Horse RAISING IN CoLoNtIAL New ENGLAND 919 
the Revolutionary War,” and from all the evidence available it is clear 
that the export trade in horses played no inconsiderable part in this 
erowth. Horses continued to be sent out from Rhode Island and 
Massachusetts ports, but it was in Connecticut, and especially in New 
London, that the trade finally came to be mainly centéred in the period 
just before the Revolution. 
SOURCES OF SUPPLY FOR THE EXPORT TRADE 
Such an extensive exportation of horses from the Connecticut and 
Rhode Island ports as has just been described indicates the raising of 
them for this purpose in large numbers and over a very considerable 
area. Details concerning such horse breeding, however, are very meager. 
Horses were probably raised to some extent by all the farmers in the 
region in response to the steady demand that existed.’? The various 
eases of horse stealing found in the court records, as already deseribed, 
as well as the presence of the so-called ‘‘ horse coursers ’’ who went 
about the country buying up animals and driving them in herds to the 
points of shipment, would indicate that this was the case (148). 
Tiere and there throughout the area, however, were certain favorably 
situated districts where the breeding of horses and of other animals for 
export was much more specialized. This was the case, for example, on 
Fisher’s Island, just off the mouth of the Thames, which was given 
over almost entirely to animal husbandry (149). Also, in the Con- 
necticut River Valley the region round about Windsor seems to have 
been another such center (150). But by far the most extensive and 
important of these specialized areas was to be found in the Narragansett 
district of Rhode Island —a region so famed in the annals of the time 
for its great flocks of sheep, its dairies and cattle, and above all its fine 
horses, as to have been noted by most of the contemporary writers of 
the period. 
41 Between the years 1762 and 1774 the number of Connecticut vessels increased from 
seventy-six, with a total burden of 6790 tons, to one hundred and eighty, with a total 
tonnage of 10,317. (Connecticut Archives, Census, p. 5. Cited by Weeden, Economic and 
Social History of New England, vol. 2, p. 758.) : 
2 The inventory of John Walworth, of New London, in 1748 shows the arrangement 
of a well-to-do farmer’s estate of that period. He possessed 4 negro servants, 77 ounces 
of silver plate, 50 head of cattle, 812 sheep, and 32 horses, mares, and colts (Caulkins, 
History of New London, p. 345). 
