Hiatoga (Scott’s) was a bay pacer foaled 1858, got by Hanley’s Hiatoga; dam by Blind Tuckahoe (pacer); grandam by Consul. This horse was quite fast and paced under the name of Tuscarawas Chief. He was the best of the family and was bred and owned by Samuel Scott, East Springfield, Jefferson County, Ohio. He put five trotters and four pacers in the 2:30 list; seven of his sons and seventeen of his daughters were producers.
The Hiatoga family seems to have no trotting inheritance except from the pacer. It is a useful family and still has vitality.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY.
Characteristics of the Morgans—History of the original Morgan—The fabled pedigree—The true Briton theory—Justin Morgan’s breeding hopelessly unknown—Sherman Morgan—Black Hawk—His disputed paternity—His dam called a Narragansett—Ethan Allen—His great beauty, speed and popularity—The Flying Morgan claim baseless—His dam of unknown blood—His great race with Dexter—Daniel Lambert, the only successful sire of the Black Hawk line.
Fifty years ago there was no family of horses so popular as the “Morgans.” They were carried into all parts of the country at high prices and they gave their purchasers general satisfaction. They were small, perhaps not averaging over fourteen and a half hands high, but compact, trappy movers and had most excellent dispositions. Many of them were ideal roadsters, where speed was not in great demand, for they were kindly, tractable and always on their courage. Many of them carried themselves in excellent style, and notwithstanding their diminutive size, it is not probable we will ever again see a better tribe of every-day, family horses. In all their outline and in every lineament they were the very opposite of the blood horse, and when bred on any strain outside of their own family, they almost universally failed to impress their own characteristics on their progeny. This failure I observed with deep regret more than forty years ago. The step could be extended and the speed increased by crossing with the long striders, but in securing this we lost the Morgan. In advance of their general distribution they had the misfortune to be heralded as great trotters, and in this respect, at least, they failed of meeting expectations. They went, largely, into the hands of inexperienced men, who knew nothing about how to cultivate speed, and the little, short, quick steps of their new trotters gave them all the sensations of going fast, without the danger incident to rapid traveling. In regard to the matter of speed, through the overzealous and not too conscientious editors and others to say nothing of the advertisements of those who had them for sale, they suffered greatly by too much praise. The result is that the original type has been extinguished, and it is doubtful whether a fair specimen could be found, even among the mountains of New England. Next to the injury which the family sustained from the exaggerated claims of speed put forward by its too sanguine friends, there was another and even greater injury from the absurd and foolish claims made for his blood. It is impossible to make a thinking and sensible man believe that a little hairy-legged “nubbin” of a pony, weighing eight hundred and fifty pounds, hired for fifteen dollars a year to drag logs together in a clearing, at which employment he was a great success, had the blood of the race horse in his veins. This was always a stumbling block to my immature enthusiasm for the Morgan horse. From an experience of a great many years and from the developments of horse history during that time, I find the “stumbling block” no longer worries me, for it has rotted away and disappeared. Although the family has ceased to exist as a factor in current horse history, it had a history in the past; and, as a historian, I must consider its origin as well as the deeds it has accomplished or failed to accomplish.
Mr. Justin Morgan, the central figure in this investigation, was born in West Springfield, 1747, where he married and lived till 1788, when he removed to Randolph, Vermont, where he died, March, 1798. He was a reputable citizen, fairly well educated for his time, and taught school for a living. He owned a house and lot in his native town, where he kept a wayside house of entertainment, and during the early summer he usually had a stallion to keep on the shares. In the spring of 1785 he had charge of the horse True Briton, or Beautiful Bay, and I will here add that three years later, John Morgan, Jr., had charge of the same horse at Springfield, for the seasons of 1788 and 1789. This John Morgan, Jr., removed to Lima, New York, late in 1790 or early in 1791. Justin had sold his place in West Springfield to Abner Morgan, on long payments, and in the summer of 1795 he came back to West Springfield to collect some money that was due him, presumably on the price of his former home, but he failed to get money and took two colts instead. One was a three-year-old gelding and the other was a two-year-old bay colt, entire. He led the three-year-old with a halter and the two-year-old followed. The date of this visit to the old home is the key to the main question to be settled, and it is fixed by Justin Morgan, Jr., then a lad of the right age to remember such things, and by Soloman Steele and Judge Griswold, who fix the date in the late summer of 1795. The horse was sold and resold and sold again, as a foal of 1793, and that date never left him till he died in 1821. I look upon this date as perfectly immovable, and every attempt that has been made to overthrow it has not been based on any reasonable evidence, nor prompted by a desire to get at the truth, but only to make a fictitious sire a possibility. This was the original Morgan Horse, and this date was thoroughly fixed by Linsley, without knowing that it upset the pedigree he had labored so hard to establish. After a lapse of fifty years an attempt was made to fix up a pedigree for the “Original Morgan Horse,” claiming that he was got by True Briton or Beautiful Bay—represented to be a great race horse, stolen from the great race horse man, Colonel De Lancey, in the Revolutionary War. I must, therefore, consider, briefly, this part of the fiction.
First—As a starting point in the pedigree, it is assumed that the race-horse in question was stolen, during the War of the Revolution, from James De Lancey, perhaps the largest and most widely known of all the colonial horsemen of that day. He was the first man to import race horses into this colony, and his name and the fame of his horses were discussed everywhere. He was very rich, in politics a Tory, and on the eve of hostilities he sold out every horse he owned, of whatever description, went back to England and never returned. This disposes of the false assumption that the sire of the original Morgan horse was stolen from him.
Second—There was another James De Lancey, cousin to the preceding, and not a rich man, who was colonel of a body of Tory cavalry operating in Westchester County from 1777 to the close of the war in 1782. It is not known whether he ever owned a race horse in his life, but it is certain he was a dashing fighter, and at the head of the cowboys he was known to the inhabitants of all that region. His name is not to be found anywhere in connection with horses. He bore, in full, the same name as the distinguished horseman, and was mistaken for him, although he was on the other side of the ocean.