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Pacific Northwest Cavalry Reenacting

Welcome! This is mainly a "local" forum for American Civil War cavalry reenactors in the Pacific Northwest. It will have dates of events and trainings as well as any items of interest.

Pacific Northwest Cavalry Reenacting
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Re: Breeding of horses in Virginia before the Civil War

Ken,

I have the book "The Dulanys of Welbourne" and have even stayed at their old plantation home in Upperville. The book is around here somewhere but I can't find it - maybe I loaned it to someone. I'll look, because the story of the Cleveland Bay who waited out the war in Pennsylvania is different than the article you noted.

Lin

More on Cleveland Bays in Virginia

I found the following original broadside advrtising a Cleveland Bay at stud in Virginia.

The Great Virginian, John Hartwell Cocke, Offers His Cleveland Bay to Stud

(VIRGINIA). (STUD BROADSIDE). COCKE, JOHN H. Cleveland, By the late Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin's Cleveland, selected as a Brood Horse with great care from that celebrated race of Coach Horses and Roadsters in England, long known under the term Cleveland Bays...10 years old this Spring, and will Stand at Bremo, Fluvanna County...William Ancel, Agent for John H. Cocke. [Caption title & partial text.] Broadside, 19" x 12", in fine condition. [Richmond or, Charlottesville, Vir: ca. 1840-45]. A striking stud poster printed in a variety of typefaces and illustrated with a large woodcut of a stallion and groom. $2,000.00

Background Information: Unrecorded. Not in Hummel, Haynes, Swem or the Imprints Survey, but one other recently sold to an institution in Virginia.

Cocke was one of the greatest men in ante-bellum Virginia. Owner of large agricultural plantations in Virginia and Mississippi which de-emphasized tobacco as a major crop, Cocke was " rogressive and prescient in all things, he promoted new agricultural methods, the founding of agricultural societies, the development of waterways and steam navigation, and various public improvements. He attacked the practise of making tobacco the principal crop and published a monograph, Tobacco (1860), to prove it ethically and economically 'the bane of Virginia husbandry.'" --DAB.

He owned slaves, but he opposed the institution and believed it to be the curse of the South and of the nation. In 1831 he wrote that it was "the great cause of all the great evils of our land." He was one of the most important founders, second only to Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, of the University of Virginia, and was widely admired and influential over a long lifetime.

Cocke raced horses widely in his early years, but around 1817 he became adverse to racing, in 1823 writing that the Virginia passion for horse racing had retarded the quality of horse breeding, he said that the best race horses were "totally unsuited to the road." He concluded there had been more good saddle and harness horses 30 years earlier than there were in 1823.

Cocke raised and nurtured a series of Roebucks, the original from Col. Powell's Selim. "From this Roebuck stock came Cocke's valuable studs of the thirties and forties, Utilitarian and Cleveland. Their blood spread over the West from Alabama to Missouri." --Ref: Coyner, John Hartwell Cocke of Bremo. Agriculture and Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. [We also can offer a similarly fine stud broadside for Utilitarian.]

Re: More on Cleveland Bays in Virginia

Ken, were you aware there is a nice Cleveland Bay stallion standing at stud in Canby? He is imported from Wales and looks to be quite a bit like a Canadian. You might want to go check him out one day.

Lin

Re: Re: More on Cleveland Bays in Virginia

Yeah, I knew about him and will probably go see him. If I recall right he's huge--over 17 hands. I'd like to see one of the shorter Clevelands, most of the stallions overseas are in the 16 hand range.

Ken

Re: Re: Re: More on Cleveland Bays in Virginia

I believe the Cleveland Bay horse in Canby might be 16.1 at most that's what they say he was as a 6 year old in Wales. They have some photos on the internet.

You'll have to do a search on Cleveland Bay in Oregon.

Lin