274 THE MORGAN HORSE 



to take around and race, bringing back feathers and prizes. He beat 

 everything. The mother of the Marchand Horse was by this stallion. He 

 was mild tempered and easy to manage ; a child could handle him ; was black. 

 He had him perhaps until he was nine or ten years old. I don't know the 

 father of this horse, but think it was the black stallion owned by my grand- 

 father before. The first stallion from the Louis Dansereau mare was a 

 white-footed horse. He was sold when six or seven. This one was two 

 years older than the other. He was handling this horse in 1837. My grand- 

 father has told me of these early horses many times ". 



Mrs. Joseph Dansereau, mother of Eugene, interview of December, 1892, 

 said : " Every one was crazy to get this mare of Louis' to breed from. He let 

 her several times, but always got her back again, and she died on his hands in 

 or about 1840. I don't know how many colts were raised from her. My father- 

 in-law, Joseph Dansereau, had a horse very hard to manage. People thought 

 this horse was made to pull on purpose, and M. O'Leary of Boucherville 

 told him so and Joseph told him to get in and he would drive him home 

 from Montreal. After a little Joseph told O'Leary to take the reins. The 

 horse went so that he could't stop him when they reached Boucherville, and 

 they had to go way home to Vercheres. This horse was sold in Mon- 

 treal some time before I was married. He was not old ". 



Mrs. Jerome Dansereau, Vercheres, who married a nephew of Louis, in 

 interview of October, 1892, said: "I remember Louis having a black fast 

 pacing stallion more than sixty years ago. He raised several stallions, but I 

 do not remember their names. They were all good, fast and handsome horses. 

 I was told when a girl that these horses came from the Dutch or Indian stock. 

 This particular black stallion Louis sold to a man from the States, for two 

 hundred dollars. He was the father of the others. He was sold the winter 

 I was married, which was 1835 ". 



Camille Dansereau, grandson of Louis, and postmaster at Montreal, says : 

 " I knew my grandfather had the first pacers. When I was six or seven my 

 father had a horse which it took two men to hold when about to race. He 

 was a block of fire. My father, Clement .Dansereau, died seven or eight 

 years ago ". 



From this testimony, the best we have been able to get from living wit- 

 nesses, the following facts appear : The fastest trotters and pacers bred in 

 Canada, during the early part of this century and as late as 1860, were mostly 

 bred at or near Contre-Coeur and Vercheres, or from stock there bred, and 

 were descendants from the famous mare known as Jeanne d'Arc, bred and 

 owned by Louis Dansereau of Contre-Coeur. This mare was the foal of an 

 American mare that Louis Dansereau traded for at Montreal about 1814, sup- 

 posed to have come from Vermont; and her sire a bay stallion of about fif- 

 teen hands high, nine hundred and fifty pounds, very closely resembling the 

 Morgans, owned by Pierre Fiset, who did not breed him. Jeanne d'Arc 

 herself was a successful race mare at the pacing gait. Louis Dansereau bred 

 from her a number of the most noted of these fast stallions, some of which he 



