ETHAN ALLEN: PORTRAIT AND PEDIGREE
Ethan Allen, from an original Schreiber and Sons photograph made when the horse was 10 years old, in the prime of his life and at the pinnacle of his racing career.
Examining the pedigree of Ethan Allen’s ancestor Justin Morgan (a.k.a. “Figure,” f. 1789) reveals still more emphatically the debt that Morgan breeding owes to the Old Canadian. Justin Morgan’s pedigree contains one speed bloodline to Old Bald Peg, but is otherwise mostly English Hobby. His tail-female ancestry is less diverse than Ethan Allen’s, consisting of 50% Old Canadian, 37.5% English Hobby, 9.375% Barb, and 3.125% Spanish. (See EQUUS 469, “The Mystery of the Morgan Horse,” for a complete review of Justin Morgan’s probable ancestry.)
Pedigree of Ethan Allen. This pedigree and those of
Justin Morgan and Dexter (next page) have been researched and color-coded to indicate the tail-female ancestry of each of the 32 individuals represented in the right-hand column of a five-generation pedigree. This is an unusual method of analysis, because normally it is the sire-line inheritance that breeders in the Western world pay attention to. However, tail-female coding brings out the genetic diversity present in the distaff side of the pedigree, which tends in all breeds to be greater than the diversity of sire bloodlines.
This analysis makes it clear that Ethan Allen’s heritage is mostly Old Canadian and English Hobby. He has two “speed lines,” one to Tregonwell’s Natural Barb mare— the Thoroughbred bloodline that has historically marked the highest percentage of flat-track winners—and the other to Old Bald Peg, acknowledged as the taproot of Thoroughbred speed (see EQUUS 448, “A Brief History of the Thoroughbred”). Ethan Allen’s tail-female ancestry is 40.62% Old Canadian, 31.25% Hobby, 18.75% Barb, 6.25% Spanish, and 3.125% Turkmene (though coded separately, Old Bald Peg counts as a Hobby and the Tregonwell mare counts as a Barb).
The color-coding of Dexter’s pedigree reveals at a glance the great diversity of broodmare ancestry that characterizes the lineage of Standardbred horses. Their sire-line ancestry is much narrower; all Standardbreds trace in sire-line to Rysdyk’s Hambletonian foaled in 1849, and through him to Messenger, foaled in 1780 and imported in 1787 or 1788. Dexter’s tail female composition is Old Canadian 31.25%; Barb 21.875%; Hobby 21.875%; “Diplomatic” Arabian 9.375%; Turkmene 6.25%; Norfolk Trotter 6.25%; and Colonial American Thoroughbred 3.125%. The most famous “diplomatic” Arabian was the Darley, a Turkmene who carried no more than 25% “Asil” blood (to review the breeding of Thoroughbred foundation sires, see EQUUS 449, “Foundation Sires and Dams”). Colonial American breeding indicates that the tail-female ancestry goes back to the early imports Jolly Roger, Fearnought, Morton’s Traveller or Janus (see EQUUS 468, “Horses of the American Colonies,” to read about early Thoroughbred imports).
This portrait of Dexter was made from a print derived from a Schreiber and Sons photograph, the original of which has now been lost. The print reflects a certain amount of the “artistic distortion” that was fashionable in 18th and 19th century horse portraiture; however, as the distortions are of a very predictable sort, they prove easy to correct in Photoshop. The result is accurate enough to use for conformation analysis vs. Ethan Allen. Dexter’s sire, Rysdyk’s Hambletonian, along with a large number of his get. (Dexter’s hundreds of brothers, sisters, half-brothers and half-sisters will be discussed in upcoming articles.)