372 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



changes of ownership that took place through his life and at his 

 death, in 1821, he was represented as foaled in 1793. He died 

 from the effects of a kick that was neglected, and not from old 

 age. 



The only serious attempt that has heen made to controvert the 

 date of 1793 was that made in the name of John Morgan, of 

 Lima, New York, in 1842, he being then eighty years old, in the 

 Albany Cultivator. Unfortunately the editor fails to publish the 

 letter he professes to have received from John Morgan and only 

 gives his construction of it, which any child knows is no evidence 

 at all. The editor represents him to say ''that the two-year-old 

 stud which he (Justin) took with him to Vermont was sired by a 

 horse owned by Selah Norton, of East Hartford, Connecticut, 

 called True Briton or Beautiful Bay." Justin Morgan removed 

 to Randolph, Vermont, in the spring of 1788, and this John 

 Morgan removed to Lima, New York, about February, 1790. 

 They were not brothers, but distant relatives. If John means to 

 say that Justin ''took with him" when he removed to Vermont a 

 two-year-old son of Beautiful Bay, that colt must have been 

 foaled in 1786, which would make him twelve years old instead of 

 five when he was sold upon the death of his owner, and thirty-six 

 years old instead of twenty-nine when he died from a kick. 

 Now, if we concede that Justin did take with him a two-year-old 

 son of Beautiful Bay, the dates render it impossible that he 

 should have been the founder of the Morgan horse family and we 

 have no trace of him whatever. 



Another authority has very recently come to the front, and in 

 order to avoid the difficulty of dates and still retain the possibil- 

 ity of the horse being by Beautiful Bay, insists that he was foaled 

 1789 and bred by Justin Morgan himself. 4Jnder this new light 

 he was foaled in Vermont and didn't have to travel there at all. 

 He insists further that he named the horse Figure and kept him 

 in the stud till his death in March, 1798, when the horse was sold 

 and his name changed to Justin Morgan. It is true that Justin 

 Morgan, still seeking to make a living, kept a stallion two or 

 three years owned in Hartford, Connecticut, and advertised him 

 as "the famous horse Figure, from Hartford." Now, if this 

 horse was foaled the property of Justin Morgan and owned by 

 him as long as he lived, why should he advertise him as "from 

 Hartford?" All these efforts to fix dates by shifting about so as 

 to make it possible for the bogus stolen horse to come in as a sire, 



