THE BLACK HAWK OR MORGAN FAMILY. 381 



double-gaited, and when speeded she would go from the trot to 

 the pace or from the pace to the trot as the case might be. 



From this synopsis of all that has been developed in the blood 

 lines of Black Hawk, there can be no longer any mystery about 

 where he got the characteristics making him so intensely differ- 

 ent from the representatives of the typical Morgan. His sire 

 was out of a high-class Narragansett pacer, and his dam was prob- 

 bly a fast Narragansett pacer, thus giving him presumably 

 seventy-five per cent, of Narragansett blood and twenty-five per 

 cent, of Morgan blood. The fight that was made against him all 

 his life, as not being a genuine Morgan, had its foundation in 

 justice and truth. He was not a Morgan in either blood or char- 

 acter. He founded a very valuable line of trotters, something 

 that no other branch of the Morgan family has ever accomplished, 

 and of right his descendants should be designated as "the 

 Black Hawk Family," and not jumbled up with the heterogeneous 

 mass of nondescripts still called "the Morgan Family." Black 

 Hawk's gait was spluttery and uneven, rather than square and 

 mechanical. A few of his progeny were very perfectly gaited, 

 but a great many of them manifested their evil inheritance, 

 which, together with unskillful handling, destroyed all possible 

 value as trotters. He placed three in the 2:30 list; fourteen of 

 his sons were sires of 2:30 performers, six of them with two or 

 more, and two daughters produced 2:30 performers. He died 

 November, 1856. 



ETHAN ALLEN, 43. This was a handsome, bright bay horse, 

 less than fifteen hands high, with three white feet and a star. 

 He was foaled 1849, got by Black Hawk, 5; dam, a fast trotting 

 grey mare of unknown pedigree. "With a list of all the cele- 

 brated American horses before him, it would be very difficult, if 

 not impossible, for the best-informed-horseman to select an animal 

 that has been so great a favorite with the American people, and 

 for so long a time, as the famous Ethan Allen. When four years 

 old he gave the world a sensation by eclipsing everything that 

 had appeared before him at that age; and again when he was 

 eighteen years old he renewed and intensified the sensation by 

 trotting in 2:15 with a running mate. These sensations of his 

 youth and his old age, did much to give him a standing with the 

 people; but his wonderful beauty and remarkable docility and 

 kindness, with the elegance and ease of his action, made him the 

 favorite of everybody. His trotting gait was recognized by the 



