178 THE MORGAN HORSE 



Apollos Austin's in Orwell. Leland went there, and the customer 

 was introduced by Shaw as Rufus Rising of Hague ; the mare was 

 there traded to Rising for a gray gelding, and Rising took her away. 

 This was early in July, 1835. The next year Mr. Rising was in Mid- 

 dlebury with the mare ; Mr. Leland met him there and went to the 

 stable of the Middlebury House and saw the mare. Leland was 

 acquainted with J. W. Holcomb, and, in 1848, saw Holcomb with the 

 gray mare at David Hill's, and saw the mare bred to Black Hawk. 

 It had been talked over several times between Leland and Holcomb 

 that he had the gray mare that Leland traded to Rising. 



The above is the substance of Mr. Leland's statements as taken 

 in his lifetime. It is remarkably corroborated in all its essential 

 points by a large amount of evidence concerning the mare that we 

 had gathered previous to meeting Mr. Leland. 



Rufus Rising, a well-to-do farmer of Hague, took the mare home 

 and kept her one or two years, and bred a colt from her; and then, 

 at the place of Curtis Balcom in Hague (who also testifies to the fact), 

 he sold her to George Johnson of Hague. Johnson kept her till the 

 fall of 1838, when he sold her to Warner Cook of Hague for sixty- 

 five dollars. George Johnson's brother, Hoyt Johnson, with whom 

 we have talked, knew this mare from the time she was brought into 

 Hague to the time of her death. The delivery from George John- 

 son to Warner Cook was made in the presence of Hoyt Johnson and 

 his wife, Rebecca, and they both recollect it perfectly, and fix the 

 date by the birth of one of their children that was born two or three 

 months before. Mr. Cook, who was a man weighing two hundred 

 pounds, used to ride the mare that fall, and Gustavus Wicker of 

 Ticonderoga, who had a little trial of speed with him, says the mare 

 would trot close to a three-minute gait with Cook on her back. The 

 next season, Warner Cook, who lived near Lake George, sent the 

 mare down to his son William H., who owned the present Rev. Joseph 

 Cook place in Ticonderoga, and he used her until he sold his farm 

 and moved back to his father's place to take charge of the old gentle- 

 man's affairs, in October, 1840, taking the mare with him. These 

 facts are attested by Mrs. W. H. Cook, who is still living; by the 

 record of the deed of the farm, and also by other witnesses. The 

 mare was put to heavy work on a team and got a spavin, probably 

 the next winter. She was put to breeding and produced in 1842, 1843 

 and 1 844 three valuable colts by Young Sir Charles (Surge Horse), and 

 was sold by William H. Cook, in the summer of 1844, to George 

 Weed of Ticonderoga, with her last foal by her side, for fifty dollars, 



