PIBST FRENCH HORSES IN AMERICA 111 



porting operations of the enterprising farmers of 

 south-central Ohio carried on at intervals during 

 a long series of years beginning in 1834. These men 

 were mostly of Virginia extraction and never could 

 abide inferior domestic animals. Their attention 

 ■was first given to their herds and flocks, which 

 acquired in due course a nation-wide celebrity. 

 Their love for a good horse was proverbial, but it 

 first expressed itself in an attachment to the English 

 Thoroughbred or blood horse and to those wonder- 

 fully gaited saddlers which are still the pride of all 

 men and women of Virginia stock. Nevertheless, we 

 have here to credit to these same public-spirited 

 Ohioans of the old school the bringing in of the 

 original seed from whence the great Percheron har- 

 vest of our own times has been reaped. In short, 

 we have |iow to record that the importation into 

 Ohio in 1851 of the two French stallions Normandy 

 and Loui^ Napoleon was followed by results of 

 which their importers little dreamed, and that in 

 the career of the one in Ohio and of the other in 

 Illinois we have revealed the solid base upon which 

 the subsequent popularity of the French horse of 

 heavy draft throughout the United States really 

 rests. 



It would be interesting if we could trace the exact 

 origin of these two successful stallions, but this is 

 now impossible. "We know that they were not 

 bought in The Perche by the men who imported 

 them. The importers probably never had heard the 

 name. It is a fact, nevertheless, that at that date 



