Sherman Morgan.—In his history of the Morgan Horse, Mr. Linsley names this and three or four other sons of the original, that were kept for stock purposes, but none of them seems to have attained any eminence, except Sherman. As he never made any pretensions to being a trotter, he would have been forgotten long ago, had it not been for the lucky circumstances that he was the sire of Black Hawk, and thus his name has been preserved. He was scant fourteen hands high, with heavy body on short legs, and carried his head well up. He was a chestnut and foaled about 1809. There has always been a doubt in the minds of many as to whether he was the sire of Black Hawk, but that question will be considered when we reach that horse. His dam was a very handsome mare, brought from Narragansett, a pacer, and a very desirable saddle mare. In the trotting “Register,” three representations are given as to the breeding of this mare, namely, that she was of the Spanish breed; that she was an imported English mare; and that she was brought from Virginia on account of her beauty and speed. The first claim seemed to have the best historical support, and besides this she was brought from Providence, Rhode Island, and was a very fine pacer. The theory was then prevalent that the Narragansett pacers were of the “Spanish breed.” The elimination of that foolish notion from the history of the pacers does not affect the plain statement that she was a Narragansett pacer. It is not known that this mare ever produced anything else, either by the original Morgan or by any other horse.
Black Hawk.—As his name indicates, this horse was a jet black, and was something over fifteen hands high. He was foaled 1833, was got by Sherman Morgan, and was bred by Benjamin Kelly, of Durham, New Hampshire. As the question of his paternity has been the subject of a great deal of bitter controversy, continued through many years, and participated in by men of intelligence, on both sides, I must give the history, as I understand it. Mr. Kelly kept a tavern at Durham and Mr. Bellows, the owner of Sherman Morgan, made this house one of his points of stopping as he traveled his horse, in his circuit of the season. Along with Sherman he had another horse called Paddy, black as a raven, that did some service at seven dollars, while the price for Sherman was fourteen dollars. On one of his visits, Mr. Kelly’s black mare, called “Old Narragansett” was bred to Sherman and proved to be in foal. Not long after this Mr. Kelly sold the mare to Mr. Shade Twombly, living about two miles from Durham, and a part of the agreement was that if the mare should prove to be with foal, Mr. Twombly was to pay for the services of the horse. The next spring the mare dropped a fine black horse colt, and Mr. Twombly claimed the colt was by Paddy and not by Sherman, hence, he refused to pay fourteen dollars for the services of Sherman, but was willing to pay seven dollars for the services of Paddy. This resulted in a lawsuit in which it was proved that Sherman was the sire of the colt, and Mr. Twombly’s estate had to pay the money. The colt was kept by Mr. Twombly’s heirs, at pasture in Greenland, New Hampshire, till he was about two years old, when he was sold at auction to Albert Mathes, of Durham, for seventy dollars and from him he passed to Benjamin Thurston, of Lowell, for two hundred dollars. In Thurston’s hands he became quite noted, locally, as a trotter, and in 1844 he became the property of David Hill, of Bridport, Vermont, where he became altogether the most popular stallion in the United States, and died there November, 1856. He was the first horse to command one hundred dollars for his services; and many of the great mares of the country were sent to his embrace, among them the world-renowned Lady Suffolk, but unfortunately she failed to produce.
To understand why the fight against the Sherman Morgan paternity of this horse should have been so bitter and so persistent, we must consider the condition of the horse interests in New England at that time. When Black Hawk came to the front the Morgans of the real Morgan type had already attained some degree of popularity and here came a horse overtopping them all, with no trace of the Morgan type about him. He and his family attracted the attention of purchasers and threw a shadow of doubt over the little punchy, hairy-legged fellows that knocked out many a sale. Besides this, it was a serious and real question in the minds of a great many honest and intelligent men, as to whether Sherman Morgan, so typical of his family, could possibly have been the sire of a horse so completely outside of the family, not only in appearance and formation, but in his ability to trot. In 1847 Black Hawk was pitted against the Morse Horse, mile heats, best two in three, at the Saratoga State Fair. He won the first heat in 2:50½ and the second in 2:43½. He was then fourteen years old and this was very fast, for a stallion of that period. It is but justice to say that the Morse Horse contingent claimed that Black Hawk was set back in the first heat for running and that the heat was given to the Morse Horse in 2:52½ and that the second and third heats were won by Black Hawk in 2:54½ and 2:56. Just what the truth is in this disagreement I am not able to determine. As we look at this horse, so distinct from all his tribe; and as we consider the very indistinct knowledge of the laws of generation as held by the masses in that day, we cannot wonder that the paternity was so vehemently disputed. Neither can we wonder, as his descendants pass in review before us, that this dispute has never been settled to the satisfaction of the contending parties. The old Morgan type never reappears in the descendants of this family.
But, we must not forget that we have considered only half of the inheritance of this horse. He had a dam as well as a sire. To that half of his pedigree we must now give some attention. The story of the “half-bred English mare, brought from New Brunswick” has had its day and we may as well lay it aside as a humbug. Mr. Allen W. Thomson, of Woodstock, Vermont, has brought out the facts with regard to this mare in a form that is very clear and satisfactory. In 1876 Mr. Thomson visited Albany for the purpose of examining everything that had been said in The Country Gentleman newspaper touching on the paternity of Black Hawk. In this search for the sire he would necessarily find many references to the dam and among these references he was greatly surprised to find she had been described as “a pacing mare.” He goes on to say: “In our visit the same fall to Durham, Dover, Portsmouth and Greenland to learn more of her, we found a number that knew her when owned in Durham, and they said she was then known as the ‘Old Narragansett Mare.’ They said that Benjamin Kelly, deceased, brought the mare into Durham, that he had a son John L. living in Manchester, New Hampshire, and that he would know more about her, etc.” After learning that Mr. John L. Kelly was a very intelligent and responsible man, having been city marshal and mayor of Manchester, and known as “Honest John,” he wrote him and received the following reply:
“In answer to your inquiries about the dam of Black Hawk, I will give you my best recollections, aided somewhat by a diary which I kept at that time. I returned to Durham from a sea voyage in the fall of 1830. In the following spring I went to Boston with my father with a lot of horses. We stopped over night at Brown’s Hotel, at Haverhill, Mass., where we met a teamster from Portsmouth, N. H., with a team of four horses. In the hind span was a large gray horse and a dark bay mare. Among father’s horses was one which was a good match for the gray horse. The man noticed it and told father that the mare was too fast for the horse, was worth two of him for speed and bottom, yet he would trade with father for his gray horse. After a good deal of talk, with the aid of Mr. Brown, the trade was made and we drove the mare in the carriage to Boston, leading the others. We found her to be a splendid roadster, and as she was not in good condition to sell, we took her back to Durham. At this time she was chafed and bruised up very badly with the heavy harness, yet in a few months she came out of it, with no traces of it, except a few white spots on her back and breast. The teamster said she was a Narragansett mare. She would weigh 1,000 pounds. Father kept her as one of his stable horses. She was found to have great speed as a trotter, and father was always bragging about her. One day, late in the season, Israel Esty, of Dover, drove up to Durham with a trotter, and bantered father for a trot, mile heats on Madbury Plains, between Durham and Dover. I had great faith in the mare and pleaded with father to accept his offer, and he did, and fifty dollars was staked on the race. John Speed was father’s hostler at the time, and he commenced getting the mare ready for the race. He had only three weeks to do it in. At the time specified, a large collection of people from Dover and Durham collected to witness the race. Dr. Reuben Steele was one of the judges. The Esty horse won the first heat, the Kelly mare won the next two, distancing the horse in the last one. In the spring of 1832 John Bellows came to Durham with the old Sherman Morgan, and I persuaded father to have the mare bred to him. He did, as I saw the horse cover her. I was 21 in 1832; went to sea again that fall. My recollection of the dam of Black Hawk is she was a very fine pointed dark mare, with a nostril so large, when excited, that one could put his fist into it.
John L. Kelly.
“Manchester, N. H., August 25, 1876.”
The only “trip” in this letter is where Mr. Kelly speaks of the mare as “a dark bay,” but as the identity of the mare is fully maintained by other witnesses, this shade of color is not material and is, doubtless a slip of the pen. We don’t know she was a Narragansett mare, but we do know that she was called a Narragansett. It is wholly possible she may have been a bastard Narragansett, or she may have been called a Narragansett merely because she was a pacer. At that date there were still many descendants of the old Narragansetts to be found, of greater or less degree of purity in their breeding. Among Mr. Thomson’s gleanings from persons who knew the mare there are some bearing upon her color and gait that are in order at this point of our inquisition. Mr. John Bellows, the owner of Sherman Morgan, says: “She was a good-sized black mare, a fast trotter, with a swinging gait, and resembled in appearance the Messenger stock of horses.” The following description was gathered from several persons who knew the mare well and among them Mr. Wingate Twombly, son of her former owner. “She was a large, rangy mare, a little coarse and brawny, did not carry much flesh, might have weighed some over one thousand pounds and was a trifle over fifteen and one-half hands high. Head and ears rather large, neck long and straight, withers low and thin, medium mane and tail, had more hair on the fetlocks than her son, was called black a little way off, but close to one could see her grey hairs mingled with her coat and close to she was called a steel mixed. She had a white strip in her face and some say a little white on one hind foot. She was smart to go, but her gait was not a smooth, square trot. Some called it a sort of a pace, others that she single-footed. She went with her head low when trotting fast. One person said it was about a straight line from her back to her head when she was going fast.” She was called the Narragansett Mare when Mr. Kelly owned her. From other sources and from men who personally knew the mare and had ridden beside her, we have undoubted evidence that she was very fast, but all through there is some confusion about the character of her gait. Mr. Bellows, who ought to know something about the gait of a horse, says: “She was a fast trotter, with a swinging gait.” Now just what he means by the phrase “swinging gait” is hard to determine. Putting all these bits of evidence together, the reasonable conclusion seems to be that she was double-gaited, and when speeded she would go from the trot to the pace or from the pace to the trot as the case might be.
