Horse Raising in Colonial New England 919 



the Revolutionary War/^ and from all the evidence available it is clear 

 that the export trade in horses played no inconsiderable part in this 

 growth. Horses continued to be sent out from Rhode Island and 

 Massachusetts ports, but it was in Connecticut, and especially in New 

 London, that the trade finally came to be mainly centered in the period 

 just before the Revolution. 



SOURCES OF SUPPLY FOR THE EXPORT TRADE 



Such an extensive exportation of horses from the Connecticut and 

 Rhode Island ports as has just been described indicates the raising of 

 them for this purpose in large numbers and over a very considerable 

 area. Details concerning such horse breeding, however, are very meager. 

 Horses were probably raised to some extent by all the farmers in the 

 region in response to the steady demand that existed.^- The various 

 cases of horse stealing found in the court records, as already described, 

 as well as the presence of the so-called " horse coursers " who went 

 about the country buying up animals and driving them in herds to the 

 points of shipment, would indicate that this was the case (148). 



Here and there throughout the area, however, were certain favorably 

 situated districts w^here the breeding of horses and of other animals for 

 export was much more specialized. This was the case, for example, on 

 Fisher's Island, just off the mouth of the Thames, which was given 

 over almost entirely to animal husbandry (149). Also, in the Con- 

 necticut River Valley the region round about Windsor seems to have 

 been another such center (150). But by far the most extensive and 

 important of these specialized areas was to be found in the Narragansett 

 district of Rhode Island — a region so famed in the annals of the time 

 for its great flocks of sheep, its dairies and cattle, and above all its fine 

 horses, as to have been noted by most of the contemporary writers of 

 the period. 



" Between the years 1762 and 1774 the number of Connecticut vessels increased from 

 seventy-six, with a total burden of 6790 tons, to one hundred and eighty, with a total 

 tonnage of 10,317. (Connecticut Archives. Cp"sns. p. 5. Cited by Weeden, Economic and 

 Social History of New England, vol. 2, p. 758.) 



12 The inventory of John Walworth, of New London, in 1748 shows the arrangement 

 of a well-to-do farmer's estate of thnt period. He ])ossessed 4 negro servants. 77 ounces 

 of silver plate, 50 head of cattle, 812 sheep, and 32 horses, mare.s, and colts (Caulkins, 

 History of Netv London, p. 345). 



