The Morgan horse is the most distinctive reproducing native type in America, and has been so since the family was recognized as a type in Vermont some seventy-five years ago. For symmetry, docility, intelligence, sturdiness, and speed, the Morgans have been justly famous and have met with the approval of good judges of horse-flesh during the whole of their history. They reached their highest fame during the two decades between 1850 and 1870. After that, both as a type and as a family, they came near perishing, a victim to the desire, which merits the name of craze, to produce trotting horses of phenomenal speed by means of crossing and recrossing with the Hambletonian blood. That there is a revival of Morgan breeding is an excellent thing for the country, for the Morgan is about the best all-round, everyday, general utility horse that this country has had and probably as good as any type in the world.

The renascence of the Morgan horse is due to the horse shows, which have become deservedly popular in many parts of the United States. There are those who speak of the horse shows rather contemptuously as society fads in which the horses exhibited are of secondary importance and interest. To many, who care nothing about horses and know less, it is doubtless true that the social side of horse shows is the important, if not the only side. This attitude, even if it be the attitude of the majority of those who attend the exhibitions, does not detract from the value of the shows so long as the work in the ring be of the right sort, and high standards be established and maintained as to the various classes of horses that are produced in this country. Indeed, it is a good thing for the shows that people with no fondness for or taste in horses should still patronize them, for their money helps pay expenses and makes it possible to offer the handsome prizes which go along with the awards. If the horse shows had done nothing else than stimulate the renewed effort to re-establish the Morgan type they would have served a purpose far from vain.

Twenty years or so ago, when the horse shows began to take the place of the old-time county fairs, the driving horse that was popular in the United States was the Standard Bred Trotter, which usually traced back to Messenger through Hambletonian, who has been celebrated with such insistence of praise as the great begetter of trotters that the majority of Americans believe all that has been said of him as the actual and indisputable truth. It is not a grateful task to destroy established and well-liked fictions, so for the moment I shall pass the Hambletonian fiction by, and devote myself to telling about horses of superior breeding, better manners, higher courage, greater symmetry and above all, a prepotency of blood which reproduces itself in offspring from generation to generation, so that we have in the Morgans an easily recognized and most valuable type. Before going on with my story, however, I must disavow any intention to detract from the merits of those who have bred and trained the wonderful trotters that have, year by year, been clipping seconds off the mile record until the two minute mark has been passed. At the same time I wish to insist that the breeding and training of these phenomenal animals should be left to the very rich, just, for instance, as yacht racing is. The breeding of trotters is far from an exact science, as the trotter, as such, is not a reproducing type, and only two or three in a hundred of the standard breeds ever go very fast, while more of the fast horses among them pace than trot. They are not a type in conformation, in action or in gait; they come in all sizes and all shapes, and are not to be judged by the two or three per cent that develop speed. Moreover, they do not pay. Counting the cost of the ninety-seven or ninety-eight per cent of failures, I venture to say that the production of each successful trotter must cost in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars. Lottery prizes, when lotteries were in vogue, were as high as that; but buying lottery tickets was never considered a good commercial enterprise. I sincerely hope, however, that rich men will continue to breed for extreme speed, as they can afford such costly and interesting experiments. The breeder, however, who wishes to make his stock farm pay, and the ordinary farmer who raises a few colts annually will surely find a more profitable business in trying to secure high-grade Morgans than in pursuing the elusive course which frequently leads to bankruptcy by the well-known Hambletonian road.

The founder of the Morgan type was a horse born somewhere about 1789, and was the property of Justin Morgan, who kept a tavern in West Springfield, Massachusetts, until he moved to Randolph, Vermont, in the year the colt that has perpetuated his owner’s name was foaled. I have examined all the testimony available as to the pedigree of this first Morgan horse, and I must say with regret, but with entire respect for those who have gathered the evidence, that none of it seems to me quite convincing. This was the conclusion of Mr. D. C. Linsley, who published a valuable book in 1857, called “Morgan Horses.” Mr. Linsley in his book printed all the stories and traditions about the breeding of the Justin Morgan with candid impartiality, but he did not decide that any was correct. According to these stories the first Morgan was anything from a Thoroughbred to a Canadian pony. Recently Col. Joseph Battell, of Middlebury, Vermont, himself a breeder of Morgans and the editor and publisher of the “Morgan Horse and Register,” has re-examined all the records extant as to the owner of the first Morgan horse, and he announces, with a thorough belief in his conclusions, that the horse was a Thoroughbred, got by Colonel De Lancey’s True Briton (also called Beautiful Bay and Traveler) out of a daughter of Diamond, also a Thoroughbred. According to the Battell pedigree, Justin Morgan had many infusions of the blood of the Godolphin Barb, the Darley Arabian, and the Byerly Turk, and was worthy to be registered in the stud book established by the Messrs. Weatherby, in England. Indeed, Colonel Battell personally told me that he thoroughly believed in the accuracy of this pedigree, adding, however, “that while the evidence is strong enough to transfer property on, it would not hang a man.”

As I said before, none of the evidence seems quite convincing to me. And 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.

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:

“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.

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.