The Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development

by John Hankins Wallace

The court records of Henrico County, Virginia, for the year 1677 contain three distinct trials growing out of horse races for that year. In one case the contest was for three hundred pounds of tobacco; in another the winner was to take both horses; in the third the amount at issue does not appear. From the readiness at sharp practice and from the cunning dodges to get clear of paying a bet it is very evident that the principals and the witnesses were well up in all the tricks of racing as it was practiced at that early day. How long before 1677 racing was practiced in Virginia I have no means of determining, but the next year and the next, continuing to the end of that century, the records of the court speak for themselves. In these trials I find the names of Thomas Jefferson, Jr., grandfather of President Jefferson, and also the name of Benjamin Harrison, the ancestor of two presidents, although they were not principals in any of the cases.

In Beverley’s History of Virginia, published in London, 1705, at section ninety-four, we have the following:

“There is yet another kind of sport, which the young people take great delight in, and that is the hunting of wild horses; which they pursue, sometimes with dogs and sometimes without. You must know they have many horses foaled in the woods of the uplands, that never were in hand and are as shy as any savage creature. These having no mark upon them belong to him that first takes him. However, the captor commonly purchases these horses very dear, by spoiling better in the pursuit, in which case he has little to make himself amends, besides the pleasure of the chase. And very often this is all he has for it, for the wild horses are so swift that ’tis difficult to catch them; and when they are taken ’tis odds but their grease is melted, or else being old they are so sullen that they can’t be tamed.”

In the number of Wallace’s Monthly for September, 1877, p. 684, will be found a very interesting article from the pen of the late Dr. Elwood Harvey, on “The Chincoteague Ponies,” that have from time immemorial occupied, in a wild state, the islands of Chincoteague and Assoteague off the eastern shore of Virginia and Maryland. The traditions relating to their origin are very hazy and improbable, and the most reasonable one, because it is within the range of possibilities, is that a Spanish ship was wrecked off this part of the coast and the original ponies were on board and swam ashore. It is well established that they have occupied the islands for more than a hundred years. They are about thirteen hands high, uniform in shape and resemble each other except in color, for all colors prevail. Some of them pace a little, and they have rather light manes and tails, and no superabundance of hair on the fetlocks. Now, the horses of Virginia, at the period of which Mr. Beverley writes, and of which I will have something further to say as we progress, were but little if any larger than these semi-wild inhabitants of the islands; they were of all colors and many of them paced. As it is well known that the action of the ocean, so unaccountable to all human ken, one year builds up a dike connecting islands with the mainland, and the next year, perhaps, washes it out again, we can thus easily understand how a herd of these semi-wild animals may have been caught and kept there. In this way, it seems to me, the origin of the Chincoteague ponies may be easily and rationally accounted for, without any shadow of violence to the clearest reasoning. Mr. Hugh Jones, who, in many directions, seems to have been a closer observer of the life of the colonists than any of the other tourists whose writings we have examined, wrote a little work entitled “The Present State of Virginia,” which was published in London, 1724, expressing himself as follows, on page 48:

“The common planters, leading easy lives, don’t much admire labor or any manly exercise except horse-racing, nor diversion except cock-fighting, in which some greatly delight. This easy way of living, and the heat of the summers, make some very lazy, who are then said to be climate struck. The saddle horses, although not very large, are hardy, strong, and fleet; and will pace naturally and pleasantly at a prodigious rate. They are such lovers of riding that almost every ordinary person keeps a horse, and I have known some spend the morning in ranging several miles in the woods to find and catch their horses only to ride two or three miles to church, to the courthouse or to a horse race, where they generally appoint to meet on business, and are more certain of finding those they want to speak or deal with than at their home.”

Mr. Jones here places us in close contact with the character and habits of the people of that day, as well as with the character and qualifications of their horses. It is not to be inferred, I think, that all their horses were pacers, but that all their saddle horses were pacers there can be little doubt. This is the first intimation we have from Virginia that some of their pacers were very fast, and when Mr. Jones says “they could pace naturally and pleasantly at a prodigious rate,” he means that the speed was marvelous, wonderful, astonishing. This “prodigious rate,” in a good measure, balances Dr. McSparran’s account of the Narragansett, which he had seen go a mile “in a little over two minutes and a good deal less than three,” and gives strength to the statement of Mr. Lewis, that when a boy he had ridden in pacing matches and return matches between the Rhode Islanders and the Virginians.

In the Virginia Gazette, under date of January 11, 1739, we find the following advertisement, to which we invite special attention, as it brings out some facts which, inferentially, throw a great deal of light upon horse racing, up to that period:

“This is to give notice that there will be run for at Mr. Joseph Seawall’s, in Gloucester County, on the first Tuesday in April next, a Purse of Thirty Pistoles, by any horse, mare or gelding; all sized horses to carry 140 lbs. and Galloways to be allowed weight for inches, to pay one Pistole entrance, if a subscriber, and two if not, and the entrance money to go to the second horse, etc. And on the day following, on the same course, there will be a Saddle, Bridle and Housing, of five pounds value, to be run for by any horse, mare or gelding that never won a prize of that value, four miles, before. Each horse to pay five shillings entrance and that to go to the horse that comes in second. And on the day following there is to be run for, by horses not exceeding thirteen hands, a hunting saddle, bridle and whip. Each horse to pay two shillings and sixpence at entrance, to be given to the horse that comes in second. Happy is he that can get the highest rider.”

The first point suggested by this advertisement is that there were no distinctions made except by size, and that, at this date, 1739, there were no English race horses then in Virginia. The second point is that there was such a thing as “horse size” but what size this was I have not been able to discover. The third point is that Galloways were allowed weight for inches. They were evidently below “horse size.” But they were expected to enter for the big purse of the meeting, and they must, therefore, have ranked as good race horses; but what did they mean by “Galloway?” This is the only instance in which I have met the term in Virginian history, although it is well known in general horse lore. “Galloway” is an old name of a territorial division of Scotland, embracing Wigtonshire, part of Ayrshire, etc., in the southwestern part of that country, and was at one time famous for the excellence of its pacers, and it is probable they were to be found there after the influx of eastern blood had driven the pacer from all other portions of Great Britain. The Irish Hobbie, always undersized, was a famous race horse, as well as a pacer, many generations before the period now under consideration. The name “Galloway” is only known in history and is not to be found on any modern map. I have learned by many experiences that the name is very generally believed to be Irish and is confounded with “Galway,” an Irish county. It is known that an Irish gentleman shipped many cattle to the colony, and it is quite possible that he shipped horses also, and if this reasoning be right, these “Galloways” may have been Irish “Hobbies.” It will be observed, also, that the distance to be run is not definitely stated, but it is fairly to be concluded that the race of the second day was to be four miles, and none of them less than one mile, and that in heats. Races of four-mile heats were very common long before the first English race horse was imported.

We here have a stock of horses that the people of Virginia have bred and ridden and raced for a hundred years, and we know comparatively nothing about them. They seem to have been specially adapted to the saddle, but they could run four miles, or they could run a quarter of a mile, like an arrow from a bow. They were not a breed, although selecting and crossing and interbreeding for a hundred years would make them quite homogeneous. There is a romantic interest attaching to these little horses, for we have reached the middle of the eighteenth century, and all the successive idols of this race-loving people are about to be dethroned by their own act, and their homage transferred to a stranger—a larger and finer animal and faster over a distance of ground. Whatever of glory and honor, to say nothing of money, that was to be achieved from this time forward was to be ascribed to the newly arrived English race horse. But the truth should not be concealed that this old stock furnished half the foundation, in a vast majority of cases, for the triumphs of future generations of the Virginia race horse, and the same may be said of the old English stock upon which the eastern blood was engrafted. About the middle of the eighteenth century the line was drawn, and there was thereafter developed the engrafting of the new upon the old. In 1751-52, Moreton’s imported Traveller was there, and he was the only English race horse advertised that year. There may have been two or three others, but they had not made themselves known to the public, and I very much doubt whether there was any other. A very few years later there were many others, and some of them of great celebrity.