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

by John Hankins Wallace

Penn’s arrival in 1682—Horse racing prohibited—Franklin’s newspaper—Conestoga horses—Sizes and gaits—Swedish origin—Acrelius’ statement. New Jersey—Branding—Increase of size—Racing, Pacing, and Trotting restricted—Maryland—Racing and pacing restricted 1747—Stallions of under size to be shot. North Carolina—First settlers refugees—South Carolina—Size and gait in 1744—Challenges—No running blood in the colony 1744—General view.

When William Penn arrived on this side of the water (1682) and took possession of his princely gift from Charles II., he found the eastern border of his new province already occupied, though sparsely, by an industrious and enterprising people. The old Swedish colonists as well as a sprinkling of Englishmen and other nationalities had been there for a good many years, and were beginning to get the necessaries as well as the comforts of life about them. For their numbers, they had a fair supply of horses, cattle, sheep, and swine; and the growing of cereals and fruits of all kinds showed encouraging progress, with the promise of plenty. The new proprietor was gladly welcomed and his rule proved kindly and beneficent. In a letter to Lord Ormonde, after his arrival, Mr. Penn, in describing the condition of things in his new colony, says: “The horses are not very handsome, but good.” The public affairs of Penn’s grant, before his arrival, had been administered in the name of the Duke of York, from about the time New Amsterdam had surrendered to the English, and hence we find sundry regulations with regard to the horse in force before that event.

The first of these, having the efficacy of law, was in the year 1676, requiring all horses to be branded, and officers appointed to do the branding and keep a record of the fact. Besides the individual brands, each town had its own brand that had to be applied, and by this double marking it was supposed that strays could be identified with certainty. Another provision was that no mares should be exported to Virginia or Barbadoes or other foreign plantations. Again, every owner was supposed to keep a certain number of horses at home, for daily use, and he was allowed to keep twice that number running at large. In 1682 no stone horse under thirteen and one-half hands high was allowed to run at large. This was afterward changed to thirteen hands. In 1724 this law was revised and re-enacted so that colts “of comely proportions” and not more than one year and a half old, if thirteen hands high, might run at large; but if older than eighteen months they must be fourteen hands high or suffer the penalty, which was castration. In 1750 horse racing of all kinds was prohibited, under a severe penalty.

In that grand old repository of ancient, curious, and valuable things relating to colonial affairs, the New York Historical Society, to which I am greatly indebted, I found a file of the Pennsylvania Gazette, commencing with the year 1729, published by “B. Franklin, printer.” In that day the term “editor” or “reporter” was not known in the vocabulary of any well-regulated newspaper office, and for anything of a local character you had to look in the advertising columns. To these I resorted, as usual, and they presented results that were a great surprise to me. Pennsylvania has long been famous for the production of great massive draft horses, and before the days of railroads just suited, with six or eight of them in a team, for the transportation of freights from the seaboard to the Ohio River. This was a great business at the beginning of this century and for forty or fifty years afterward. The fame of those great teams, the great wagons and the great loads they hauled over the mountains, spread far and wide, and as a special designation that went with them they were called Conestoga horses, and the wagons were called Conestoga wagons, named after a creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where many large horses were bred. There was no particular line of blood to be followed, for a large horse bred west of the mountains was just as certainly a Conestoga as though he had been bred in Lancaster County. The Conestoga was simply the horse that was best suited for a big team with an enormous load, and he varied in size from sixteen and one-half to eighteen hands in height and from one thousand six hundred to one thousand nine hundred pounds in weight. These measurements he reached by breeding for the one purpose of strength and weight. It is safe to conclude that in the latter part of the last century breeding animals of large size were brought over the water, for we can hardly conceive of their being descended from the little pacers preceding them only fifty or sixty years.

The Pennsylvania horses of the first half of the last century were remarkably uniform in size, and from a large number of cases in which the size is given I find the exact average was thirteen hands one and one-quarter inches. Of the twenty-eight animals in which the habit of action is given, twenty-four were pacers, three both paced and trotted, and just one is given as a natural trotter. Here we have two very striking facts—the low stature and the uniformity of the pacing gait. These horses average a quarter of an inch below the Virginians, the next lowest, and a higher ratio of pacers than in any other colony. There must have been some reason or reasons for this, and I will suggest two which strike me as probably effective in producing these results. The earliest settlers in Southeastern Pennsylvania were the Swedes. They brought their horses with them from the Old World, and they were undoubtedly pacers, but I have no means of determining anything about their size. This may be an important factor in determining the uniformity of the gait, as well as the diminutive size. The other consideration that I will present is the fact that the pacer was more fashionable in and about Philadelphia, then the leading city of the continent, than in any other section or portion of the colonies. It is a fact that seems to be fully established, that early in the last century the breeding of pacing horses was carried on in the region of Philadelphia, with much spirit and intelligence, and that pacing stallions for public service were carefully selected for their shapeliness and speed. It is also a fact that all horses that could not pace were, in the public estimation, classed as basely bred.

The Swedes and Finns planted a colony on the west bank of the Delaware in 1638, and as they were an industrious and thrifty people they prospered and extended their plantation up the river as far as Philadelphia. This territory was then claimed by the Dutch of New Netherlands, and they overcame the Swedes in 1655, and ten years later they in turn had to surrender to the English. Of the early Swedes, the Rev. Acrelius wrote and published, in the Swedish language, a very valuable account of his people. In speaking of their horses he says: “The horses are real ponies and are seldom over sixteen hands high [evidently a misprint and should read “thirteen” instead of “sixteen”]. He who has a good riding horse never employs him for draft; which is also the less necessary, as journeys are for the most part made on horseback. It must be the result of this, more than of any particular breed in the horses, that the country excels in fast horses, so that horse races are often made for very high stakes.” Such horses often sold for sixty dollars in our modern money. The question of the pacers of Philadelphia will be considered more at length in the chapters devoted to the history of the pacer.

New Jersey is not known to have made any direct importations of horses from the old country. Lying between New York on the east and Pennsylvania on the west, she had abundant opportunity to get her supply of horses from her neighbors on either side, to say nothing of the overflow from Virginia about 1669. Like all the other colonies, as early as 1668 her horses were ordered to be branded and then suffered to roam at large and find their own living. Not much attention seems to have been given to the idea of improvement in the size and quality of the stock till 1731, when it was provided by law that all colts of eighteen months old, running at large and under fourteen hands high, should be gelded. I have not made any attempt to get at the exact average size of the Jersey horses, nor to ascertain the ratio of pacers among them, for we know the environments and the sources of supply, and in knowing these we know just what the Jersey horses were—a large majority of them were pacers and they were not over fourteen hands high.

The statutes of this colony, enacted 1748, furnished the first real evidence of record, with one exception, going to show that pacing and trotting races, as well as running races, were the common amusement of the people in the first half of the last century. They were so common, indeed, that the legislative authorities declared them a nuisance and restricted them to certain days in the year. That this was not a “moral spasm,” as some might call it, that had seized the legislative authorities of that particular year, is evident from the fact that, afterward and from time to time, this statute was amended, and always in the direction of greater restrictions and greater severity. This is sufficient evidence that the moral sense of the community sustained the lawmakers in pronouncing it a nuisance, to be abated. It is not probable that pacing and trotting races were any more common or more demoralizing in New Jersey than in some of the other colonies, but they seem to have been content with fulminating against “horse racing” without specifying the different gaits at which the horses might go in the race. Until this old colonial statute was discovered, it was not possible to prove by contemporaneous evidence that there had been any pacing or trotting races before the first decade of the present century. This, however, adds to their antiquity more than a hundred years.

Maryland was really the first in point of time to legislate for the suppression of pacing, as well as running races, but the old statute, enacted in 1747, was not discovered till very recently. This proves that pacing races were very common in Maryland one hundred and sixty years ago, but it says nothing about trotting races. It will be observed that in the New Jersey statute the different kinds of racing are placed in this order: “Racing, pacing and trotting,” and I take this to mean the order of their prominence. Applying this method to Maryland, it may be inferred that trotting races were infrequent and practically unknown, and hence not enumerated as offensive. Taking these two cases together, I think we are justified in concluding that the pacer antedated and preceded the trotter in all turf sports. No doubt he was faster then than the trotter, and he has maintained his superiority, in that respect at least, to this day. Maryland was a great racing colony and it was afterward a great racing State. This statute did not sweep over the whole colony, but applied only to the race course at Newmarket, and Anne Arundel and Talbot counties. As I understand the matter, this statute was enacted specially at the request of the Society of Friends, and for the protection of their yearly meetings.

With Pennsylvania on the one side and Virginia on the other, it is not necessary to spend any time on the sizes and gaits of the horses of Maryland, for they were simply duplicates of those in the two colonies with which they were in constant intercourse and trade. In the matter of undersized stallions running at large Maryland was more in earnest and more savage than any of the other colonies. For, by an act of Legislature, passed 1715, it was provided that any person finding an entire colt eighteen months old, or an unbroken stoned horse, running at large, no difference what his size, might shoot him upon the spot.