Meet your new EHC treasurer, Christian Krueger!

Marquette University, Ph.D. Student
MA, Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University
BA, History & Studio Art, Ripon College

What got you into history? Equine history?
When I was a little girl, my parents always encouraged me to learn about family and local history. Day trips to living history sites and a library full of historical fiction cemented my love of the past. I’ve also been fortunate enough to have grandparents who willingly and lovingly shared their stories of growing up in rural Wisconsin, so that brought history to life on a personal level. Like most little girls, I loved horses. Before ever having one of my own (I always dreamed, of course), I kept my bookshelves in good supply of Thoroughbreds and Marguerite Henrys, and an ever-growing herd of Breyers overtook every spare inch of my bedroom—I even had the audacity to ask the neighbor to build me a barn from plans that I had drawn to scale! I eventually did get a horse of my own, and that’s where history and horses collided in a very real way—I don’t know how many hours I spent researching the pedigree of my naughty little black Tennessee Walker gelding, Tracy’s Tenspot (Midnight Sun stallion x Merry Go Boy mare). Spot and I had many good years together (he lived to the ripe old age of twenty-eight!), and my current partner Hayley’s Blue Comet (Comet) continues to inspire my intellectual and practical equine pursuits.

Who is your favorite historical horse?
This is such a tricky question! Of all the horses in history, I would have to say my favorite is the horse Paul Revere rode on his famous midnight ride. Although the actual name of his mount is questionable, the “steed that flies fearless and fleet” captures the imagination and proves that even the nameless horses can make history.

What are you working on now?
Right now, I’m focusing on my Doctoral Qualifying Exams, which I hope to take in August of this year. Once I’ve finished those, I look forward to digging into my dissertation, which will look at the horse’s role in shaping Kentucky identity from its “frontier” days through the Civil War. I have already begun exploring the loyalties of Bluegrass breeders in a predominantly Union-sympathizing border state, and I can’t wait to get back to the archives.

Anything else you’d like to add?
In addition to riding, reading, and writing about horses, I also love to draw them. Since high school, I’ve run a bit of an art business, and it’s grown over the years. I enjoy working with a range of media, including oils, pastels, pencil, charcoal, and scratchboard. If you are interested in a commissioned piece of your own, please check out my work at www.fencelinestudio.com.

Charlotte Carrington-Farmer

Associate Professor of History, Roger Williams University

Ph.D. History, University of Cambridge

M.A. History, University of Warwick

B.A. History, University of Leicester

 
What got you into history, and into equine history?

It’s a cliché, but I’ve always loved horses and I’ve always loved history; so combining the two is a dream come true. As an undergraduate and graduate student in the U.K., I had superb mentors who inspired my love of early American history and the history of the early modern Atlantic world. Notably, Professor John Coffey at the University of Leicester, Professor Bernard Capp at the University of Warwick, and Dr. Betty Wood at University of Cambridge. I moved to the U.S. in 2012 to take a job as an Assistant Professor of early American history at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island. Taking the job at Roger Williams University completely shaped the course of my career, not least because I’d written my undergraduate dissertation on Roger Williams (the man, not the university.)

Up until to this point, I’d never heard of equine history, let alone thought about writing it. I considered myself a social and cultural historian. My Ph.D. centered on crime and dissent in early New England, and from this I published a biography of Thomas Morton. At this point, a few things happened simultaneously that led me to equine history. I discovered that my new home had a deep connection to equine history. Rhode Island was home to the first truly “American” breed of horse: the Narragansett Pacer. I instantly wanted to know more, especially how and when the breed emerged and why it became extinct. At this point in my career, I was looking for a new research topic and exploring the rise and fall of the Narraganset Pacer was the perfect fit.

I’d always owned horses, and I’d competed in working hunter and side saddle classes growing up in the U.K. Thus, I started my first piece of equine history investigated Rhode Island’s own Narragansett Pacer. At the same time, I flew my own pony, Machno Cara, (a Welsh section C mare) from England to Rhode Island. When Cara crossed the Atlantic, my interest in Atlantic history and equine history came together in a way I could have never imagined. I started exploring how and why horses crossed the Atlantic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, specifically New England’s equine export trade to the sugar colonies in the Caribbean and South America. I’m now hooked on equine history!

Who is your favourite historical horse?

When working on my article, “The Rise and Fall of the Narragansett Pacer,” I came across a Narragansett Pacer that Rip Van Dam of New York (later Governor of the State) owned who was quite a character! When Van Dam’s agent tried to ship the horse from Rhode Island in 1711, the horse jumped overboard and swam back to shore. When Van Dam finally got the horse home, he wryly noted that he “always plays and acts and never will stand still, he will take a glass of wine, beer or cyder, and probably would drink a dram on a cold morning.” This was my kind of horse!

What are you working on now?

I just published an article entitled: “The Rise and Fall of the Narragansett Pacer,” in Rhode Island History, Winter/Spring 2018, Volume 76, Number 1, pp. 1-38. The article was accompanied by an exhibition of my research on the Narragansett Pacer, which was installed in the Providence Arcade from May to July 2018 by the Rhode Island Historical Society. I also just published a chapter entitled: “Trading Horses in the Eighteenth Century: Rhode Island and the Atlantic World,” in: Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld, eds., Equine Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity, 1700-Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.) At the moment, I working on a book project exploring New England’s exportation of horses to the sugar colonies in the Caribbean and South America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I have a sabbatical coming up next spring, and I’m looking forward to doing some more archival work in the Caribbean. I’m excited about integrating my research into my teaching, and I plan to develop a class on horses in the early modern Atlantic world at Roger Williams University.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Merging my love of horses and Atlantic history is something I never knew (or dreamed) was possible. However, doing equine history is not always pleasant, especially when looking at shipping horses across the Atlantic. I found this out when working on shipping log books at the archives at Mystic Seaport. Captain Henry Bowers recorded the horrendous conditions for the horses on a voyage to St. Kitts on the Brig Gleaner. When the main deck filled with water, “the Horses began to give out.” Within an hour, most of the horses were “unable to stand,” despite of the crew trying everything to keep them upright. The crew tossed part of the awning and fifteen bundles of hay overboard to try to ease the vessel, but to no avail. When a hurricane struck the brig, nearly all of the horses fell and were in a “drowning condition.” The crew then “cut…the dead ones up and threw them overboard.” Disaster continued when the starboard quarter was struck and the crew desperately tossed more hay overboard. The assault continued and the ocean made “fair breach” on all sides of the vessel, at which point the Gleaner lost all her fowls and pigs. A few days later, on 23^rd January they lost another horse, which left only eighteen alive out of the forty-three they started with. The horses that were still alive were “very much chaffed” when they finally arrived in St. Kitts on 2^nd February. When the horses arrived the sugar colonies they often had a very hard (and short) life; especially if they were draught horses crushing the sugar cane. Gruesomeness aside, I hope to add to the rich historiography on both Atlantic history and equine history by centering equines in the story of trans-Atlantic trade and sugar production.

Marie-Eugénie Kaufmant 

Caen University (France, Normandy), Professor of Spanish Literature of the Golden Age / ERLIS (Research team)

Associate Professor (maître de conférences), Brest University (France, Britany), 2005-2016

Accreditation to direct research (HDR), Paris-Ouest Nanterre-La défense University, 2015

PhD (2004), MA (2001), french « agrégation » in Spanish language (teaching accreditation, 2000) and BA (1998), Paris IV-Sorbonne University.

What got you in to history? Horse history?

The horse led me to History, more exactly to the history of Spanish equestrian culture in literature. One of my earliest memories is the contact with an horse’s warm, odorous and reassuring muzzle! I spent my childhood , with all kind of animals, in the landscapes of Normandy’s Orne department, a well-known region of equestrian breeding close to the historical Haras du Pin.

This context and a passion for Golden Age literature and theater, mostly and both, explain my research interests, with a dissertation on Poetics of natural spaces in the comedia nueva (published in 2010, Casa de Velazquez, Madrid). My studies on open and natural spaces led me naturally to the important presence of horses in this Early Modern Theater. From space to horses, socio-dramatic mobility and equestrian symbolism in literature encouraged me to analyze, through dramatic texts, several aspects of the fascinating horse culture of the Spanish Golden Age and the Early Modern equestrian ideology, which are so predominant in these plays.

Who is your favorite historical horse ?

My favorite historical horse should be Babieca, the Cid’s one, because of the special adaptation of horse and rider with each other, perhaps the first literary, equestrian and historical couple of Spanish literature. But you might have gathered that I prefer mythical and legendary horses to historical ones. And, of course, my favorite mythical horse is Rocinante because of his foundational stature, since in Cervantes’s words and poetics, he is the first horse of all horses by name (Rocín-ante means ambiguously ‘old horse-before’), as the origins of horse literary history. It brings me pleasure to think that these mythical figures and their ironic names (Babieca and Rocinante) transcend the tragic fate of so many labour and war horses they can have represented historically. How many such warm historical and anonymous muzzles should have needed some affectionate care ?! In some way, I would like to believe that their tragic historical beings can be redeemed from anonymity and sublimed by the fascinating horse history and especially the literary one under the tutelary figure of Pegasus.

What are you working on now ?

According to the regional importance of horses in Normandy, one of the specialisms of Caen University is research on horses in all fields. Some colleagues from my research team ERLIS have already directed a seminar on horse culture in several linguistics areas (L’Imaginaire du Cheval). As a Profesor of Spanish literature, after the publication of my monograph (Le cheval au théâtre dans l’Espagne du Siècle d’or, Orbis Tertius, 2018), I am continuing my own research on horse culture and poetics in Hispanic literature and I am thinking about directing some collective work on horse history and literature in Hispanic fields.

#MemberMonday profiles the current activities of Equine History Collective Members. If you would like to be included, please contact us: equinehistory@gmail.com! 

Philip A. Homan

Ph.D, English (in process) Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID
M.A. Library Science 2002 St. John’s University, Queens, NY
Ph.D., Theology (ABD) Fordham University, Bronx, NY
M.A. Religious Studies, 1987 Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA
B.A. Economics-Accounting and English, 1984 Gonzaga University, Spokane, WA

What got you in to history? horse history?

I’m a fifth-generation Idahoan, whose maternal grandparents were ranchers in Owyhee County, Idaho, at the turn of the twentieth century. I’m working on a biography of Kittie Wilkins, the Horse Queen of Idaho (1857-1936), with whom my great-grandparents were acquainted. According to the newspapers, Wilkins made the largest sale of horses in the American West when she sold 8,000 head for the British Army Remount Department’s US Commission to send to the South African War, 1899-1902. Idaho Public Television featured Wilkins in the documentary “Taking the Reins” in its new series Idaho Experience. I’m therefore also currently researching the supply of war horses and army mules from America to the South African War, which I call the Equine Middle Passage of the transatlantic horse trade.

Who is your favorite historical horse?

Powder Face, the Horse That Robbed the Winnemucca Bank! One of Wilkins’s horses, an Arabian, called Powder Face, was stolen by the Wild Bunch to use in their getaway from their robbery of the First National Bank in Winnemucca, Nevada, on September 19, 1900. During the getaway, Butch Cassidy gave Powder Face to a 10-year-old boy in Winnemucca. Powder Face is therefore at the center of the legend of Cassidy as America’s Robin Hood, who stole from rich and gave to the poor, liked children, and was kind to animals.

What are you working on now?

I’m currently an Idaho Humanities Council Research Fellow working on the project “‘This Flotsam and Jetsam of Human Passions’: Idaho War Horses to the South African War, 1899-1902.”

Anything else you’d like to add?

In Stavanger, Norway, last September 25-27, 2018, I presented the paper “Moving Horses: War Horses from the American West to the South African War, 1899-1902” at the “Horses, moving” Conference at the Arkeologisk museum, Universitetet i Stavanger. Also in London next April 25-27, 2019, I’ll present the paper “‘Far from Good Sailors’: American Horses and Mules for the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, 1899-1902—An Equine Middle Passage of the Transatlantic Horse Trade” at the “Maritime Animals: Telling Stories of Animals at Sea” Two-Day International Conference at the National Maritime Museum.

#MemberMonday profiles the current activities of Equine History Collective Members. If you would like to be included, please contact us: equinehistory@gmail.com!