestor. Through his sons, Honest Allen and Daniel Lambert, his name
and that of his sire have been kept very much alive in the records, for
his descendants have been fleet in the track and most successful in the
show ring. His daughters and granddaughters have also done him proud,
proving the excellence of the Morgan blood as brood mares. It is only
when we get to his generation that the chroniclers take much notice of
the importance of the females in perpetuating the Morgan type and
family. Honest Allen spent the last ten years of his life at Lexington,
Kentucky, and he was mated with many of the best mares in that section,
his son, Denning Allen, out of Reta, a granddaughter of Black Hawk,
proving himself one of the best speed producing sires the country has
had, one of his colts, Lord Clinton, being marvelously fast and
courageous.
Woodbury Morgan was the largest of the stallion sons of the original
Morgan. He was 14¾ hands, and usually weighed about 1000 pounds. He was
in the stud in Vermont for twenty years, and at twenty-two was taken to
Alabama, where he died from an injury received in disembarking from the
ship that carried him. His sons and daughters in New England helped
materially to increase the fame of the type, as they were larger than
the other branches of the family, and had in a great degree the
characteristic virtues—fearlessness, elegance, speed, stamina, and
docility. Three of his sons—Gifford Morgan, Morgan Eagle, and Morgan
Cæsar—became famous sires, their sons, grandsons and great-grandsons
being reckoned among the best horses in America. One of the grandsons of
Gifford Morgan was Vermont Morgan, the sire of Golddust, a horse which
established one of the most noted and valuable families of the Morgan
strain. Golddust was foaled in Kentucky in 1855, and was at his best
during the Civil War, his opportunities being very much curtailed by the
unsettled and distressing social conditions which prevailed in the
neighborhood where he was owned. But he was a wonderful horse, and
having received through his dam another fresh infusion of Arabian blood,
his sons and his daughters were rich in that potent quality, without
which no equine family or type has ever, in the last few centuries at
least, been valuable or permanent. Golddust’s dam was by Zilcaadi, an
Arabian horse given to United States Consul Rhind by the Sultan of
Turkey. The Golddusts were speedy horses, but speed was not their chief
virtue. If Mr. Dorsey, of Kentucky, had not been handicapped by the
prevalent prejudice held by the purchasers of roadsters against any
other than Hambletonians as fast trotters, he would have been able to
perfect a better type of carriage horses than we have in this country,
and have got, also, many very fast trotters. Golddust did get fast
trotters, but his bent was certainly in another direction which was not
followed. He was 16 hands high, and weighed 1250 pounds. He was a bright
gold in color—hence his name—and the perfection of symmetry, while his
action left nothing to be desired.
The third of the sons of Justin Morgan to establish a distinct Morgan
family was Bulrush Morgan foaled in 1812, and living to the great age of
thirty-six years. The breeding of the dam of Bulrush Morgan is not
known, but she is said to have been a French mare, which I take to mean
that she was brought into Vermont from French Canada. This horse left a
great many descendants, and they were all singularly alike, generally
being deep bays and browns with dark points and a general freedom from
any marks, such as white feet or white spots in the face. They were
noted also for the absence of spavins and ring bones. They were fast,
good all-round horses—good on the road and in the field, in harness and
under the saddle. They did not particularly attract the attention of
trotting horse people until Bulrush Morgan’s great-grandson, Morrill,
began a family of many branches—the Winthrop Morrills, the Fearnaughts,
and the Dracos—all of much distinction in that field where fast mile
records are considered the highest test of merit.
Suppose that we were to concede that phenomenal speed was the one test
of merit for a driving horse and then examine the records. We should
find that the majority of the really phenomenal trotters from Ethan
Allen’s time till now had in their breeding rich infusions of Morgan
blood. As I have said before, Ethan Allen, with no other than Morgan
blood that we can account for, was the fastest stallion of his time, and
the most popular performer on the trotting tracks, even eclipsing the
famous Flora Temple in his ability to excite the enthusiasm of sportsmen
by the evenness of his work, the smoothness of his gait, his endurance
and courage, and that intelligent docility which made him seem to know
in every emergency exactly what he was called on to do. In his great
race in 1867, at the Fashion Course on Long Island, when, with a running
mate, he met the fleet Dexter, who had taken from Flora Temple her
long-maintained fastest record, we are told that forty thousand people
had assembled to witness the contest, and the betting was 2 to 1 in
favor of Dexter. In Wallace’s “Monthly” of ten years later, there was a
description of the race that I venture to reproduce:
[Illustration:
JUBILEE DE JARNETTE (MORGAN)
Owned by C. X. Larrabee
]
“When the horses appeared upon the track to warm up for the race,
Dexter, driven by the accomplished reinsman, Budd Doble, was greeted
with a shout of applause. Soon the team appeared, and behind sat the
great master of trotting tactics, Dan Mace. His face, which has often
been a mask to thousands, had no mask over it on this occasion. It spoke
only that intense earnestness that indicates the near approach of a
supreme moment. The team was hitched to a light skeleton wagon; Ethan
wore breeching, and beside him was a great, strong race-horse, fit to
run for a man’s life. His traces were long enough to fully extend
himself, but they were so much shorter than Ethan’s that he had to take
the weight. Dexter drew the inside, and on the first trial they got the
‘send-off,’ without either one having six inches advantage. When they
got the word the flight of speed was absolutely terrific, so far beyond
anything I had witnessed in a trotting horse that I felt the hair
raising on my head. The running horse was next to me, and
notwithstanding my elevation in the grand stand, Ethan was stretched out
so near the ground that I could see nothing of him but his ears. I fully
believe that for several rods at this point they were going a two-minute
gait.
“It was impossible that this terrible pace could be maintained long, and
just before reaching the first turn, Dexter’s head began to swim, and
the team passed him and took the track, reaching the first quarter pole
in 32 seconds, with Dexter three or four lengths behind. The same
lightning speed was kept up during the second quarter, reaching the
half-mile pole in 1.04, with Dexter further in the rear. Mace then took
a pull on his team and came home a winner by six or eight lengths in
2.15. When this time was put on the blackboard the response of the
multitude was like the roar of old ocean.”
The team also won the next two heats in 2.16 and 2.19, and Wallace is of
opinion that the team might have won the first heat in 2.12 had it been
necessary. This enthusiastic description of Ethan Allen’s performance
was written before Wallace “took a brief” for the Hambletonians. Then he
belittled the Morgans in every way, and when reminded of his previous
admiration of Ethan Allen, expressed a doubt of his Morgan ancestry. But
the Morgans have kept on going fast, when it has happened to be their
nature so to do, and that really is as much as can be said of any
horses. The dams of the following remarkable performers were of Morgan
breeding:—Jo Patchen, Dan Patch, Sweet Marie, Major Delmar, and Lou
Dillon, while the only trotting inheritance of Rarus, Fearnaught, and
Lord Clinton was from Morgan forebears. The Morgans can go fast enough.
There is no doubt about that. But that is not their chief value or their
highest merit. Probably not a much greater percentage of Morgans would
go phenomenally fast than of Standard Bred Trotters with no Morgan
strain, though such a proposition has not been proved; but the Morgans
are what the Standard Bred Trotters are not—the Morgans are of a
definite reproducing type, and whether they trot in 3.30, 2.30, or 2.00
minutes, they have their typical excellences to recommend them and to
give them a value, which no other horse type in America can approach,
because they are the best, most symmetrical, most elegant and most
docile harness horses in the world, with a stamina and a courage that
none but Thoroughbreds approach.
So much importance has been attached to this matter of speed with track
records, that I felt obliged to dwell on it somewhat in my discussion of
the Morgans. It is really, however, much more interesting than
important. The important thing is to get a breed of horses ninety per
cent of which can go with reasonable speed, showing a clean, square trot
and graceful high action, and when at top speed be free of clicking or
forging or interfering, performing in this manner, moreover, without
boots or hobbles and without effort, and also without tiring even when
the road is long. And in the Morgans we have such a type. That there
should ever have been any danger that they might have perished through
neglect is a curious chapter in the history of this country. It does not
properly belong in this place, but to that other chapter which relates
to the chicanery, the delusions and absolute forgeries which are so
interwoven with the history of the Standard Bred trotter that good men
believe in them though they have been pointed out again and again with
elaborate detail and circumstance.
[Illustration:
Original lithograph published by Currier & Ives.
ETHAN ALLEN AND RUNNING MATE _vs._ DEXTER
Mile heats, best three in five heats, Fashion Course, L. I., June 21,
1867. Ethan Allen and mate won in three straight heats. Time: 2.15,
2.16, 2.19.
]
The Morgans are being bred in many parts of the country, more of them
being in the Middle and far West, probably, than in Vermont and the rest
of New England. Their blood is closely blended with many of the families
of the Kentucky saddle-horses, and goes far in giving finish to that
remarkable type, which now furnishes mounts for the great army of
American park riders, while pretty nearly all the show winners in the
saddle classes come from two or three counties of the beautiful Blue
Grass State. The adaptability of the Morgan blood to other crosses is a
strong argument in favor of its Arab origin. That its prepotency has
continued so long is another argument in favor of the theory that there
was other Arab blood brought by the female lines. These speculations and
surmises we cannot prove, but as there is now a register we can know
about the latter generations, the good qualities of which will, no
doubt, show us that we were fortunate in saving this invaluable type
before it was too late and madness had done its final work of
extermination.
CHAPTER FIVE
MESSENGER AND THE EARLY TROTTERS
One of the most important events in the early horse history of this
country was the landing from England in 1788 of the Thoroughbred
stallion Messenger, a gray horse that had had some success on the turf
in the old world, but was scarcely what might be called great as a
race-horse. He was brought over here to be the sire of runners, and he
was, to an extent, as both his sons and daughters were good performers.
His greatest place in the Thoroughbred records is due to the fact that
he was the sire of Miller’s Damsel, the dam of American Eclipse, the
horse that upheld the honor of the North in the great contest when Sir
Henry represented the South. But before Messenger’s death it had been
recognized that when he was bred with the mares of the American basic
stock, the produce had a disposition and a capacity to trot faster than
was then at all usual. Naturally, therefore, he was used to further this
end as much as to sire runners, though there was nothing like a trotting
turf in those days, the contests being on the roads under saddle and for
considerable distances.
Messenger’s sire was Mambrino, by Engineer; Engineer was by Sampson, and
Sampson by Blaze; Blaze by Flying Childers (pronounced by Major Upton in
his “Newmarket and Arabia,” “the best horse to be found in the stud
book”); and Flying Childers by the Darley Arabian. This is pretty good
breeding, as any one will say who is familiar with the early English
records as kept by the Messrs. Weatherby. But even Messenger’s title to
be a Thoroughbred has been bitterly disputed by the controversialists of
recent time, this controversy having been precipitated and intensified
when, in the effort to get faster trotters, it was proposed to put in
more Thoroughbred blood. The leader of the opposition to more
Thoroughbred blood was an able and ingenious writer who has never had
his equal in manufacturing pedigrees to suit his own theories, and at
the same time please the interests of those who hired him to bolster up
the merits of the stock they were breeding to sell. He maintained that
the dam of Sampson, the grandsire of Messenger, was a pacing mare, and
hence Messenger’s capacity to transmit the trot to his progeny. He
further affirmed that the trot and the pace were the same gait; but of
this I will speak later when I get to the Standard Bred Trotters. Now,
as a matter of fact, the Godolphin progenitor of Messenger through the
female line was a Barb, and Barbs are apt to pace, though if
Thoroughbreds pace I have yet to see one.
So many fictions have grown up about Messenger that he seems more like a
hero of romance than a flea-bitten gray horse of not very fine finish,
and worth, according to the records of sales, in the neighborhood of
$4500. Indeed, the record of his landing is so obscure that I have not
been able to determine whether it was in New York or Philadelphia. But
he was in the stud for nineteen years and left many sons and daughters.
He was kept in various places—near Philadelphia, on Long Island, in
Orange County, New York, and in New Jersey. But in each neighborhood he
made an impression on the horses that came after him, an influence which
seems to have been both good and enduring.