Horse Raising in Colonial New England 917 



Christopher, Montserrat, and Surinam (131). In 1731 Governor Jenks 

 places them first in importance among the exports of the colony, and 

 states that at that time there were ten or twelve vessels engaged in 

 the West Indies trade (132). Ten years later the number of vessels 

 had grown to one hundred and twenty (133). Douglass also confirms 

 the importance to the Rhode Islanders of horses as an article of com- 

 merce (134), while the Reverend James MacSparran, for a long time 

 resident in the colony, tells of the " fine horses which are exported to 

 all parts of English America " (135). 



Newport and Providence were the main ports of embarkation, but 

 many horses were shipped on small vessels directly from the farms 

 in the Narragansett country (136), where was found the greatest center 

 of the livestock production. In 1745 Moses Brown, one of the more 

 prominent of the Providence merchants, had eight vessels under his 

 management, ^' some to Surinam with horses " (137) ; while the cor- 

 respondence of one Newport firm indicates that during the years from 

 1731 to 1773 this firm was shipping horses as a regular part of its 

 cargoes to all the British islands and to Curagao (138). 



EXPORTATIONS from CONNECTICUT PORTS 



At the outset the horses sent out from Rhode Island came into com- 

 petition with those that continued to be sent from the Massachusetts 

 Bay region, but before long it was Connecticut that had come to be 

 the chief rival in the trade.® The renewed enforcement of the Molasses 

 Act after the close of the war with France in 1763 dealt a hard blow 

 to the commerce of Rhode Island, which had been the chief center for 

 the distillation of rum from the molasses received from the French 

 islands,^° and with the considerable decline in its trade which followed 

 went a lessening of the exportation of horses from its ports and a partial 

 diversion of the trade to the easily accessible outlet at New London 

 in Connecticut, where such shipments had for some time been well 

 established. 



® One Newport captain in 1731. quaintly complains to his owners that he has been 

 unable to dispose of his cargo of horses at Antigua because " there was 3 New London 

 men arrived before I landed. They sold there horses for tow pistoles a head which is 

 true." (Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 7th ser.. vol. 9, no. 69, p. 16.) 



1° The former prohibitive duty of sixpence a gallon was reduced in 1764 to threepence ; 

 and the act was finally repealed in 1766 and a tax of only one penny a gallon was 

 imposed instead. But between the war and these duties, Rhode Island commerce suffered 

 heavily. 



