When I was a bit girl, I wanted for a pony every Christmas. This wish seems to have been shared by kids in the late nineteenth century. right here I reproduce a trade card , circulated by J. Murray Hoag of Maquoketa, Jackson County, Iowa. Hoag was both a breeder as well as an importer of ponies from Europe. The card shows lucky kids riding as well as driving ponies. Hoag utilized the exact same picture in an advertisement in the December 1891 problem of the Century Illustrated Magazine, appealing to ship Christmas ponies, their tack as well as “miniature vehicles” anywhere in the United States. He called his farm the “Headquarters for option Ponies.”
A extremely cursory browse suggests that J. Murray Hoag (1843-1917) was an fascinating character. He had served in new York’s 9th heavy Artillery program during the Civil War. This program was assigned to protect Washington, D. C., as well as as the war progressed, most of its troops fought in Virginia, including the protracted siege at Petersburg. Whether or not Hoag stayed in Washington for the duration of the war is unknown; by 1867, he served in the Freedman’s Bureau as a “subassistant commissioner” in Savannah.
By 1880, however, the 37-year-old Hoag was married as well as residing in Maquoketa, Iowa, where he worked as an insurance coverage agent. during the 1880s, however, the Hoags somehow got included with breeding Shetland ponies as well as bought a farm north of town, where they lived up until the early 1910s.
I have not yet been able to figure out when Shetland ponies, or their Welsh as well as Icelandic cousins, very first shown up in the United States. Some progressive as well as well-to-do American farmers understood about them by 1840s, when articles about Shetlands appeared in farm journals. They didn’t seem to catch on, however, perhaps since American work needing horses needed larger animals that might cover higher distances or haul larger loads. Shetlands did not appear at the equine show at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in 1876, from what I understand so far. I am surprised by this. Imported European dogs were exhibited at the Centennial dog show, as well as this would have been a great location to introduce a new breed of equine to numerous countless prosperous visitors.
By the 1880s, however, the Shetland pony had established its own fancy. The American Shetland pony Club was established in 1888; it published its very first breed registry in 1892, at which time it had 94 members, including J. Murray Hoag. That breed registry includes a prolonged account of a see to the Shetland Islands by an American breeder who chosen as well as imported stock to develop his own herd. He complained that American crossed other little horses with Shetlands indiscriminately; this suggests that the ponies had already spread widely. (Because I know somebody will ask about this, little ponies were really not utilized commonly in American coal mines.)
The key to success for the Shetland pony in America lay in producing demand among the kids of well-to-do families. keep in mind that this is a time even before bicycles, which weren’t developed for children’s utilize up until after world war I. Riding anywhere meant utilizing animal power, as well as privileged kids sometimes had carts pulled by placid goats in harness. For example, Abraham Lincoln’s sons Tad as well as Willie had two goats that they drove around the grounds of the White home (and which obviously were enabled indoors). central Park even had goat carts that parents might lease for children’s use.While I like goats as much as the next, er, goat liker, I can envision that the possibility of a genuine pony made a goat in harness pale in comparison.
In 1906, Sydney Barrington Elliott, M.D., self-published The Shetland Pony: His Breeding, care as well as Training. He as well was a pony enthusiast as well as breeder, selling full-grown, trained ponies for $150 as well as up out of his Belle Mead farm in Chelsea, Massachusetts. He promoted the Shetland pony as “a never-ceasing sources of enjoyment as well as great health” to children: “In riding as well as driving the pony the kid obtains self-reliance as well as courage, quickness of private action as well as a sense of judgment. To ended up being a great horseman he must have commend of his own solidify as well as obtain perfect self-control.” I’ll second that last statement. in spite of all of Elliot’s protestations as to the gentle, kindly nature of ponies, the worst autumn from a equine I had as a youngster was being thrown into a online electric fence by a black-and-white Shetland hellion named, appropriately, Warlock. as well as now I have regular get in touch with with one more black-and-white stinker, Toppy, who lives at my boarding barn as well as would just as soon bite me as look at me.
But back to J. Murray Hoag, as well as the happy kids on his business card. J. Murray aswell as Carrie Hoag never had kids of their own; ultimately they offered the pony farm as well as retired to California. I have no doubt, however, that Hoag ponies did indeed discover happy houses with scores of American families, where they either conveyed their young owners with a appropriate sense of equine decorum or terrorized them mercilessly, as Warlock when terrorized me.
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