Profiles

A Who's Who of Horses and Their Humans

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    I have changed my mind about this page.  It will be organized alphabetically instead of according to breeds with people and horses listed together.  If there is enough information about a particular horse, for instance, I will make a separate page for it.  I do still want to have a good picture for every profile eventually, just like I have on the breed pages.  The profiles on the breed pages will eventually all be linked to here for more information.
    One thing I will not change yet:  I will keep the categories of people and horses listed below separate for now.  I may link the same pages somewhere else on the site and keep this page for a quick search.  I have not yet fully decided what I'm going to do, so I don't want to make any drastic changes at this point.

Quarter Horse

Standardbred

Thoroughbred

    Certain horses have shared the heroic stature of their masters.
    El Morazillo, ridden by Hernando Cortez in leading the conquest of Mexico, was deified and worshipped by the Mexican Indians for two centuries after his death.
    The horses of mythology, though fictional, deserve mention with the famous equines of the epic past.  To the Greeks, horses symbolized the blessings of the gods, see Pegasus, the winged horse of Bellerophon.
    In the ancient sagas of many lands, the horse is often courier between heaven and earth, or bearer of heroes to the hereafter.  Norse heroes were borne to Valhalla by the horses of the Valkyries.
    Mr. Ed, the talking equine star of the 1960s television series, was a golden palomino. He learned an enormous amount of tricks for his role, including answering a telephone, opening doors, writing notes with a pencil, and unplugging a light. Apparently, Mr. Ed would occasionally have a fit of temper, as befitting his star status, and would stand stock still, wheezing and refusing to move.
    El Cid, the Spanish warrior, called his horse Babieca, a Spanish word meaning "stupid."

Courtesy The Empire of Equus by David Willoughby, I have included this brief summarization of several important horses (and their people).  Hopefully I'll be able to get more information on all of them in time.
    The Quarter Horse breed was started with the English Thoroughbred "Janus" in 1760 in Virginia and North Carolina.  The first purebred Arabian horse in the United States was a stallion named "Ranger," imported to New London, Connecticut, also in 1760.  Never forget the American mules were first bred from Spanish ones, gifted to George Washington by the king of Spain in 1787.  The American trotter (or Standardbred) traces back to "Messenger," foaled in England in 1780, and "Bellfounder," foaled in England in 1815 (the book indicates, though does not explicitly say, that Messenger was a Thoroughbred and Bellfounder was a Hackney).
    The following are some famous horses and their generals (I choose at this point in time to simply list them with a few brief notes, saving details for another time):  Alexander the Great's Bucephalus (the name means "bull-headed"), Napoleon's Marengo (an almost-Arab stallion, 14.1 hh, lived to the age of 36), George Washington's Nelson (light chestnut with white face and legs, 16 hh; the general also owned a stallion named Douglas and a another white horse named Lexington, among others), Robert E. Lee's Traveller (grey gelding, 16 hh; Lee once said, "There is many a war-horse that is more entitled to immortality than the man who rides him."), Ulysses S. Grant's Cincinnati (black, 16 hh, 1200 lbs), Philip Sheridan's Winchester (black, over 17 hh).  There is also brief mention of General Sherman's Sam, General Meade's Baldy, and General McClellan's Black Dan.

A Who's Who of Humans

Colonist

Conquistador

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