1 64 THE MORGAN HORSE 



C. H. Hayes of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, writes of the dam 

 of Black Hawk : 



"The dam of Black Hawk was a black, striped-faced mare from 

 Nova Scotia, and would weigh one thousand pounds. She was a 

 powerful animal of great endurance, and could haul two men to a 

 wagon a mile in three minutes. Her dam was said to have been im- 

 ported". 



Two statements as to the origin of this mare have been made, 

 both purporting to come from the teamster who traded her to Mr. 

 Kelly. They are contradictory. Nothing is known as to the knowl- 

 edge of this teamster. One of these versions has been given ; the other 

 is contained in the following letter of John L. Kelly, son of Benjamin 

 Kelly, written to Allen W.Thomson, Woodstock, Vermont, and dated 

 August 25th, 1876: 



"In answer to your inquiries about the dam of Black Hawk I 

 will give you my best recollections, aided somewhat by a diary I 

 kept at that time. I returned to Durham from a sea voyage in the 

 fall of 1830. In the following spring I went to Boston with my father, 

 with a lot of horses. We stopped over night at Brown's Hotel, 

 Haverhill, Massachusetts, where we met a teamster from Portsmouth, 

 New Hampshire, with a team of four horses. In a hind span was a 

 large gray horse and a dark bay mare. Among father's horses was 

 one which was a good match for the gray horse. The man noticed 

 it, and told father that the mare was too fast for the horse, worth two 

 of him for speed and bottom, yet he would trade with father for this 

 gray horse. After a good deal of talk, with the aid of Mr. Brown 

 the trade was made, and we drove the mare in the carriage to Boston, 

 leading the others. We found her to be a splendid roadster, and as 

 she was not in good condition to sell, we took her back to Durham. 

 At this time she was chafed and bruised up very badly with heavy 

 hames, yet in a few months she came out of it with no traces of it 

 except a few white spots on her back and head. The teamster said 

 she was a Narragansett mare. She would weigh a thousand pounds. 

 Father kept her as one of his stable horses. She was found to have 

 great speed as a trotter and father was always bragging about her. 

 One day late in the season, Israel Estey of Dover drove over to Dur- 

 ham with a trotter and bantered father to trot mile heats on Med- 

 bury Plain between Durham and Dover. I had great faith in the 

 mare and pleaded with father to accept his offer, as he did, and fifty 

 dollars was staked on the race. John Speed was father's hostler at 

 the time, and he commenced getting the mare ready for the race. 



