HORSE RAISING IN COLONIAL NEW ENGLAND 
DEANE PHILLIPS 
With the rapid rise of the sugar industry in the West Indies during 
the latter half of the seventeenth century, the continental British 
colonies in America were called upon to serve as the main source of 
supplies for the sugar plantations. An important trade grew up, 
especially with the New England region, in which the islands received 
lumber, fish, foodstuffs of various sorts, cattle, and horses. In return 
the northern colonies obtained sugar, molasses, rum, dyestuffs, and — 
of especial importance to New England — specie in various forms which 
could be used for purchasing manufactured articles and other needed 
supplies from England. 
Horses were used on the sugar plantations to turn the rollers of the 
eane-crushing mills, to haul the cane from the fields, and to transport 
sugar and supplies. They were in demand for saddle purposes also. 
As far as New England was concerned, there is ample evidence that 
the exportation of horses to supply this need of the sugar islands formed 
a very important part of the commerce which was earried on between 
the two groups of British colonies in the New World, and that it was 
‘equally important in the trade which grew up between New England 
and the French West Indies when these islands also began the cultiva- 
tion of sugar. The observations of contemporary writers, the reports 
of the various colonial governors to the Board of Trade in London, 
port records and various commercial statistics of the period which have 
been made available by modern research, and many other scattered 
sources of information, indicate that this was the ease. 
It is apparent that the development of such an export trade in horses 
must have stimulated a corresponding development of horse raising 
on a commercial scale. In this memoir an attempt has been made to 
eather together such widely scattered data as are available concerning 
this early agricultural enterprise of New England, and to trace its 
development and extent during the colonial period. Since, from its 
nature, this raising of horses was intimately bound up with the sugar 
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