376 THE HORSE OF AMERICA. 



ton, who seems to have owned him as long as he lived. It must 

 be accepted as true that Lieutenant Carpenter captured a horse 

 from Colonel De Lancey, but we cannot accept it as true that 

 this was the same horse owned by Norton. We must first know 

 how and where "one Smith" got him. Norton had this horse 

 and advertised him in different parts of the country for public 

 service seven or eight years before the romance of his history 

 and pedigree was given to the world. As this romance would 

 have been a grand feature in an advertisement of a stallion,, Mr. 

 Norton was too slow in evolving it, and when he did bring it out 

 nobody believed it. At that period many portions of New Eng- 

 land abounded in stallions with bogus pedigrees and histories, 

 and if we judge Norton by his acts in giving his horse three 

 different names at different times and places, we must conclude 

 he was ready to conceal or invent anything that would add to 

 his horse's popularity and patronage. 



SHERMAN MORGAN. In his history of the Morgan Horse, Mr. 

 Linsley names this and three or four other sons of the original, 

 that were kept for stock purposes, but none of them seems to 

 have attained any eminence, except Sherman. As he never made 

 any pretensions to being a trotter, he would have been forgotten 

 long ago, had it not been for the lucky circumstances that he- 

 was the sire of Black Hawk, and thus his name has been pre- 

 served. He was scant fourteen hands high, with heavy body on 

 short legs, and carried his head well up. He was a chestnut and 

 foaled about 1809. There has always been a doubt in the minds 

 of many as to whether he was the sire of Black Hawk, but that 

 question will be considered when we reach that horse. His dam 

 was a very handsome mare, brought from Naragansett, a pacer, 

 and a very desirable saddle mare. In the trotting "Begister," three 

 representations are given as to the breeding of this mare, namely, 

 that she was of the Spanish breed; that she was an imported 

 English mare; and that she was brought from Virginia on ac- 

 count of her beauty and speed. The first claim seemed to have 

 the best historical support, and besides this she was brought from 

 Providence, Bhode Island, and was a very fine pacer. The 

 theory was then prevalent that the Narragansett pacers were of 

 the "Spanish breed." The elimination of that foolish notion 

 from the history of the pacers does not affect the plain statement 

 that she was a Narragansett pacer. It is not known that this 



