Anne Arundel's Horses

2012-01-13T22:20:00.002-05:00

Doing Business with Horses -- 1870s - 1900s

2012-01-13T21:52:00.020-05:00

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"Doing business with horses" -- a phrase that can be interpreted in several ways: using horses to conduct one's business; the businesses of buying, selling, or training horses; or working in a business that supplies the equipment and tools required by those who own horses for any reason. The end of the nineteenth century to the start of the twentieth was the period just before the beginning of the end for horses as a part of everyday life in both rural and urban areas. Although the automobile powered by an internal combustion engine had made its practical appearance in the 1880s, ownership was still limited and sightings even in Annapolis were rare until the early twentieth century.

When Boyd's Business Directory of the State of Maryland was published in 1875, horsepower for moving people and goods was still provided by horses, not cars. Of the businesses in towns that catered to the needs of horses, the directory listed one blacksmith, Gottlieb Feldmeyer, at 16 Carroll Street (in the area where the James Senate Office Building and other state agencies are now located). Joseph Hayes's harness making business occupied space nearby at 25 Cathedral Street and Arthur Carter's wheelwright shop was not much farther away at 64 Tabernacle Street (now College Avenue). With West Street providing the only land access to Annapolis, businesses catering to horses located on the perimeter of the city near West. Benjamin Martin's Hotel at 67 West and Moses Sellmon at 55 West both offered livery services and stabling for horses.

The term "livery" has several definitions, but the one most appropriate here is "a stable that boards horses and that keeps horses and carriages for hire." The dictionary definition encompasses both boarding and hiring, but the advertisements that appear in the diretories separate the two. Martin's Hotel offered horses and vehicles for hire but also provided a place to stable horses for travelers and perhaps for townspeople who owned a horse but didn't have a stable.

The Maryland Directory, published two years later in 1878, listed three blacksmiths in Annapolis. Gottlieb Feldmeyer was still in business, and two additional firms, Martin & Meyers and Peterson, Stites, & Co., also offered services in this line. Blacksmiths could not only shoe horses but also did the metal work for wooden carriage and cart wheels, repaired traces, and could fabricate or mend the metal parts of harnesses and riding gear.

By the publication of the 1882 edition of this directory, the number of city blacksmiths had increased to six: Feldmeyer, W. W. Martin on his own, Peterson, without Stites, as Peterson & Co., Arthur Carter, Ferdinand Hogan, and Jacob Niehl. The portion of the 1885 Sanborn Insurance Co. map of Annapolis shown above identifies the Feldmeyer blacksmith shop in the middle of the Carroll Street block, with a wheelwright shop next door.

Jumping ahead fourteen years to 1896-97, there were again six blacksmiths in Annapolis, but the personnel had changed once more. W. H. Feldmeyer now did business at 20 Carroll Street, Samuel Peterson was located on the waterfront at Medford Wharf and A. A. Stites served customers at City Dock. Newcomers included W. W. Morris at 117 West Street, J. F. Stevens at 167 West, and F. E. Stevens at 51 Prince George Street. The same 1896 directory listed thirty blacksmiths in the rest of the county, serving customers in twenty-five different towns or neighborhoods.

The three later directories show the same patterns of continuity and change in the other businesses related to horses. Joseph Hays appears as a harness maker again in 1878 but not in subsequent years. Theodore G. Friemel was the harness maker in Annapolis in 1882, perhaps in association with Gottlieb Feldmeyer. By 1896, his business was in the hands of C. A. Friemel and located at 53 West Street, and J. B. Martin, at 71 West, also made saddles and harnesses. In 1878, the directory had an entry for Martin & Myers (also listed as blacksmiths) under the wheelwright heading; they were the only wheelwrights listed that year. In 1896-97, according to the directory, there were no wheelwrights in town, but the city had one wagonmaker, F. E. Stevens (also listed as a blacksmith) at 51 Prince George Street.

Benjamin Martin remained in the hotel and livery business for the entire twenty-year period covered by the early directories. He was listed only as B. C. Martin under the category heading of "Livery/Stable" in 1878 and 1882 but reappeared as Martin's Hotel, at 73-75 West Street, in 1896-1897. James H. Vansant also operated a livery/stable business in 1878 and 1882, and 1882's listing included F. W. Duvall as well. In 1896-97, in addition to Martin's Hotel, there were two establishments in town: Richard G. Chaney at 121 West Street, near the railroad depot and the Annapolis & Bay Ridge Stables, at 61-63 West (established in 1870, according to their advertisement), with a Vansant family member as manager.

Two other categories of business related to horses appear in the directories published in 1875 and 1896-97. James Vansant's first directory listing, in 1875, was as the agent for Adams Express Company at 7 West Street. Adams was still in business twenty years later, but now had a competitor, the United States Express Company at State Circle and Francis Street. The advertisements of the livery and express businesses point to the mutually beneficial relationship between the steamboat lines and railroads on the one hand and the livery companies on the other. Freight arriving by boat and rail had to be transported to businesses, farms, and homes, just as passengers had to be brought to and from the wharves and depots. Livery companies were the taxis and rental trucks of the pre-combustion-engine era.

And just as later directories contain listings for gasoline stations, so too the 1896-97 directory included among its entries two businesses that provided fuel for horse power. John H. Rawlings, at 77 West Street, and Henry B. Myers, at 29 West, advertised hay and feed among their many products for home and farm.

Henry B. Myers opened his business on West Street in the late 1880s and Henry Myers & Co. continued to occupy the site until the early 1970s. In its earliest years, the company catered to a horse-powered agricultural economy, selling harnesses and hardware on West Street and advertising the availability of coal, lumber, flour, feed, and hay behind the store in buildings that lined Cathedral Street, as shown below in the 1891 Sanborn map (buildings have been renumbered since 1891). As cars replaced horses, harnesses, hay, and feed gave way to paints and oils, china, GE appliances, and housewares. The family business first occupied 47 and 49 West and later expanded into 45. Between 1908 and 1913, the company added a third story and gave the original 18th century buildings a uniform facade with a modern, 20th century look.

In the Sanborn map below, Cathedral Street runs along the left side of the block shown and West Street runs diagonally along the right. The supplies of hay and feed were stored in the sheds along Cathedral.

Looking down the first block of West Street toward St. Anne's Church (after 1908), horse-drawn vehicles still dominate the street's traffic although they no longer have exclusive use of the roadway. The remodeled buildings at 45-49 can be seen as the three-story structure on the right side of the street.

By 1928, the company advertised trucks as well as hardware, stoves, and household goods, but hay and feed could still be purchased.

A c.1930 photograph shows the remodeled storefront while the last photograph below captures the recent businesses occupying 45-49 West Street in 2008 as well as the modern color palette. And the internal combustion engine appears to have won the battle for the street.

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2012-01-02T13:10:00.003-05:00

The White Horse

2012-01-02T12:04:00.005-05:00

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A couple of weeks ago, I was in New York for the weekend and took a break from a walk around Central Park to visit The Frick Collection. While in the museum, my eye was caught by a Constable landscape labelled "The White Horse." The horse in question is standing in the bow of a flatboat getting underway on the left side of the canvas. One man is busy coiling up an anchor line while two men are pushing the boat away from shore using long poles. A fourth man, smoking a pipe, sits in the stern with the tiller at hand. The catalog description of the painting describes it as showing "a tow-horse being ferried across the river Stour near Dedham."

The tow-horse will eventually be pulling a narrow boat on a nearby canal. His connection to the ferry is only as a passenger. The horse stands in a well between the bow and a low raised deck area that runs almost the length of the boat. Three of the ferrymen are standing on this raised deck while the fourth appears to be sitting on the side of a similar small well at the stern end. It is difficult to see how this vessel could carry much in the way of cargo except on calm days when passengers and baggage could rest securely on the elevated deck. Only the use of planking to cover the recessed space would allow the boat to carry any kind of wheeled vehicle.

What is certain, however, is that there is no cable, no provision for sails, and no arrangement for rowing. Is the river shallow enough at this point to pole the boat across? Does it drift with the current, steered by the tiller? That would seem to make crossings "on demand" unlikely and complicate the shuttle design of having a matched pair of ferry landings. Short of a time machine, an account by a very observant and obsessively detailed traveller, a manual for ferry operators, or some other contemporary description, the details remain unclear.

2011-12-27T16:36:00.002-05:00

Ordinaries, Ferries, and Horses

2011-12-27T16:21:00.015-05:00

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Wishing to write one more blog post for 2011, I then, as per usual, decided to defer the agonies of writing in favor of the pleasures of organizing the material that I have been collecting over the past couple of years. I started with the real paper but that proved to be such a heterogeneous collection that the task seemed too demanding for the evening of Boxing Day. So I turned to the virtual paper instead.

One of the first files I found bore the name "Anne Arundel County," which told me very little. When I opened it to investigate further, it proved to be a file of extracts from county court records, all having some connection to ordinaries or ordinary keepers. The file had been generously shared with me by Rod Cofield, Director of Interpretation and Museum Programs at Historic London Town and Gardens. Because the colonial town of London was one terminus of a ferry over the South River, operated by the holder of an ordinary license, all aspects of colonial ordinaries in Anne Arundel are important to the interpretation of the site.

William Brown House, Historic London Town and Gardens
To digress just a bit, in 1755 an Englishman named George Fisher traveled north from Virginia, passing through London Town on his journey. In the narrative of his travels, Fisher wrote "London Town, (a great name) where I arrived about Three stands upon the S W side of South River; is composed of a few houses only. After Crossing this small river not more than half a mile in breadth, Two great Fellows in getting my Horse out of their (Browns) Boat, threw him upon his back in the water; and tho' he lay at least a minute on his side in the water, the Boat beating on him, he received no damage. [William and Mary Quarterly, January 1909, p.175]

Returning to the path on which I originally set out, the file is voluminous with much information that has little to do with the content of this blog. But it does contain scattered entries that help shed additional light on the operation of ferries as they pertained to travel through the county on horseback. Enough information so that I promise to put to rest with this blog the question of the power source for Anne Arundel's ferries. Not that I'm convinced all the evidence has been assembled, but only because I don't plan to go looking for any more. If it turns up, however...

The court record volumes begin in 1703. The county levy for that year, established at the November court session, authorized payment of 6000 pounds of tobacco to each of the county's publicly supported ferrymen. In the manner of colonial roads, which meandered around fields and obstacles, the June 1704 court record presents another digression, in the account of a suit by Joseph Addison against Capt. Edward Hunt. Addison charged that Hunt "at Lyons Creek in Anne Arundel County… stood justly indebted" for an itemized list of expenses that included "money lent you at the race" in the amount of 18 shillings. This serendipitous entry testifies to horse races being held at Lyons Creek (near Herring Bay) as early as 1702.

In the record of the January 1705 court session, the clerk included the rates set for food, drink, and accommodations at county ordinaries. Travelers paid six pence for "a night's lodging in a bed" and the same amount for "good pasturage for a horse". For two shillings the horse's master could purchase a peck of shelled corn or oats as feed for his horse and hay or oat straw bedding for the same amount. The August court further decreed that the ferrymen on the Severn and South Rivers had to be in attendance on Sundays between nine and eleven in the morning and two and four in the afternoon to provide passage for all persons, whether on foot or horseback, who were going to church services.

Horses continued to receive equal, if not superior, consideration in court directives concerning ordinaries and ferries. When the justices appointed Joseph Crouch and James Hoskins as ferry keepers for the Severn River in November 1710, for example, they directed the two men to "ply the [river] with a good boat for carry over of horses and other passengers inhabiting in this county." Edmund Rumney, in petitioning for the appointment as ferry keeper for the South River in November 1713, stated that he had spent at least £300 to built "conveniences . . . fit to give entertainment for man and horse by land or water and is also provided with two good boats and hands."

The first clue as to the means by which the ferry boats moved across the rivers can be found in an entry for November 1715: "Edward Rumney agrees to keep South River Ferry for the ensuing year . . . and to find two good boats and two hands to row in the said boats." This stipulation doesn't rule out the possibility that sails were also used in favorable conditions but would seem to indicate that the ferries did not use any form of cable crossing.

Appointment as ferry keeper for the South River was a sought-after plum, judging from the petitions submitted to the court. John Holland petitioned for the post in November 1716; in granting his request, the court ordered Holland to find "two good boats and five able men to keep the said ferry." Perhaps the experience of the previous year suggested that a ratio of five men to two boats was a better arrangement than two men for two boats.

Strength would seem a desirable attribute for the able hands to have possessed, a judgment confirmed in November 1719 when the Severn River post was requested by Thomas Williams. His petition argued that the incumbent, Robert Jubb, offered poor service because he had "for the most part no body to row in the boat but a couple of very weak boys whose strength is not sufficient very often to convey passengers over[,] especially in hard winds, when tis both dangerous and delaying to those that cross the river." Despite Jubb's deficiencies, however, Williams's petition was rejected. Passengers would continue to take their chances with the weak boys.

The extracted records do not record any significant additions to understanding the operation of the ferries until the 1740s. The November 1746 court directed that "nothing is to be paid for bags containing anything," a charge of "only six pence for any man & horse," and "three pence for a single man or horse." Jurymen attending court could cross after sunset for free. It is tempting to picture horses, without riders, showing up at the ferry landing with three shillings in hoof seeking passage across the river or creek, but more probable to infer that passengers sometimes traveled with extra horses.

The same court session agreed to keep Stephen West as the operator of the South River ferry for another year. As part of the new agreement, the justices granted West permission, when it was not safe for two boats to cross the river, each with a crew of only two men, "by means of hard winds . . . liberty to place all the hands in one Boat if he think proper." Again, the language supports the conclusion that the hands employed by the ferry keeper rowed the boats across the river.

A general order issued in November 1750 set forth the clearest description of the services ferries provided and of the cargoes they typically carried: Ordered that the Ferrymen set over all persons belonging to the County [i.e., county residents] from Sun rising to Sun setting for the allowance [i.e., annual salary] made by the County and also at all times the Justices, Sheriffs, Jurymen, and Evidences [i.e., witnesses summoned to court to testify] during their attending courts, and all other persons set over before Sun rise or after Sun set to pay at the rate of six pence man and horse and three pence for a single person and that the several ferrymen may charge and take for carrying over every chaise or chair or other wheel carriage at the rate of three shillings and six pence each and all ferrymen carry over bags, wallets, baskets, dead meat, and fowls, poultry, geese, and turkeys without charging any thing for the same.

The clerk's record of proceedings in August 1751 contained an unexpected description of the crew of the Magothy River ferry. William Kitely appeared "to answer a the complaint of John Gray of Magothy concerning his keeping Magothy Ferry, and that he should bring with him the girl named Linstead[?] that usually rows in the ferry boat." Evidently the able hands could be female, as well as male, as long as they were strong enough to pull the oars. Three years later, in June 1754, the justices exempted Thomas Barrel, "who rowed in South River Ferry Boat" from payment of the annual levy and granted him a stipend of 320 pounds of tobacco for his support until the next November's levy court, "he having fitts and [being] unable to work." Taxes were levied only on those adults able to work, and residents who could not work and lacked family to care for them received support from public funds.

The men like Thomas Barrel who did the work of loading and unloading the ferries, as well as rowing them, received some consideration for their well-being in a directive of the court issued in November 1754. "The ferrymen are to assist in getting the carriages [on and off the ferry] but shall not be obliged to wade in the water in the winter season." Left unclear is who would wade in the water if that were necessary to move a carriage or chaise safely between shore and ferry. Travel by horse-drawn vehicle entailed various kinds of discomfort but the savings in time must have made their use worth the hardships for inland trips that avoided long sails up and down the Chesapeake region's many rivers.

When the court renewed William Brown's appointment as keeper of the South River ferry in 1762, modifications to the standard terms indicate the growth of public business that was occurring during the third quarter of the century. The justices required that Brown keep two boats and four hands "constantly attending" year round, but "in all public times such as Provincial and County Courts, elections, and other public meetings[,] to keep three boats and six able hands attending." How seaworthy the third boat would be and how skilled the two extra hands (idle or employed in agricultural tasks the rest of the year?) were should perhaps have been a concern.

The August 1769 court proceedings included publication of the current "Rates of Liquors and Other Accomodations." Ordinary keepers could charge 8 pence per gallon for oats and corn. The array of provision for horses also included "Fresh water, hay, corn tops, or oat straw with stableage" at a charge of 1 shilling per night. If fodder consisted only of marsh hay, the cost was 8 pence, and good pasturage per night could be obtained for 6 pence.

With this last entry, the information available from the court records relating to travel on horseback in connection with ordinaries and ferries comes to an end. The references, coupled with the one account by Philip Vickers Fithian of his experience of being called upon to row during a difficult passage, generally indicate that the ferries operating in Anne Arundel relied upon able bodied men (and an occasional woman) to row the ferry boats with their human and equine passengers across the county's waterways.

2011-11-30T22:05:00.003-05:00

Heraldic: Silver Medal Winner at Pan Am Games

2011-11-22T21:29:00.038-05:00

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[Disclosure: I recently read in a newspaper article that a blog post should be no more than 500 words. And when I was alerted to the Capital story on Heraldic (having been out of town when it appeared), I anticipated writing only a short piece about the ceremony honoring the Pam Am Games silver medal winner. But, you can't write a short essay without understanding as much of the background as possible. And as I began looking into the subject, I became increasingly drawn down various by-ways and side paths that have made 500 words an impossible limit. I'll try to do the 'who-what-when-where-why' up front before digressing down those paths; readers who want to take a different journey are of course free to move on at any point.]

Pan Am Games -- 2011
Heraldic is a handsome bay Arabian gelding who was honored by the Maryland Horse Industry Board on November 15th with its "Touch of Class" Award. The ceremony, held at the Maryland Department of Agriculture building in Annapolis, followed Heraldic's return from Chile, where he and his rider, John Crandell III, won two silver medals in the Pan Am Games endurance ride. [Although the larger competition took place this year in Mexico, the endurance ride was held in Santo Domingo, Chile on October 22.]

Heraldic is owned by John Jr. and Linda Crandell, parents of John III and owners of Long Run Farm in West River. John III, trainer and rider of Heraldic, and his family live on a farm in Star Tannery, VA adjoining the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, where Heraldic's endurance training takes place. Training in horsemanship and other skills, including schooling, basic dressage education, and behavioral work, all critical to success in endurance riding, takes place at Long Run Farm here in Anne Arundel County as well as in Virginia. The Crandell family has also operated the marine construction firm E.A. and J.O. Crandell Inc. in Annapolis since 1948.

Pan Am Games -- 2011
The endurance ride in Chile, covering a distance of 120 kilometers (74.6 miles), crossed both flat terrain and rough, mountainous areas in five loops of varying length. The U.S. team of three horses and riders won a silver medal with a combined time of 19:05:19, just 1 minute and 47 seconds behind the gold medal finish of the Uruguayan team. Crandell and Heraldic finished the course in 6:03:38 to win the individual silver medal; a U.S. pair also took the individual bronze medal, giving the U.S. team a total of three -- the largest number of medals ever won by a U.S. endurance team in international competition.

The margin of victory for the individual medal might well have been narrower or the finish order different had Heraldic not tripped a mile from the finish line. Crandell skinned his knee landing on the ground, but remounted to finish the ride, only four minutes behind the first place rider and horse.

Although the medals won in the Pan Am Games (one of the largest international competitions other than the Olympics) provided the immediate occasion for Heraldic's award, the horse and his rider have a long list of accomplishments that makes them deserving recipients of an honor reserved for "horses and people who represent the highest standards of excellence in Maryland's equine community." [MHIB press release, 11/10/11]

Pan Am Games -- 2011
Governor Martin O'Malley declared November 15th "Heraldic and Crandell Family Day," adding that "We look forward to the continued success of Heraldic and the Crandells as they represent Maryland and the United States at the World Championship next year.” But November 15th must have been a bittersweet day for the Crandells, as Jewell Ardella Bladen Crandell, 98, of Churchton, mother of John Jr. and grandmother of John III, died that same day.

Touch of Class
Through its name, the "Touch of Class" award honors the Maryland-bred Thoroughbred mare, Touch of Class, who won individual and team gold medals in show jumping at the 1984 summer Olympics, making her only the fourth horse in history to win two show-jumping gold medals. Touch of Class posted the first double clear rounds in Olympic history, and cleared all but 1 of 91 jumps. In recognition of her performance, the USOC committee named Touch of Class the first non-human USOC Female Equestrian Athlete of the Year.

Heraldic and the Crandells
John Crandell Jr. bought the two-year-old Heraldic from Asgard Arabians in Sinks Grove, W.Va. in c.2000. When John Jr. broke his hip and was unable to ride for several years, he passed Heraldic's competitive riding on to his son, John III. The latter's description of the trip to West Virginia that resulted in the purchase of Heraldic gives some indication of the training required to turn an independent, untamed horse into a champion racer.

The listing of Heraldic's rides begins in May 2005 with a 9th place finish in a 50-mile competition, followed in December with medals for first place finish and best condition in a 100-mile competition. In 2006, Heraldic and Crandell became the first horse and rider pair to win endurance riding's Triple Crown, capturing the Old Dominion 100 in June in Virginia, the Tevis Cup trophy in August in Placer County, California, and the American Endurance Ride Conference (AERC) championship in Virginia in October. All rides covered 100 miles, and Heraldic took the medal for best condition in two of them. The pair's stellar year earned John Crandell III the title of horseman of the year from Chronicle of the Horse magazine.

AERC 2007
In 2007, Heraldic took medals for first place finish and best condition at the AHA National ride in Montana in June and for first place in the AERC championship ride in Idaho in August. November found Heraldic in Malaysia, where he and Crandell finished fifth in the Sultan's Cup Terengganu Endurance Challenge 2007 (now the Sultan Mizan Cup), the first ever endurance challenge held in Malaysia with international participants, including the world's best riders. The challenge also served as the trial run for Malaysia to host the 12th FEI World Endurance Championship in 2008.

Heraldic was to have been a member of the U.S. team competing in that 2008 FEI championship ride until the horse suffered a potentially career-ending injury. Heraldic was by then already in training for the championship in Malaysia and soon to be moved to a training camp in Florida. But one morning in August 2008 Crandell found the horse, in the small meadow pasture where he was being kept, with a cut on his left hind leg, described by John Crandell as "a 2.5 inch diameter open wound medial on the stifle [the equine equivalent of a knee]; Grade 5 lame."

After a period of five or six months, when Heraldic's leg could again bear weight and move freely, another year and half were spent in the therapy and retraining that enabled Heraldic to compete again. As Crandell said on Heraldic's website "Heraldic came out of the ordeal re-educated, more disciplined, and better prepared to train for fitness than ever."

Photo by Potato Richardson --The Equestrian News, 10/15/2011
The 2010 season of competition attested to Crandell's assessment of Heraldic's condition when horse and rider captured two of the three rides that make up the Triple Crown. Heraldic won both the Old Dominion 100 and the Tevis Cup, also taking the medal for best condition in the Virginia ride. By the last stretch of the Tevis Cup course, Heraldic had outpaced the rest of the field to such an extent that instead of sprinting for home, Crandell took time to spruce up his mount for the finish line photographs. An unlucky step into what proved to be a sub-surface hole cost Heraldic his chance for victory in the AERC championship, third of the year's three major rides.

Victory in the Pan Am Games endurance ride in 2011 capped another year of three major victories, the other two coming in March at the Fun In The Sun ride in Williston, FL (FITS), another 100 mile test, and in the 75 mile Ontario Competitive Trail Riding Association (OCTRA) event in Canada, where Heraldic also won the medal for best condition.

To appreciate fully the severity of Heraldic's injury and the work that the horse and his extensive support team devoted to bringing him back into competitive form, read the account posted on Heraldic's website: http://heraldic.yolasite.com/. And to keep with up Heraldic's current activities, you can visit his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Heraldic/246652352042241.

Endurance riding has been a multi-generation Crandell family enterprise for over forty years. John III began his involvement as a teenager in 1976 and has been a professional farrier and trainer since 1983. In those capacities he has served as a shoeing and training consultant worldwide. Since 1986 he has participated as a rider or staff member for the U.S. and U.A.E. endurance teams for both world championships and other major international competitions.

Photo by Paul W. Gillespie -- The Capital
Crandell's second Old Dominion 100 win with Heraldic in 2007 was his sixth winning ride in that competition, the other four preceding his partnership with Heraldic. In the 2007 ride, Ann Crandell, John's wife, won the bronze medal. Other Crandell family members actively engaged in riding and training include John's parents, John Crandell Jr. and Linda Crandell, and his brothers.

Because of the physicial demands of training and competition, horses generally compete in no more than three 100 miles rides during a given year. Riders compete more often, however, on different mounts. John III finished third in the FITS 100 in 2007, second in the Tevis Cup in 2007, and third at the Greenway Gallivant 100 in 2008, riding HH Saba Shams in all of those races, and in 2010 finished in the top ten of the Goethe 75 on LR Bold Greyson.

Crandell and Heraldic will lead the U.S. Team in the World Endurance Championship to be held in England in conjunction with the 2012 Olympics.

Endurance Riding
So, what is endurance riding? The Old Dominion Endurance Rides, Inc. website provides a succinct answer (as well as being one of the best sources of general information about the sport): "An Endurance ride is a timed test against the clock of an individual horse/rider team’s ability to traverse a marked, measured cross-county “trail” over natural terrain consisting of a distance of 50 to 100 miles in one day."

The definition of 'day' varies according to the length of the course and the difficulty of the terrain. For the Tevis Cup ride, the 'day' is a 24-hour period, from 5:15 a.m. one day to 5:15 a.m. the following day. This means that all horses cover at least a portion of the course in the dark.

Tevis Cup -- 2010
Things get more complicated beyond that generic description. Trails vary considerably. The Tevis Cup covers a unidirectional course from the start just outside Truckee, CA, near Lake Tahoe to the finish in Auburn, CA, with over 15,000 feet of altitude changes. The Pan Am Games ride took place at the Brisas de Santo Domingo resort, located along the Pacific coast in the middle of Chile. The ride began by the sea but the five-loop course climbed to a lake-filled plateau with a variety of flora and fauna. In the 2010 Old Dominion 100 competition, teams had to contend with morning temperatures in the low 90s and humidity near 100 percent as well as rough terrain. In Dubai, the sandy course can be a hard-packed surface in some areas and soft footing in others.

Regardless of the temperatures encountered or the terrain, every ride has a specific starting and ending time, and all horse/rider teams must remain on the trail for the duration of the ride. Although the expectation is that riders will ride, rules permit them to lead or follow the horse instead, as circumstances dictate. Winning riding times vary between 6.5 and 13 hours, depending on the terrain. [Heraldic has been a particularly versatile athlete, having won on both the fastest and the most challenging courses in America.]

Endurance riding began in the early 1900s as a test for horses used by cavalry units: a 5-day, 300 mile (483 km) ride with a weight load of at least 200 lbs. In the early 1950s, endurance riding became a civilian sport, with time and distance reduced to a maxium of a one-day, 100-mile ride.

In 1978 the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI), the international governing body for World and Olympic equestrian events, recognized endurance riding as an international sport. The United States Equestrian Federation (USEF) has the responsibility of overseeing all U.S. teams taking part in international FEI competitions. More than 300 annual FEI-sanctioned competitions are held in Europe, Asia, and the American continents.

The American Endurance Ride Conference (AERC) is the official national governing body for endurance riding in North America. The AERC sanctions more than 700 rides each year throughout the United States and Canada. The two oldest and most prestigious sanctioned races are the 100 Mile Western States Trail Ride (for the Tevis Cup trophy) in California and the Old Dominion 100 Mile Endurance Ride in Virginia.

Any horse competing in a sanctioned endurance ride must pass a thorough examination by a licensed veterinarian before being allowed to start. Every course has additional mandatory vet examinations at check-points during the ride. Veterinarians have specific guidelines for judging a horse's ability to continue the ride. They monitor respiratory and heart rates, examine feet and legs for potential problems that could cause lameness, and look for signs of dehydration. Any horse showing lameness or failure to meet specified metabolic parameters is immediately eliminated. Horses undergo a final exam within 1 hour after the ride is completed and can still be eliminated if deemed unable "to continue." The awarding of a separate medal for best condition to a horse finishing among the top ten underscores the commitment to the welfare of the equine competitors.

The great majority of horses competing successfully in endurance rides are Arabians (whether full-blooded, one-half, or one-quarter), like Heraldic. Linda Crandell, in an interview with Equinews in October 2002, explained why Arabian horses are particularly well-suited to endurance competition. “These horses have large nostrils and lung capacities that allow for greater oxygen intake. Arabians have veins that are close to the skin surface, which help in cooling the blood and allowing for quicker recovery times. They are a slighter horse with lighter muscling that makes it easier for them to carry themselves and their riders over longer distances.”

Tevis Cup -- 2006
The Western States Trail Ride, the oldest modern day endurance competition, began in 1955, with the first Tevis Cup trophy awarded to the winner in 1959. The course follows the Western States Trail, a narrow mountain track shared with hikers, runners, other riders, and occasionally off-road vehicles. Temperatures during the 24-hour day can range from 40 degrees to 120 degrees Farhenheit. The course has two mandatory 60-minute rest stops, at 30 mile and 70 mile marks. This challenging ride is one of those usually dominated by Arabians because of their stamina and the physical characteristics identified by Linda Crandell. The average completion rate for the competition is 50 percent. Heraldic won in 2006 at age 8 in a time of 15:08; returning to the competition in 2010 after recovering from his 2008 injury, he finished first at age 12 in 14:59.

If you've read all the way through these meanderings, you now know about as much as I do about endurance riding. I hope you've found it as interesting a journey of discovery as I have. My thanks to Heraldic and the Crandells for leading the way.
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2011-11-15T21:43:00.000-05:00

Horses in Times of War

2011-11-15T20:41:00.003-05:00

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The book The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785, by Don Cook (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), looks at the Revolutionary War, and the lead-up to it, from the other side of the Atlantic. For those whose interest is in military history, much of what Cook has to say about the conduct of the war by the British may be old news. But for someone whose time line of colonial history stops no later than the end of the Seven Years' War, Cook's narrative contains much that was new, and some of it pertained to the use of horses during the war. Some of his details are even relevant to Anne Arundel County.

Much has been written about the difficulties Washington faced in retaining soldiers in his army, particularly over the winter months when enlistments had expired, and of the difficulties in provisioning the troops. The British faced their own logistical problems, however. When soldiers were killed or wounded in battle, replacement awaited the arrival of fresh troops from Britain. The third of a ton of food needed per man per year came from shipments across the ocean of bread, flour, rice, salt, butter, salted beef, and pork. The option armies frequently used, of living off the countryside, would alienate the colonists whom the British hoped to persuade to lay down arms and resume being loyal subjects of king and parliament.

It wasn't just men and their rations that had to be imported from Britain -- horses and their feed also had to cross the Atlantic. Storms and unpredictable winds complicated the task of supplying the army's needs. In 1776, for example, 950 horses were shipped to the army in New York but nearly half -- 400 -- were lost en route.

When General William Howe decided in 1777 to leave New York in favor of occupying Philadelphia, he made a secondary decision to transport the army by ship rather than move overland to avoid the danger of flank attacks by Washington and the American forces. A dubious decision at best, as it left General John Burgoyne with no support in the event of difficulties in his Fort Ticonderoga campaign, it proved to be a disastrous one for the horses and men involved.

Howe determined on Philadelphia as his objective in the spring of 1777, but it was early July before the force of 19,000 troops and their supplies -- cannon, gunpowder, food, horses, and fodder -- began loading about the fleet of 250 transports and warships that his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, had assembled in New York. Becalmed for days, the fleet did not set sail until 23 July.

When the fleet arrived at Delaware Bay, a British patrol frigate informed the admiral that the river approaches to Philadelphia were heavily defended (an overstatement of the situation). The Howes decided to sail up the Chesapeake Bay instead and then to march overland from the head of the Elk River to Philadelphia.

As a result of this decision, as well as the delay in leaving New York, men and horses spent seven weeks on board ship during sweltering summer weather that light breezes did little to alleviate. They had left New York with a four-week supply of food and animal fodder. Starving, dying horses had to be thrown overboard as the fleet moved slowly up the bay, some undoubtedly washed ashore along Anne Arundel's shoreline or observed by county residents monitoring the fleet's progress from the shore.

When the army came arrived at Head of Elk on 25 August, it was nearly 70 miles from Philadelphia -- almost as far away as it had been when in New York.

Horses fared no better when another British commander, General Henry Clinton, moved the army out of New York by sea in December 1779, this time for Charleston, South Carolina. Clinton's fleet carrying 8,000 men plus their horses and equipment was not the first, nor the last, to experience first-hand the perils of the North Atlantic in winter. Men and horses alike suffered through a month of storms and gales, snow and icy rain, broken masts, ripped sails, and rigging torn away. Even if the transports had adequate stalls with slings for all of the horses, the extreme pitching of the vessels in heavy seas resulted in broken legs -- more horses that had to be destroyed and thrown overboard. Others were lost when transports sank.

When the fleet finally limped into the Savannah River at the end of January, preparations for the land campaign that eventually ended in Yorktown in October 1781, included buying or seizing fresh horses to replace the hundreds lost at sea.
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2011-08-09T21:26:00.002-04:00

Serendipity

2011-08-09T20:35:00.009-04:00

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When I wrote the previous post, I had one more postcard to include, but I wanted to verify the background details with Charles Cadle, the authority for everything you want to know about the history of the city fire department. Before I was able to arrange that, however, Charlie spoke with a Capital reporter, whose story appeared in today's newspaper, filling in the details that I needed to get.

The postcard shows two horses racing down King George Street, pulling the city's steam engine behind them. They appear to have just passed the intersection with Martin Street, heading for Randall Street and Gate 1. Horses powered the steam engine from 1884, when it was purchased for the Independent Fire Company No. 2, until they and the steam engine were replaced in 1911 by the horsepower of the city's first motorized fire engine.
The above image is taken from the 1885 Sanborn Company map of Annapolis. The periodic series of Sanborn maps show the footprints of all structures in the city as well as building height and fabric. The first set of maps for Annapolis was prepared just in time to capture the new fire station in City Hall. By that time, the fire department had celebrated the arrival of its new engine by hosting a Thanksgiving Day parade in November 1884 -- an opportunity to show off their new equipment. [“History of the Independent Fire Company from an Old Program,” p.4.] The engine was housed in City Hall until the city government built a larger facility across the street. The fire company occupied the new two-story brick firehouse from 1917 until 1983. But the steam engine was gone by that time.

Fortunately, postcards and photographs, like the one above, record a time when city residents and property owners depended on the power and speed of horses, as well as the skills of members of the fire department, to protect their property.
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2011-08-07T16:44:00.001-04:00

And now for something completely different...

2011-08-07T14:44:00.011-04:00

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When the Heritage Area staff and I began discussing how to turn a proposed exhibit on the place of horses over time within the Four Rivers area into a narrative publication and then more realistically into a blog, we grappled with how to control our large and shapeless subject. Our solution envisioned a two-dimensional matrix. Divisions of time would provide one dimension: the five centuries during which horses have been an integral part of life in this area. The other dimension would attempt to sort the relationship between horses and the area's residents into four categories of activity: agriculture, transportation, recreation, and business.

Both of our dimensions are arbitrary. Using centuries as our time divisions blurs relevant political, social, cultural, and economic changes that occur independently of the stroke of midnight marking the boundary between one century and the next. The "iron horse" began to supplant the animal horse as a means of long-distance transportation by the middle of the 19th century, not on the first of January 1800. Horsepower harnessed in car engines rather than equine bodies became a significant means of moving people and goods in the second quarter of the 20th century, although automobiles first appeared in the 19th century. Our activity categories overlap, making assignment to one or another equally arbitrary. Racing and riding stables are businesses for the owners of horses, race tracks, and stables, but they provide entertainment for racegoers who cheer for and bet on their favorite horses and for children and adults who take riding lessons or go on trail rides.

Being a historian, I've approached the posts on this blog from that perspective. How did the first horses arrive? How were they used? How did their numbers increase over time? How did settlers reshaped the landscape to accommodate travel by horse? How did informal competition between owners develop into formal races? Trying to answer these questions, previous posts have focused on the first two centuries of the county's history, although they do touch to greater or lesser degrees on the activity dimensions of the matrix.

At the same time, I've been collecting a growing stack of newspaper and magazine clippings dealing with more current topics. Most recently, a feature on a fundraiser for a therapeutic riding program and a news article about the recent joust at St. Margaret's Church await being carried from the kitchen counter to be added to similar material in my office. What they haven't yet done is appear online.

Inspired, however, by this month's meeting of the Annapolis History Consortium, this post moves a century forward in time. The meeting featured the generous sharing by one member of images from his Annapolis postcard collection. The collection covers about 100 years of the city's history and a wide variety of subject matter, but my attention focused on a half-dozen images that included horses. Thanks to the even more generous permission to copy them, I'm able to include them here.

Okay, these horses are not in Annapolis or the Four Rivers Heritage Area. But I could not resist including this use of horses to sell flour. I'm not sure how one gets from the image of Ben-Hur in a chariot race to the retailing of flour, but presumably Messrs. Campbell and Phipps expected their customers to see a connection.

George Jones's early 20th century postcard shows harness racing at Parole. Spectators' carriages line the sides of the track, and the racers can be seen approaching in the distance in the center of the postcard.

Mame Warren's Then Again...Annapolis, 1900-1965 includes an interview that describes the early races:
"Mr. Rullman, who had a drugstore right across from the Farmers Bank on West Street, had a horse that he used to ride out West Street every evening in good weather. At that time it was an oyster-shell road and...you'd see the trail of dust all the way down the road.

Mr. Rullman used to go out to Parole. He used to race out there....Races would be announced in the paper, and they were only on holidays,...so that people could get there. There was just a field with markers around a partial fence to denote where the track was. There were no stands; it was just a field. So people would take their horses out there from time to time and run them around the track. These were harness races...in the days when I knew it. The horses were locally owned."

By the 1930s, a more formal track had replaced the one on which Rullman raced and the harnesses now connected horses with sulkeys, not the owner's carriage.

The race track at Parole gave way to Parole Plaza shortly after this aerial view was taken in 1959. The then-modern shopping center has since yielded its place to the shops, restaurants, and residences of Annapolis Towne Centre.

Horses, dogs, and people took the ferry across Spa Creek while the second Eastport bridge was being constructed. The new bridge opened on 8 April 1907.

Early 20th century transportation in a nutshell: horse-drawn carriages, a bicycle, and the trolley of the Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis electric line in this view looking down the first block of West Street toward St. Anne's Church.

Photographs and prints similarly show the ubiquitous presence of horses in the 19th and early 20th centuries. More to come.

2011-07-04T21:30:00.005-04:00

Equipping Horses

2011-07-04T21:23:00.012-04:00

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Although you can ride a horse bareback, it’s not a very practical way to travel, particularly if you need to carry anything with you. By the time Anne Arundel residents were traveling by horseback, equipping a horse entailed the services of an array of specialized craftsmen to produce the leather and metal articles that made for a comfortable trip.

A variety of sources are available to tell us about the equipment needed for a horse more than two hundred years ago. Philip Vickers Fithian’s account [p.16] of his trip from New Jersey to Virginia in October 1773 provides a list of the minimum purchases required for a long-distance trip on a horse. Store accounts and inventories of both store goods and decedents’ horse-related possessions provide other documentation. Visual images – paintings, lithographs, etc. – offer another look at the well-dressed horse.

More Mondays ago than I care to remember, I explored a different avenue for studying equipment when I visited Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum to spend some time with Sara Rivers-Cofield, Curator of Federal Collections. Sara and I discovered a mutual interest in colonial horses last fall when we both attended a one-day symposium at Belair Mansion (which shall figure more importantly in later posts). We decided then that we should get together to share information as soon as we found a mutually convenient date.

Mostly Sara provided information and I took pictures and notes. Because the MAC lab is a repository for collections from around the state, Sara is in the enviable position of having enough pieces of stirrup iron, bosses from bridles, nails from saddles, and other fragments to begin to put together a picture of what horses were wearing over time. One or two tacks or bosses don’t tell a researcher much, but when you have twenty or thirty, you can begin to compare and draw conclusions.

That’s not what I’m going to do here, though. Instead, I’ll start with Fithian’s account and try to provide some visual accompaniments for his notations of what he bought for his journey. Fithian started with a horse, of course, and that may be the hardest purchase to illustrate correctly. No need to include a Stubbs painting as Fithian certainly didn’t buy a Thoroughbred. But he did pay £25 for the animal, so he probably bought a relatively young horse bred for stamina rather than speed, the kind of “genuine country horse” described by Ruffian’s owner in his 1793 advertisement.

Two days before he bought the horse, Fithian set about acquiring the leather goods needed for his trip. He noted first the purchase of a “Saddle, Bridle, Spurrs, etc.,” and the “etc.” must have also included reins. The same day he also bought a “Pr of Sadle-Bags.” The day after buying his uncle’s horse, Fithian “Had my Boots altered & mended – Was measured for a Surtout-Coat.” Travelers covering long distances had to be sure they too were well-equipped; sturdy boots and a warm, heavy overcoat were necessities in October.

Fithian’s last step was to have shoes put on the horse. In New Jersey, where he lived, it is possible that a farrier did this work, if there were enough local customers to support such a specialized trade. A farrier not only made horseshoes and then shoed horses but also trimmed and balanced hooves. In Anne Arundel and the rest of the Chesapeake region, these tasks were carried out by blacksmiths as part of a broad array of services. Even at the end of the colonial period, there was not enough density of settlement to cause any smith to limit his trade to farrier’s work. [A google search today, however, of ‘farrier maryland’ will turn up 74,000 hits.]

When the Reverend Hugh Jones described traveling on horseback in the late seventeenth century, he wrote that “Our soil is generally sandy, free from stone, which makes itt verry convenient for travelling. And we have noe occasion for shoeing our horses except in frosty weather.” This apparently was true, at least on the lower western shore, into the eighteenth century, for excavations at a 1715 stable, on the plantation of Richard Smith, Jr., found no horseshoes, despite the presence of other horse equipage artifacts. But Fithian was making a trip from New Jersey through Maryland to Virginia and his horse needed shoes. Judging from the assemblage of horseshoe fragments at the MAC lab, Fithian’s horse was not the only one, and of course the few surviving blacksmith’s accounts from the colonial period include shoeing horses among the charges found in customer’s records.

Thus equipped and prepared, Fithian was ready to begin his journey on 20 October 1773.
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[The stable was located on the Smith St. Leonard Site, 18CV91. Members of the public can volunteer and help dig the site through the Park's public archaeology program.]
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2011-01-19T20:02:00.001-05:00

Horses Racing

2011-01-19T13:37:00.015-05:00

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In one of Patricia Moyes’ mysteries featuring C.I.D. Inspector Henry Tibbett, the inspector and his wife go sailing with friends off the coast of East Anglia. As they are returning home at the end of their sail, Tibbett notices that there is another boat nearby sailing a parallel course. He also becomes aware that for the remainder of their time on the water, his host and hostess are making many more adjustments to the sails and their course than had been true earlier. When they are finally back at their starting point, ahead of the other boat, Tippett congratulates his host on winning the race. “Race? What race?” replies the other man. “We never race.”

What has this to do with horses in Anne Arundel? Just that, as two boats sailing near one another on similar courses are almost always testing relative speed and skill, so too horse owners, as far back as the prehistoric nomads of central Asia who first domesticated the horse, matched their animals against one another, often with a wager on the outcome. Informal races in Maryland date back to the mid-seventeenth century when there were enough horses in the colony for owners to begin competing in match races during gatherings for fairs, church, or court days. Or, as the author of a history of racing in France (p.1) put it, “Desultory horse-racing of course exists in all countries where there are horses to be ridden and men or boys (especially the latter) to ride them; and the commencement of such horse-racing dates, no doubt, from the earliest period at which the horses of those countries submit . . . to bear riders upon their backs.”

The first races in England may have been those organized by Roman soldiers stationed in Yorkshire about 200 A.D. The first recorded race meeting, however, is believed to have taken place in 1174 at a horse fair held at Smithfield, London during the reign of Henry II. The first trophy awarded to a winner is similarly believed to be a small wooden ball decorated with flowers presented in 1512 by the organizers of a Chester fair.

One of the world’s most famous races dates to a period between these two events. The Il Palio di Siena originated in the 14th century; today 10 horses compete in a circuit of the piazza di campo but originally the race began outside the city with the finish line in the campo. Unlike the English match races, the palio began as a multi-horse competition, with the horses racing for contrada, or Sienese neighborhoods, rather for than individual owners.

Despite the Smithfield and Chester races, today Newmarket is considered the home of horse racing in England. According to the Newmarket Racecourses website, in fact, “Newmarket is the historic Home of Horseracing and the greatest horseracing centre in the world.” (And, truthfully, for those of us who are Dick Francis fans, the idea of hanging out in Newmarket for a few weeks or months to soak up the ambience sounds like nirvana.) Legend has it that James 1 discovered the village in 1605 while out hawking or riding, and subsequently spent so much time there that the House of Commons requested that he spend a bit more of it on ruling the country. It was James who had the first grandstand built on Newmarket heath. From here spectators could watch the first recorded race, a match on 18 March 1622 between horses belonging to Lord Salisbury and the Marquis of Buckingham. The latter’s horse won the prize worth £100, an enormous sum for the average Briton but much less so for the aristocratic owner of the horse. Spring and autumn race meetings began in Newmarket about the time that Charles I succeeded to the throne (1625) and the first Gold Cup race was held in 1634.

Charles II, when restored to the throne of England in 1660, resumed the royal association with Newmarket. The course’s records include “Articles ordered by his Majestie to be observed by all persons that put in horses to run for the Plate, the new Round-heate at Newmarkett, set out the 16th day of October, in the 17th yeare of our Sovereaign Lord King Charles II. Which Plate is to be rid for yearly, the seconde Thursday in October, for ever.” There were twenty articles in all, which laid out the rules for a race consisting of three heats and “the course,” specifying the time, the weights to be carried, the behaviour expected of participants, the circular shape, and the stakes involved. The first race is dated to 1666, but this would require the articles to take effect in the 7th year of the monarch’s reign. As Charles is credited with winning the Plate in both 1671 and 1675 (“rode 3 heats and a course and won the Plate” on Blew Capp), it would seem that the 1666 date (the one used by Newmarket itself) is correct. These were the first races in England to be held according to written rules.

The year 1665, when the articles were drawn up, is the key to devoting some attention to Newmarket even though it too is not in Anne Arundel County. In that same year, Charles II directed Richard Nicolls, the governor of New York, to lay out a racecourse called Newmarket . The course was constructed on what was then known as Salisbury Plains on Long Island, now Hempstead Plains, near present-day Garden City and within a few miles of Belmont Park, home of the last leg of the Triple Crown. The Newmarket (LI) cup dates to 1668, making it the oldest trophy race in the British North American colonies.

It needs to be noted that the horses racing at Newmarket and elsewhere were not yet Thoroughbreds, but the breeding stock that contributed to the development of the Thoroughbred does date from Charles II and his marriage to Catherine of Braganza. Catherine, who married Charles in 1662, was the daughter of John IV of Portugal and as part of her dowry England acquired the ports of Bombay and Tangier. The “royal mares” imported from Tangier, known as Barbs, were later bred with imported middle-eastern and North African stallions to develop the Thoroughbred horse.
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2011-01-13T21:40:00.001-05:00

From Scarcity to Nuisance

2011-01-13T21:01:00.015-05:00

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The Jamestown colonists found it necessary to slaughter their horses for food during the starving time of the first winter. We can assume, although without documentation as proof, that subsequent supply ships brought replacements for those horses, but it wouldn’t have been until the 1610s, after the initial years of famine had receded, that the colony’s supply of horses began to grow through births of foals in Virginia.

The accounts of the arrival of the Ark and the Dove, carrying the first Maryland settlers in 1634, are similarly silent on the subject of horses, although early ships must have carried a few even if there were none on the first voyage to Maryland. By the late 1640s, there were definitely at least seven horses in the colony for they turn up several times in the Provincial Court records (vol. 4 of the Archives of Maryland Online). These horses were the property of Leonard Calvert, brother of Lord Baltimore and governor of Maryland. Tracing them through the records, it appears that five of the horses -- three mares, a "stone horse" (stallion) and a colt -- were originally the property of Lord Baltimore, then were acquired by John Lewger, secretary of the colony, and sold by him in 1644 to Calvert in exchange for Calvert's payment of £100 sterling to John Smith, a linen draper (cloth merchant) in London, on Lewger's behalf.

The mid-1640s were a turbulent time for the Maryland colony, when Richard Ingle, a ship captain who supported the Parliamentary cause attacked the colony and for a time took over its government -- a period later referred to as the "plundering time." Leonard Calvert and others defended proprietary interests for some months but eventually fled to Virginia. There Calvert recruited soldiers and returned with a force of both Virginians and Marylanders to retake control of the colony. He evidently took at least a few horses with him when he crossed the Potomac into Virginia. In June of 1647, Virginia's governor, William Berkeley, wrote to say that he was sending back to Calvert a mare and colt in the care of a Mr. Trussel. Calvert also received a claim from Edward Hill, who was acting as governor for a time after Ingle's departure, for "satisfaction for Colclough’s horse, offered me in exchange of your filly at Chicacoan."

Leonard Calvert died unexpectedly on 11 June 1647. On his deathbed he named Thomas Greene as governor and Margaret Brent as his executor. Legacies included a "mare colt" to his godson Leonard Greene and the next "mare colt" born to Mrs. Temperance Pippett of Virginia. The inventory of Calvert's estate, appraised on the 30th of June, listed "3 Stone-horses 3 mares, & one Ston-colt" valued at 8400 pounds of tobacco and a saddle and bridle worth 100 pounds. There is no further mention of horses until February 1649, when Margaret Brent sold one gray stone horse to Barnaby Jackson, a tailor, for 1700 pounds of tobacco. The bill of sale does not indicate that Brent acted as Calvert's exectuor, so it is possible that she sold one of her own horses.

The final reference to the governor's horses comes in 1650, when Thomas Thornborough submitted a petition to the court, asking that it enforce a commitment made by the deceased governor, Leonard Calvert, to give Thornborough a horse as compensation for his service at St. Inigoe’s fort. The horse in question was being held by Cuthbert Fenwick, who had bought it from Margaret Brent, Calvert’s executrix, who had sold it out of Calvert’s estate. When Jane Fenwick, Cuthbert's widow, died in 1661, the inventory of her estate included one horse, but there is no way to know whether or not it was the horse Thornborough claimed as his.

From the above evidence, or lack thereof, we could reasonably conclude that there were not many horses in the province through the 1650s. But other documents suggest that might not have been the case. By 1659, the Maryland legislature was enacting a law requiring “That all fences for Corne fields within this Province shall be five foote in height round the said field sufficient and strongly made in the Judgemt of two Indifferent men viewing the same in case of trespass[,] And in case any horse or horses or other cattle^[1] shall happen to leape over such fence as aforesaid or breake it downe it being sufficient and strongly made as aforesaid That then the Owners of such horse or horses or other Cattle shall be lyable to pay the trespass[,] And in case the said Fence be not soe high that then the Owner or owners of such Corne feilds shall beare their owne losse comitted by the horse[,] horses or Cattle as aforesaid.” In other words, all corn fields had to enclosed by strong fences at least 5’ in height. If any horse managed to get into the field despite the fence the animal's owner had to pay damages, but if the fencing was inadequate, then the planter suffered the loss. Apparently there were enough horses on the loose by the late 1650s to be a threat to fields of corn.

Five years later, the legislative records indicate another recognition of the importance of horses for travel within the colony. An Act for Ferrys stipulated that ferries over the St. George’s River in St. Mary’s County and the Wicomoco River in Charles County must have boats with a 14’ keel to carry “any person traveling on foot” but that an 18’ boat was required to provide for “men and horses[,] for the passinge or conveyinge over [the Patuxent River] all passengers whatsoever wth their horses travelinge either on foote or on horse back.”

The first law attempting to limit the importation of horses was passed in 1671. By the early 1680s, the legislature was considering several measures to control the number of horses in the colony, including not only limitations on importation, but also prohibition of ownership by non-landowners and a ban on stallions running loose that were not at least fourteen hands high to prevent any deterioration of the colony’s stock of horses. The general aim was “to lessen the Number of them that now are grown a Common Nusance.” This was to some degree a measure of social control – with the upper house arguing in favor of legislation to restrict ownership by the lesser sort while the lower house raised objections to the proposals. In the October 1683 session, the lower house did respond to a request for a proposal when “Mr Clement Hill and Mr Hutchins from the Lower house [came in] with a Bill for Lessening the Number of Horses” but after the first reading there is no further mention of the act.

In 1694, the assembly, distressed that earlier laws had not been effective, passed “An Act to prevent the greate Evill occasioned by the multiplicity of horses within this Province.” The law argued that “the small stature of Stallions running wild doth both Lessen & spoyle the whole breed and Streyne of all horses” but then noted “that which is most grievious and intollerable is the utter Ruine & destruccon of Corne Feilds, Pastures, and other Inclosures, which otherwise would produce great store of good & usefull provisions.” The remedy was a requirement that “yearly & every year all Owners of any horse horses Mares Colts and Geldings shall & are hereby obliged to keep all or any such Horse or Horses Mares Colts and Geldings withingood and sufficient Inclosures fenced grounds or pastures from the first day of May till the tenth day of November yearly for prevention of the greate Mischeife and Evills aforesaid.” The proliferation of wild horses had become enough of a problem to reverse the usual practice of letting animals roam freely while fields had to be fenced to keep them out. Horses now had to be enclosed in fenced pastures to protect crops from damage.

2 May 1754
Similar laws remained in effect for much of the colonial period but failed to remedy the problem. Issues of the Maryland Gazette in the 1750s and 1760s often have as many or more notices asking owners to collect lost or strayed horses as there are advertisements seeking the return of runaway servants and slaves.
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^[1] The OED defines ‘cattle,’ in the language of the stable, as applying to horses, in the way it is used in Georgette Heyer novels by aristocrats referring to the matched pairs they purchased for their carriages. As the likelihood of a cow or bull leaping over a colonial fence seems remote, this is perhaps also the legislative use of the word.

2011-01-05T14:10:00.001-05:00

The Thoroughbred Horse

2011-01-05T11:47:00.011-05:00

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Before I began doing the research for this blog, I had assumed that Thoroughbred horses were similar to pedigreed dogs: pure-bred animals with a documented lineage. Wrong. As I began reading about breeds of horses to become familiar with the types hat might have been imported in the seventeenth century, I learned that a Thoroughbred is a specific breed of horse, defined by a pedigree that can be traced back to one of three foundation sires.

Having read and loved King of the Wind as a child, I knew about the Godolphin Arabian, the Byerley Turk, and the Darley Arabian. But I hadn’t realized quite how central they were to the development of the Thoroughbred. Up through the seventeenth century, British horses were bred for the strength and stamina to carry armored knights in battle, while Arabian horses were smaller and bred for speed and maneuverability. The smaller English breeds were ponies that could not match the qualities of the Arabians.

The Byerley Turk
At the end of the seventeenth century and in the early eighteenth century, however, Turkish leaders sent gifts of Arabian horses to the heads of European nations and some Europeans privately acquired ownership of Arabian or Turkish horses. These included the Byerley Turk in 1683, the Darley Arabian in 1703, and the Godolphin Arabian in 1730. Breeding English mares to these three stallions formed the foundation of a new breed, the Thoroughbred, combining the strength of one with the speed of the other to produce a horse that could carry a rider at a sustained speed over a long distance. The result was an animal that gave new impetus to the sport of horse racing.

The Darley Arabian
The introduction to James Weatherby’s General Stud Book, which began publication in 1791, recorded the pedigree of over 350 mares. Each could be traced back to Eclipse, a descendant of the Darley Arabian, Matchem, a grandson of the Godolphin Arabian, or Herod, a great-grandson of the Byerley Turk and to one of 74 foundation mares of English or North African/Middle Eastern origin (Arabian, Turkoman, or Barb [Barbary Coast of North Africa]). Weatherby and Sons still publishes the General Stud Book and only horses listed in it are considered Thoroughbreds and allowed to race professionally. Although used primarily for racing, Thoroughbreds are also bred for fox hunting, show jumping, dressage, and polo.

The Godolphin Arabian
In May 1793, an advertisement appeared in the Maryland Gazette for “RUFFIAN, genuine country horse.” Ruffian had “but little to recommend him, except the excellence of the strain from which he was bred, and his ability to perform more riding with greater ease to the rider than any horse heretofore known in Maryland.” The Maryland race horses of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century were country horses like Ruffian, but by the mid-eighteenth century some men wanted more than a genuine country horse. They began to bring Thoroughbred bloodstock into the Chesapeake, beginning with Bulle Rock, imported by Samuel Gist of Virginia in 1730.

2010-12-23T20:54:00.000-05:00

Across Maryland on Horseback

2010-12-22T19:59:00.015-05:00

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Philip Vickers Fithian, a native of New Jersey to whom all colonial Chesapeake historians are eternally indebted, graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1772. Before taking up a position as a Presbyterian minister, Fithian found employment from October 1773 to October 1774 as a tutor to the children of Robert Carter of Nomini Hall, located on Virginia's Northern Neck. The journal that Fithian kept during his stay in Virginia is a gold mine of detailed observations of an alien -- to the journalist -- culture. Among the nuggets are Fithian's comments on travel by horseback, starting with his own experience of traveling from New Jersey to the Carter home. As Fithian traveled through Maryland, although not through Anne Arundel County, he was close enough to appropriate his account for this blog.

Fithian's preparations began on the 9th of October, when he "traveled to the Bridge, & a Saddle, Bridle, Spurrs, &c. for my intended Journey--Returned before Evening, and of Saml Dennis bought a Pr of Sadle-Bags. After a day of rest on Sunday, on the 11th he was up by six, Busy in Preparing for my Journey--Agreed with Uncle for his Horse; I am to give him 25£.--The Money to be paid in May next. The following day, very busy--Had my Boots altered & mended--Was measured for a Surtout-Coat. On the 14th, Fithian took his new horse to the blacksmith's to be shod with new shoes.

Fithian spent about a week saying good-bye to friends and relations before setting off for Virginia on the 20th of October. He covered 38 miles on the first day, traveling between Greenwich, New Jersey (a seaport town on the Cohansey River, five miles upstream from the Delaware River) and a tavern 12 miles south of New Castle, Delaware, at a cost of 6 shillings, 6 pence (1s/6d). The route took Fithian 16 miles to Quintons Bridge, where he paid 1/ to cross; 10 more miles to Penn's Neck Ferry, where the charge was 2/ for the toll bridge and 4/6 to cross the Delaware to New Castle. In that town, Fithian bought oats for his horse and a cordial for himself, paying 1/2. Twelve more miles brought him to Mr. Achans Tavern, where he spent the night.

After paying 3/4 for his night's lodging and stabling for his horse, Fithian rode 12 miles to North East, Maryland, where he ate breakfast at a cost of 1/6. Another 10 miles brought him to the Susquehannah River, where the ferry keeper charged 1/ for crossing the river and 9d for oats for Fithian's horse. By 4 o'clock in the afternoon he had covered a total of 34 miles to reach Bush Town in upper Baltimore County, paying out a total of 6/7 in the course of the day.

A night in Bush Town proved to be more expensive than one at Mr. Achan's, costing 4/6, and breakfast at the small, mean Tavern 13 miles farther along perhaps less satisfactory, although costing the same 1/6 as breakfast the day before. County courts regulated the prices charged by licensed taverns and ordinaries but had less ability to ensure the quality of the fare. Another 13 miles on horseback carried Fithian to Baltimore by one o'clock. The day on the road covered 26 miles and cost the traveler 5/8. His early arrival could have given Fithian time to see something of the town, by now a busy seaport, but the diary makes no mention of how the traveler spent the rest of the day -- only that his expenses in Baltimore amounted to a substantial 15/3.

On the 23rd, a journey of 15 miles took Fithian to a ford over the Petapsko to a small tavern where he paid 1/11. Rode thence to Blandensburg 23 miles. Whole distance 38 miles. Whole Expence 17/2. The following day was a Sunday but Fithian was on the road all day, covering a total of 45 miles and spending 11/4 in all. From Bladensburg he traveled 8 miles to Georgetown, where he had breakfast and took the ferry (6d) across the Potomac River. Nine more miles brought him to Alexandria and another 18 miles to Colchester, where he "Dined" for 3/9, plus 6d for a ferry crossing along the way. Ten more miles brought Fithian to the end of his day's journey at Dumfries.

On Monday, Expence at Dumfries 4/5. Rode thence to Aquia 10 miles. Expense 2/4--Rode thence to Stafford-Court-House 12 Miles. Whole distance 22 Miles. Whole Expence 6/6. Like many travelers in the Chesapeake region, Fithian found it possible at Stafford to take advantage of the hospitality extended by wealthy planters. Expence at Stafford 5/. Stopped at Colonel Thomas Lees, only a few Rods from Stafford Tavern. Continued there all day, and the following Night. Expence to Day 5/. Visitors to private homes did have one expense that did not occur at a tavern - a tip to any of the planter's slaves who waited on them or took care of a horse during their stay. Expence to boy 1/. Rode from Mr. Lees to a small poor Ordinary 13 Miles -- Expence /8 for Oats -- Rode thence, without feeding to Captain Cheltons. on the Potowmack 32 Miles -- Whole Distance 45 Miles. Whole Expence 1/9.

On the 28th, Rode after Breakfast to the Honorable Rob: Carters the End of my Journey; 12 Miles, by two o-Clock in the Afternoon. Both Myself, and my Horse seemed neither tired nor Dispirited -- Occasional Expences on the Road. In Baltimore for some Buff-Ball, 1/6. In Blandensburg for having straps put to my Saddle-Bags 3/. In Colchester for Shaving and Dressing 1/3. The whole 5/9. So that my whole Distance appears to be 260 Miles, perform'd in seven Days. And my whole Expence appears to be 3£ 6s 6d. On Friday, Fithian Settled myself in the Room appointed me -- and adjusted my Affairs after my Ride.

The following day Fithian was out riding around the countryside with the Carters' eldest son, doing some shopping and visiting neighbors -- but that's another story.

≈The account of Fithian's travels can be found at pp.16-19 in Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian: A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, 1773-1774, Hunter Dickinson Farish, ed. (Charlottesville, VA: The University Press of Virginia, 1957, 1983).
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2010-12-22T19:55:00.002-05:00

Transporting Horses

2010-12-12T21:48:00.017-05:00

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Knowing that horses arrived on the same ships that carried the early colonists raised the question of how horses were handled as cargo on a vessel that pitched and rolled in response to any but the calmest weather. Both visual images – painting and drawings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – and ships’ logs help to answer this question.

As this ship model shows, stalls constructed below decks and equipped with slings kept horses from suffering life-threatening injuries in the event of severe weather, although they did not prevent minor problems as the logs reveal.

An 18th c. Spanish illustration showing a similar form of stall and the sling.

The log of the brigantine Flora records the weather conditions that could complicate life for both crew and cargo during a crossing of the Atlantic. The Flora sailed from Whitby on the east coast of Yorkshire with a cargo of six horses, two bound for Madeira and the remainder destined for Charleston. The ship left Whitby on 16 September 1767 for a passage of nearly three months over more than four thousand nautical miles. Heavy autumn and winter gales accompanied her across the Atlantic.

By the 28th of September, meeting a “Great swell from ye East,” the “Ship labours hard. The Horses are hard matcht to keep upon their Legs. . . . Ruswarp had Like to been down upon us[,] had Entirely Dropt his hinder Legs and hung by the slings.” On 23 October the log reported “Our Horses in Good Health and fine order.” Men and horses alike “are eaten up with flies.” On the 31st, as the ship moved westward from Madeira, all the horses were bled, “it being very Requisite against the Change of Climate. They are in better order now than when they came on board the ship.” Fresh gales on the 2nd of November brought “A Great sea from the West. Ship Labours very hard yet the Horses able to Stand fast in ye hold," although the master, William Manson, noted that he “Tumbled down several times upon ye deck,” not having the benefit of a sling to keep him upright.

Weather was not the only source of difficulties. On November 6th, “Danby kicked Lofthouse very hard on his left hind Leg which is very much swelled to which we applyd a medicine for it.” Furthermore, “Lofthouse was taken badly with a Cough and Short Wind.” Three days later, “Blooded the Horse Lofthouse in the Thigh Vein and annoynted his Leg Which seems to be much swelled.” Lofthouse’s leg continued to be troublesome for several weeks and “Sulphur and Lofthouse have both Rubbed off some hair of their Buttocks on the Side Rails with the Quick motion and Rowling of the ship.” The entry for 30 November noted that “Sulphur’s legs still continue to be very Scabbed,” but “Lofthouse mends fast & ye new hairs grow . . . [and] The Stallion and Bay horse” were in “Good health and Good order.” Strong gales on 4 December made the horses “hard matcht to keep upon their Legs,” but arrival in the Charleston harbor on the 9th brought their shipboard life to an end.

Horses carried in stalls below decks had, of course, to be gotten on and off the ship by some means.

This ship model shows the below-deck stalls for the horses but in addition includes both staging platforms on the side of the ship where horses are lined up waiting in turn to be lowered into the hold, and a horse amidships being lowered to the level of the stalls by a halyard.

A different image, of an army loading its cavalry horses, shows the same use of a halyard to swing the horses aboard.

Another variation on the same procedure.
The views of naval vessels loading or unloading horses remind us that any military campaign of the period required the movement of large numbers of horses. When William of Orange invaded England in 1588, it was reported that the Dutch fleet carried some seven thousand horses. They served as mounts for thirty-six hundred cavalry officers, the Prince and his entourage, and the officer and gentlemen volunteers who accompanied him, and also as draft animals to pull carts carrying provisions and ammunition and the army’s artillery. Saddlemakers in Amsterdam supplied three thousand saddles as well as boots, bridles, reins, etc. A mobile smithy accompanied the expedition to shoe horses as well as repair weapons. When transporting horses in this quantity, unloading by means of a halyard required too much time – particularly for an army preparing for battle. In 1688, local fishermen directed the fleet to a landing place where the beach fell away sharply enough that the horses needed to swim only a short distance to reach shore.

Here, horses swim ashore from a ship off the coast of Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Despite the obvious differences in the vessels used, the method of offloading remains essentially the same.

Transporting cavalry horses was not a consideration in the Chesapeake ordinarily, but was a practical issue during the French and Indian War for British troops sent to fight in the colonies. A recent review of research related to the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary War trail dealt with the logistics of getting the troops that fought at Yorktown to Virginia by ship. There they awaited the arrival on foot of the oxen needed to pull the cannon that were carried on board the ships along with the soldiers. No mention was made of transporting horses, but at least a few traveled down the bay by sail and tide for paintings of the British surrender show Washington, Lafayette, and other officers on horseback.

Complicated as the loading and unloading of horses might have been, it was probably nothing compared to the challenge of getting an elephant on and off a ship!

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2010-12-02T21:58:00.000-05:00

Jasper Danckaerts Might Have Preferred a Horse

2010-12-02T21:50:00.004-05:00

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A Labadist minister, Jasper Danckaerts, traveled from New Amsterdam to northern Maryland in December 1679 to assess the possibility of establishing a Labadist settlement in northeastern Maryland. Danckaerts and his companion traveled mainly on foot, but were very grateful for the few occasions when they had the opportunity to ride a horse, even if meant sharing one horse among three men.

In the journal that Danckaerts kept of his travels, he described the difficulties of crossing the region’s many creeks and rivers. On Monday the 4th of December, the group crossed the “creek, or Bohemia River, in a canoe.” [116] The following day, they were more fortunate, arriving at the court house on the Sassafras River, where a ferry carried them to the other side for a charge of one English shilling per man. Following the course of the river, they came to a small creek, “which runs very shallow over the strand into the river. Here we had to take off our shoes and stockings in order to cross over although it was piercing cold. We continued some distance further . . . to the Great Bay (the Chesapeake) when we came to another creek and called out to be taken across, which was done.” [116]

“The next morning we crossed a creek, and were shown the way to another plantation, where would be set over still another [creek]. . . . The people excused themselves from taking us over, saying that their canoe was not at home, and sent us to another plantation on the right. We crossed there [and went] a long distance along the road until we reached a plantation . . . where no one was at home except a woman, who nevertheless lent us a canoe with which we might not only cross over, but go a considerable distance down the creek, trusting her canoe to us.” [117]
At a later crossing, Danckaerts and his party reached the bank of the creek as another traveler was already crossing in a canoe. Fortunately for Danckaerts there was a second canoe, in which he and his companion crossed, giving the canoe to a woman waiting on the other shore who paddled it back across the creek.

On Danckaerts’s return trip, the ferry at the Sassafras courthouse proved not be as accommodating as he’d found it on his first encounter. “We wished to be put across the Sassafras River here, but could not accomplish it, although we were upon the bank of the river. We were directed to the ferry at the court house, . . . where we arrived about two o’clock and called over to them to come and take us over. Although the weather was perfectly still and they could easily hear us, we were not taken over, though we continued calling out to them until sundown.” [124]

One of Danckaert’s final crossings involved enlisting the help of an enterprising indentured servant. “We therefore promised this servant if he would put us across we would give him the money, which we would otherwise have had to pay at the ferry. The master made some objections on account of the servant’s work and the distance from the river, and also because they had no canoe.” One would think any of these objections would be a serious obstacle to the plan, but apparently not. “The servant satisfied him on these points, and he [the master] consented. We breakfasted on what we could get, not knowing how or where we would obtain anything again. We three, accordingly, went about two miles to the strand, where we found a canoe, but it was almost entirely full of water, and what was the worst of it, we had nothing with which to bale it out. However, by one means and another we emptied it and launched the canoe. We stepped in and paddled over the river to a plantation of a Mr. Frisby.” [126]

What can we learn from Danckaerts’s account of his journey that sheds light on the use of horses for personal travel in seventeenth-century Maryland? Had the party been traveling on horseback, it would not have been able to use the many crossings where canoes carried the men from one side of the creek to another. But these journeys by canoe, as the above excerpts show, were not without their own complications: no canoe at a convenient crossing point could mean a long detour in search of another; a crossing too shallow for a canoe meant wading across frigid winter streams; canoes could leak or be so weighted down by their passengers as to have little margin of safety. On horseback, the party could have made faster use of the ferries available (assuming the ferry hands wished to heed their summons, but that was a hazard whether on foot or horseback) and could traverse creeks at natural fords or shallow headwaters, options that required no more of a detour than did the hunt for a canoe and would take far less time using horsepower than to find the canoe on foot.

The journal of Jasper Danckaerts is available online at http://books.google.com/books?id=_cgBAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=journal+of+jasper&hl=en&ei=VwT1TOG5FsL78Abw5dXTBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
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2009-10-27T22:18:00.003-04:00

A Horse Needs a Road

2009-10-14T21:07:00.005-04:00

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The Rev. Hugh Jones wrote in 1699 that "Our soil is generally sandy, free from stone, which makes itt verry convenient for travelling. And we have noe occasion for shoeing our horses except in frosty weather. And what with the goodnesse of our little horses and with the smoothnesse of the roads, we can travell upon occasion fifty miles in a summer afternoon, and sometimes a hundred miles in a day." [1]

Jones's comment alerts us to the fact that more than a horse was required to travel on horseback over distances of more than a few miles. Travelers needed roads, ferries, and bridges in addition to the horse. Maryland's legislature first dealt with roads in 1666, when it passed An act for making high wayes & making the heads of Rivers, Creekes, Branches and Swamps passable for horse and ffoote. [2]

The act ordered the commissioners, or justices of the peace, for each county to assemble on the 20th of October to decide on the most convenient highways and paths for their respective counties. The men had the authority to appoint an overseer for each road and to levy a tax of tobacco or labor to carry out the work of improving the roads, which were not to go through anyone's yard, garden, orchard, or corn field. The commissioners could levy fines on anyone who did not comply with the terms of the law.

Compliance on everyone's part for the next three decades was minimal, but roads gradually improved as overseers supervised workers to remove underbrush, cut trees and grub out their roots, and drain marshy areas. Early roads often followed Indian trails, widened to allow for use by horses, and often traversed the ridges that ran along the necks of land.

From these higher, public routes, secondary paths (some public, some private) led to landing places, ferries, courthouses, churches and meeting houses, and grist mills. Changes in the road network took place as individuals or neighborhoods petitioned to add a new road or turn, improve, or remove an existing one.

Because roads inevitably crossed plantations, a traveler's convenience could be a property owner's inconvenience, if the road cut a field in half or required gates to protect crops that would be endangered if travelers failed to close them. Alternatively, a road that was turned to avoid cutting through a field could send a traveler on a longer or less easily-traveled route.

Management of the road network became a regular, and sometimes contentious, part of a county court's administrative duties.

In 1696 and again in 1704, the General Assembly again attempted to improve the colony's roads by enacting new legislation. These acts required that roads be a minimum of twenty feet wide, clear of underbrush, and well-grubbed to remove tree roots. The legislation directed the justices annually to record a description of the county roads and the overseers appointed to supervise them.

All residents owed a fixed number of days of labor each year under the direction of the overseers; no one could escape road work by paying a tax instead of working, although wealthy planters could send slaves or servants to fulfill their labor obligation.

The 1704 act attempted to provide directions for travelers unfamiliar with the area by establishing a system of notches to mark roads leading to Annapolis (AA) and Williamstadt ([Oxford] W).

County court proceedings generally include the road descriptions and overseers' appointments among the administrative business of the courts. The earliest record books of Anne Arundel's court burned in the State House fire of 1704, but later volumes contain extensive material about the county's road network.

Nevertheless, the only complete description of the county’s colonial roads in the Anne Arundel court records dates to August 1734. The entry listed twenty roads, seven of which passed through All Hallows and five of which began in Annapolis.

“the following roads are deemed and ascertained by the Justices of this Court to be Publick Roads (Viz)
from Annapolis over Severn Bridge to Patapsco Ferry
from Annapolis to Huntington
from Annapolis to Elk Ridge
from Annapolis Round the head of South River
From Annapolis to South River ferry
from Severn Bridge to Bells Mill
From Elk Ridge Road to Indian Landing
From Bells Mill to South River Ferry
from South River Ferry to Queen Anns Ferry
from South River Ferry to the Bay Side Road that Leads to fishing Creek
and from South River Ferry the Road that Leads through the Mannour
from Severn Ferry to Long Bridge by the Chapel to the Mountains
from Severn Ferry round the head thereof
from Patapsco Falls to Rowles’s
from Deep Run to Paptapscoe ferry
from London Town to Pigg Point Ferry
From London Town to Lyons Creek
from the head of Road River Hundred to Queen Anns Ferry
from Henry Ridgleys to the Landing at Patapscoe at the head thereof
from William Ridgleys to the said Landing at the head of patapscoe
from Catlins old fields to Carrolls Mannour
From Catlins Old Fields to the Locust Thicket” [2]

In November, the justices appointed the overseers for the various roads, designating them for geographic areas rather than specific roads (as was often done in other counties):
David Macklefresh for Road River hundred
Thomas Homewood for Lower part of Broad Neck hundred
Thomas Baldwin for Lower part Middle Neck Hundred
Richard Warfield Jr for Lower pt Severn Hundred
William Ander for South River hundred
William Waters for Lyons Creek hundred
Samuel Chambers for Road River Hundred
Abell Hill for West River Hundred
Edward Parish for the Swamp
William Simmons for Herring Creek Hundred
John Gray Sr for Broad Neck Hundred
John Campbell for upper part Town Neck Hundred
Henry Ridgley for upper pt Huntington Hundred
John Ashman for Upper Pt Patapsco Hundred
James Crouch for Lower pt Paptapsco Hundred
Gideon Howard for Lower pt Elk Ridge Hundred
John Hammond son of Charles for Patuxent Hundred
William Ridgley son of Charles for Middle River Hundred
Edward Dorsey Jr for that pt Elk Ridge Hundred lately in the precinct of John Dorsey son of Edward
John Howard for Upton Road

The following March, the court made a change in one assignment. William Waters, the overseer for Patuxent Hundred, being in the custody of the sheriff, was replaced by Richard Davis.

Other road business came before the court in the same session. First, “A Representation being made to the Court here that a new Road from above the Plantation called Units to come to the Main road a little below Mirey Swamp bridge will be necessary and convenient to Several of the Inhabitants of this County, it’s Ordered that the Overseer of the High Ways Clear the same according to the directions of Mr. John Howard,” one of the justices.

Then, “Mr. Henry Ridgley and Capt. John Howard being some time past appointed by this Court to View a Road Prayed for by Richard daviss and Other the Inhabitants of this County from below said Davisses to Queen Caroline Church make Return to this Court that the Same is very Necessary wherefore it is Ordered that the Overseers of the Hundred clear the said Road accordingly.”

Further, “Mr. Henry Ridgley and Capt. John Howard being some time past appointed by this Court to View a Road which was Prayed for by Several of the Inhabitants of this County from the foarding Place of Patuxent river by Nathan Hammond’s Plantation make Report that the Same is very needful, wherefore it is Ordered by the Justices here that the Overseers of the Hundred clear the said Road accordingly.”

County residents, traveling on horseback, needed convenient roads to reach bridges and fords or to attend church services on Sunday. Far from being dependent on boats for transportation, they relied on their horses and the county's road network to go about their daily business.

[1] Earle, Tidewater Settlement System, 143-44.

[2] Anne Arundel County, Judgments, IB 1, 1734-1736, 78.

2009-10-06T18:04:00.006-04:00

The Modern Horse

2009-10-06T12:25:00.004-04:00

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Modern horses belong to the species E. caballus within the genus Equus, the only extant genus of the family Equidae. Within the genus Equus, horses, asses, and zebras are the only surviving species.

The genus Equus evolved into its present form on the North American continent, as documented in continent’s fossil record. During a period of major glaciation during the Pliocene epoch (2.6 million years ago), some Equus species crossed from North America to the eastern hemisphere.

In Africa, they diversified into modern zebras; those who spread to Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa developed as desert-adapted asses, both domesticated and wild (onagers). True horses, E. caballus, spread through Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

In the western hemisphere, horses became extinct about 10,000 years ago, at a time in the late Pleistocene when a series of extinctions eradicated most of the large mammals, including not only all of the horses in North and South America, but also mammoths and saber-tooth tigers. A combination of climatic changes and overhunting by H. sapiens, a recent arrival in the hemisphere, is believed to have been responsible.

Extant species within the genus Equus are E. burchelli, the Plains zebra of Africa; E. zebra, the Mountain zebra of South Africa; E. grevyi, Grevy’s zebra; E. caballus, the true horse; E. hemionus, the desert-adapted onagers; and E. asinus, the true asses and donkeys of north Africa.

Horses were reintroduced into the western hemisphere by European explorers, conquerors, and settlers. Juan Ponce de Leon brought horses, as well as cattle and hogs, to the Gulf Coast of Florida in 1521. Nineteen years later, Francisco Coronado carried horses into the southwestern part of what is now the United States.

Native Americans in this area acquired horses from breeding stocks that developed from the horses that had originally been brought by the Spanish. But there were no horses in the eastern part of the continent north of Florida when the first settlers arrived at Roanoke(1584)and at Jamestown(1607).

The wild ponies of Assateague and Chincoteague may be descendants of survivors of a wrecked Spanish ship. Spanish fleets traveled to the new world carrying horses for the armies that conquered Mexico, Peru, and other parts of the Caribbean, Central, and South America; these fleets returned home by a route that took them along the coast of North America. While they would not have carried many horses on this part of their journey, some could have been aboard a ship that was wrecked.

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A Boat or A Horse?

2009-08-13T21:47:00.017-04:00

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The common perception is that Chesapeake colonists traveled primarily by boat, a generalization that is probably valid for the earliest days of settlement, when anyone who needed to travel any distance wouldn't have had much of an alternative.

A person who didn't have access to some form of water transportation – whether a canoe, skiff, raft, or small boat like a shallop – would most likely have had to walk to travel anywhere beyond his own plantation.

Nevertheless, there were practical incentives to acquire a horse as soon as possible to carry one to court, to a neighbor's, to church. Horses were expensive, but so were boats. Horses were uncommon, but so were boats. Roads may have been poor, bisected by creeks and rivers, impassable in periods of bad weather, but rivers and the Chesapeake Bay could be dangerous in storms or impassable because of unfavorable winds or tides, and require circuitous routes to move from one neck of land to another.

Although horses were not widely owned until the second half of the seventeenth century, boat ownership was not common either. Moreover, boat ownership remained limited to a small segment of the population, while ownership of horses became more widely dispersed over the seventeenth century, as the following table shows [all estates inventoried in Anne Arundel County, 1660-1699; not corrected for gender, age, wealth, or householder status]:

Thus, in a later-settled county like Anne Arundel, residents had widespread access to horses for transportation and other purposes within just a decade after the first settlers arrived to take up land.

The most thoughtful and evidence-based consideration of the "boats v. horses" question appears in a study of All Hallow's Parish (the settlement of London Town and the surrounding area) by geographer Carville Earle. Earle noted the oft-quoted statement of the Reverend Hugh Jones, that "the number of navigable rivers, creeks, and inletts, render it soe convenient for exporting and importing goods into any part thereof by water carriage."

But Jones also recognized what less clear-eyed observers have not, that what was useful for transporting heavy cargoes was not necessarily equally suited to personal movement. Earle found that the adaptations colonists made to their new-world environment included adopting "the horse and the road as the main means of travel" and a willingness to travel longer distances on horseback, in a region of dispersed settlement, than was the practice in England. [1]

Earle's analysis documented the low incidence of boat ownership compared with access to horses and identified their disadvantages in contrast to horses. As settlement spread away from the estuaries, fewer and fewer plantations had direct access to water; boats required more skill and more work in the absence of favorable winds or tides; and maintenance costs were greater.

Initially boats were cheaper to acquire – £1.5 to £3 for an 8-to-12 foot boat with sails and oars versus £5.5 to £7 for a horse – but by the 1690s purchase prices were comparable, giving the horse a decided advantage overall.

"Horseback riding became the main way of getting about in the parish and in tidewater Maryland." Jones, whose observation about the use of boats applied to imports and exports, not people, had a different assessment when it came to his own movements: "Our soil is generally sandy, free from stone, which makes itt verry convenient for travelling. And we have noe occasion for shoeing our horses except in frosty weather. And what with the goodnesse of our little horses and with the smoothnesse of the roads, we can travell upon occasion fifty miles in a summer afternoon, and sometimes a hundred miles in a day." [2]

[1] Carville V. Earle, The Evolution of a Tidewater Settlement System: All Hallow's Parish, Maryland, 1650-1783, (1975), 23, 142.

[2] Earle, Tidewater Settlement, 143-144.

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The First Modern Horses in the Chesapeake Region

2009-08-09T16:09:00.040-04:00

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Modern horses arrived in the Chesapeake region with the first Virginia colonists. Although scenes of Indians mounted on horseback attacking a wagon train or battling cavalry troops are a staple of westerns, these were nineteenth-century experiences. Native Americans in this area did not raise or have access to horses.

As was the case with many of the new human arrivals, the horses brought in as part of the earliest expeditions did not survive the "starving time" of 1609-1610.[1] Archaeological evidence indicates that all were consumed as food by the desperate colonists. The ships that arrived in subsequent years to resupply the Jamestown colonists carried more horses; these horses survived, and as they reproduced horses became a permanent part of the Chesapeake landscape.[2]

S. D. Rager

It is interesting to note that the lists of needed supplies, prepared both for the Virginia Company and for Maryland settlers, never mentioned livestock of any kind. Ships making ocean passages carried live animals as a source of food during the voyage, and successful settlement required domesticated animals for food, transportation, and labor. But the few accounts that we have of the early years of colonization make no mention of horses.

Father Andrew White notes in his journal that the first Maryland colonists bought cattle and hogs when they stopped in Virginia before sailing up the Potomac River to their landing at St. Clement's Island, but he doesn't say anything about horses. Nor is there any indication that the Ark and the Dove carried horses, something that was a possibility but very unlikely. Nevertheless, the first settlers must have purchased horses in Virginia within a short time of arriving in Maryland and later-arriving ships may well have carried at least a few horses.

Both artifacts recovered on archaeological digs and a variety of documents provide evidence about the presence of horses in early Virginia. Archaeologists working on the site of Martin's Hundred, first settled in 1618, recovered both horse shoes and a stirrup during their excavations of the site. The "Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall", promulgated in 1612 to bring order and discipline to the Virginia colony, included the following order:

Now know yee therefore, these promises carefully considered, that it is our will and pleasure, that every one, of what quality or condition soever hee bee, in this present Colony, to take due notice of this our Edict, whereby wee do strictly charge and command, that no man shall dare to kill, or destroy any Bull, Cow, Calfe, Mare, Horse, Colt, Goate, Swine, Cocke, Henne, Chicken, Dogge, Turkie, or any tame Cattel, or Poultry, of what condition soever; whether his owne, or appertaining to another man, without leave from the Generall, upon paine of death in the Principall, and in the accessary, burning in the Hand, and losse of his eares, and unto the concealer of the same foure and twenty houres whipping, with addition of further punishment, as shall be thought fitte by the censure, and verdict of a Martiall Court.

Later Virginia records include a report made in 1616 that noted only six horses in the colony; a request that twenty mares be shipped in 1620 (but no evidence either way about their arrival), and the notation of only one horse in the 1625 muster for Martin's Hundred.

On the other hand, the Virginia Council in June 1620 described the colony's horses as "more beautifull, and fuller of courage" than the English horses from which they descended. The massacre that occurred in 1622 may well have wiped out many of those horses, resulting in the low number reported in 1625.

A proclamation issued in 1622 imposing the death penalty for anyone convicted of stealing "beasts & Birds of Domesticall & tame nature," placed horses, mares, and colts at the top of the list of protected animals, indicating both their importance and the fact that there were horses that might be stolen.[3]

While this evidence is mixed as to the presence of horses in Virginia's first decades, it is unambiguous about the value attached to them.[4]

[1] A recent study of colonial diet, based on archaeological investigations of early Virginia sites, notes that fish, wild fowl, turtles, and small mammals represented the "mainstay" of the early Virginia settlers' diet. Faunal remains from the winter of 1609 reveal the extent of the colonists' hunger, as they included vipers, black rats, dogs, cats, and horses. Archaeologists do not normally find horse bones in kitchen middens -- only the very poor ate horse meat, and then only when they had access to it, horses normally being too valuable and too scarce to be butchered for food. Yet the biomass recovered from early deposits at Jamestown included heavily butchered horse bones from heads and feet as well as carcasses. Cary Carson, Joanne Bowen, Willie Graham, Martha McCartney, and Lorena Walsh, "New World, Real World: Improvising English Culture in Seventeenth-Century Virginia," The Journal of Southern History, LXXIV (February 2008), 40.

[2] Nor was their adaptation to the Chesapeake in any way unusual. The Narragansett sachem Miantonomi, speaking to a local tribe on Long Island in 1642, despaired that "these English have gotten our land, they with scythes cut down the grass and with axes fell the trees; their cows and horses eat the grass, and their hogs spoil our clam banks, and we shall all be starved." Sarah Vowell, The Wordy Shipmates, (2008), 203.

[3] Ivor Noël Hume, Martin's Hundred, (1982), 147-48.

[4] Equally signficant, perhaps, is the choice of a cover illustration for Hume's book: Gerard Terborch's "Cavalier in the Saddle."

Why Horses? Why Anne Arundel?

2009-08-07T17:15:00.010-04:00

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Until fairly recently, both of these questions would have been unnecessary. But most 21st-century residents of Anne Arundel County probably don't encounter living horses very often.

Children may enjoy an occasional pony ride; families may attend the annual joust at St. Margaret's Church; or horses may be seen grazing in the fields along Route 2 in south county or up in the Pasadena area.

Photo from St. Margaret's Joust.
Photographs, paintings, and television shows might be the closest contact with horses that most of us have today -- even the westerns that were once a common experience for movie-goers are now a dwindling part of our culture. But for three hundred years after the settlement of Maryland, horses would have been an integral part of everyday life for most county residents.

Horse power provided a major source of energy and one of the primary means of transportation. Racing and riding were more than entertainment, recreation, and exercise; breeding and racing have been economically important since the 18th century. Armies relied on mounted cavalry as an important element of their fighting power and law enforcement used horses for mobility and crowd control.

As we begin to look around us and to look back at our past, we can see that although their role has changed over the last four centuries, horses have always been a vital part of life in Anne Arundel, across the state, and in our region.

Because this blog is appearing on the Four Rivers Heritage Area website, our focus necessarily will be on local history and local activities. But because the subject is so vast, with tentacles stretching in all directions, temporally and spatially, the subjects that we talk about and the evidence that we use will be drawn from Maryland and occasionally from Virginia, our Chesapeake neighbor, with whom we share a common heritage.
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