120 THE MORGAN HORSE 



Branch in 1 793 ; his son Jude married Mrs. Williams' daughter. Their 

 son, who recently died at Chelsea, said his father told him these facts 

 time after time, and his grandsons remember hearing their grand- 

 father tell the same; one of them thinks his grandfather said the 

 four-year-old horse was gray, but the others said not; that he said 

 bay. William Rice lived at Randolph when Mr. Morgan 



died; he removed to Woodstock about 1796. * * * Some say 

 he had the four-year-old horse and took him to Woodstock, and 

 some say the horse was sold and taken to Williston". 



Now, Mr. Thomson did not then and does not now know that the 

 Morgan horse was advertised in 1795, or at any other time, to stand 

 at Williston, under the name of Figure. So the statement that some 

 said at that time that the four-year-old horse was taken to Williston, 

 coupled with the fact that others said he went to Rice, at Woodstock, 

 both of which statements are strictly true of the Morgan horse, is, to 

 say the least, very suggestive that the four-year-old and the Morgan 

 horse, otherwise called Figure, were one and the same animal. And 

 it seems most probable that the bay stallion pointed out to Mr. Moul- 

 ton was the identical Morgan horse, perhaps three instead of four 

 years old ; and it is not unlikely that the "little runt of a colt" with 

 him justified Mr. Moulton's remark, and was not worth ten dollars. 

 We have no other evidence, coming by verbal tradition, as to the 

 bringing in of the colts and their appearance at that time, that is so 

 direct and so apparently reliable as this. 



Taking all these circumstances into consideration, it certainly 

 looks very probable that the horse advertised under the name of 

 Figure at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1792, by Samuel Whitman, was 

 the Justin Morgan, and that he was taken that year or the next to 

 Vermont, by Mr. Morgan. So that the Justin Morgan may have 

 made the first part of the season of 1792, then three years old, at 

 Hartford, Connecticut, and completed it at Randolph, Ver- 

 mont. 



Mr. Linsley closes his sketch of the Justin Morgan as follows : 



"At twenty-nine [thirty-two] years of age, no cause need be as- 

 signed for his death but the ravages of time and the usual infirmities of 

 years ; but old age was not the immediate cause of his death. He was 

 not stabled, but was running loose in an open yard with other horses, 

 and received a kick from one of them on the flank ; exposed without 

 shelter to the inclemency of a northern winter, inflammation set in 

 and he died. Before receiving the hurt which caused his death, he 

 was perfectly sound, and entirely free from any description of blemish. 



