Touch Stones in TIME

Touch Stones IN TIME By Barbara Molland Chaucer, he refers to the English Palfrey – the most common riding horse for royalty and arly each year the American Saddlebred people of means in England in the 1300s and Horse Association celebrates the start of the same ambling horse that is the ancestor of Eevery Saddlebred breeder’s year with the our American Saddlebreds today. The Palfrey publication of this reference and breeder’s guide. was, during Chaucer’s time, a common part of It is a fitting time to think about our roles as the English landscape and found from one part stewards of the breed. What does it mean to be of the British Isles to the other. Chaucer wrote a steward? From the Merriam-Webster Dictio- his Canterbury Tales before the invention of nary of the English language, we are given this the printing press, so it is not hard to imagine definition of stewardship: “the conducting, that communication was slow in the 1300s; life supervising, or managing of something; espe- hadn’t changed appreciably in generations, but cially: the careful and responsible management it was going to change of something entrusted to one’s care.” rapidly in ways that peo- In virtually every way, anyone who chooses ple could scarcely imagine to breed a horse, or to breed any animal, is at that time. taking on the responsibility of stewardship of In continental Europe that animal. Those of us who have been and in the British Isles, involved with horses and the American Sad- the 1600s brought dlebred breed for several years concern our- improved roads, which in selves with not just the breeding of one horse, turn led to more use of but the welfare and future of many horses, the harness and cart sometimes even those that don’t belong to us. horse. At the same time, This, in turn, forms the vision and future of British colonialism the breed, a road map, so to speak, of where brought increased mar- we have been and where we are going. itime trade which encour- In today’s world, we are all too aware that aged imports of horses life changes quickly. Even among horse breed- from other areas; this ers, where the 11-month gestation period of a was accompanied by a mare sometimes seems to slow life to a snail’s growing interest in horse New York Public Library Picture Collection Public Library Picture New York pace, trends of horse ownership and use evolve racing and English royal- Paul Revere in Lexing- ever more rapidly. New disciplines form, ty’s passion for fox hunting and sport. The ton in 1775 on what is equestrian fashions emerge, and imports as saddle or riding horse as utilitarian trans- widely speculated to be well as creations of new horse breeds appear, portation decreased in use. a Narragansett Pacer, some to last and gain an enthusiastic follow- Horse breeding at this time was often sub- which was used to cre- ing, while others become that proverbial flash ject to the way that horses were kept, usually ate the Kentucky Saddle in the pan (or paddock). in extensive public common areas, unfenced, Horse. We live in a rather unique time in the with stallions running freely with mares. Pal- chronology of horses and their use. Nearly lost freys were generally small horses, rarely stand- to equestrian memory, for example, is the fact ing over 15 hands. When King Henry VIII that for most of the history of riding, for hun- declared a law demanding the castration of all dreds and hundreds of years, saddle horses or small native British stallions – two years of age, those used for riding exclusively, were standing under 14 hands and running freely in amblers, not trotters. A trotting horse was a common areas – he was sounding the death driving or harness horse, not one to be ridden. knell for the English Palfrey. In 1660, when Using England as an example, in the work of Charles II ascended the throne, he and his advi- the noted early English writer Geoffrey sor, the Duke of Newcastle, began the serious American Saddlebred Reference Directory JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 1 Touch Stones IN TIME work of eliminating the as none of our horses would ever move in that native British ambling manner without a rider; but the Americans stock and replacing it insist upon it that it is otherwise because many with imported Turks and of their colts pace as soon as born.” Barbs. To quote the writer Clearly, this English traveler had no person- John Wallace, respected al memory nor had he heard other of his coun- author of Wallace’s trymen speak of ambling horses. Within a gen- Monthly, who wrote in eration or two these horses had fundamentally 1895: “Of all the facts disappeared from the British landscape and that are known and estab- British memory. lished in the history of the At approximately the same time, political New York Public Library Picture Collection Public Library Picture New York English horse, the wiping and economic conditions in England encour- out of the pacer is the aged the settlement of America. Religious dis- Gaines’ Denmark, most striking and significant … The little English sent drove a small group of English Puritan foundation stallion of pacers, that had been the favorites of kings and settlers to the shore of Massachusetts where the breed, spent years princes and nobles for so many centuries were they found a wilderness of trails and rugged with the Confederate submerged in the streams of Saracenic blood that terrain, a perfect setting for their small raiders of General flowed in upon them, and their only legitimate ambling horses to regain an equine foothold of John Hunt Morgan descendants left upon the face of the earth found utility and a way to survive. after being requisi- homes in the American colonies.” Americans being Americans, our early settlers tioned by his troops In England itself, herds of native British soon rebelled against English conventional wis- passing through Bour- ambling horses contracted so dramatically that dom in both equestrian and political matters, bon County, Kentucky. their only significant presence for a time was in and when Paul Revere rode in Boston to give This photo of Morgan southwest Scotland and in the Galway area of the alarm that the British were coming he rode, and his men was origi- Ireland. They there became known as Scottish it is said, a Narragansett Pacer – a small fleet nally published in Galloways and Irish Hobbies, ancestors familiar horse from Rhode Island whose ambling fore- 1863. to the historians of the American Saddlebred bears had been discarded by the British but breed and to all gaited American horses. An which were already being used by Americans to example of how quickly these horses disap- create the Kentucky Saddle Horse and Tennessee peared from common use in England can be Walker on the other side of the Allegheny found in the statement of an English traveler to Mountains. We find literary reference to the colonial America in 1796, in which he wrote Narragansett Pacers in the writings of James about the horses and horsemanship of Virginia: Fenimore Cooper, when in the early 1800s he “The horses in common use in Virginia are all describes their gait in The Last of The of a light description … some of them are hand- Mohicans, “Tis the merit of the animal. They some but all for the most part spoiled by the come from the shores of the Narraganset Bay, in false gaits which they are taught ... a pace and a the small province of Providence Plantation and ‘wrack.’ We should call this an unnatural gait, are celebrated for their hardihood and ease of “Of all the facts that are known and established in the history of the English horse, the wiping out of the pacer is the most striking and significant … The little English pacers, that had been the favorites of kings and princes and nobles for so many centuries were submerged in the streams of Saracenic blood that flowed in upon them, and their only legitimate descendants left upon the face of the earth found homes in the American colonies.” – John Wallace, 1895, author London, British Library, Additional MS 35166 London, British Library, of Wallace’s Monthly. The English Palfrey, ambling horse of the Middle Ages. In 1660, when Charles II ascended the throne, he and his advisor, the Duke of Newcastle, began the serious work of eliminating the native British ambling stock and replacing it with imported Turks and Barbs. 2 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 American Saddlebred Reference Directory their movement.” The Americans took the equine genetic researcher formerly at the Uni- qualities they most valued in the ambling hors- versity of Kentucky Gluck Research Center but es, crossed those horses on the larger, finer now with Texas A&M University. Dr. Cothran Thoroughbreds being imported to America and has blood-typed most of the wild horse herds developed a more stylish but still thoroughly in the state of Nevada. I recalled that I had comfortable riding horse, the Kentucky Saddler. read that there was evi- By the time the American Revolutionary dence of American gaited War was old news and the Civil War was blood, or what Dr. threatening to destroy the Union, the renown Cothran calls American of Kentucky Saddle Horses had spread from Saddle or American Gait- one end of the new country to the other. With ed Horses, in several herds its limestone soils, the Bluegrass Region of in Nevada. Because most Kentucky had become the cradle of the best breeders and owners did horses in the nation.

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