Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Breeding for Results- "Full Cry"- September, 1992

Dad on a daytime coon hunt ca. 1958.
I'm reprinting this article on McCurdy horses exactly as it was printed in the September, 1992 issue of Full Cry (coon and tree dog magazine).  Dad wrote news and dog-breeding articles for them for over 40 years.  I don't believe I'd be exaggerating to say that he was a "legend" among coon, lion and bear hunters in the U.S.  Still today, ten years after his death, I run into people who knew and remember him because of his writing.  This is what he had to say about the McCurdy horses in 1992.  Keep in mind that there was no association, no registry, and there weren't a lot of "pure" McCurdys left in existence at this time.


I have mentioned the McCurdy horses several times and said that one day I was going to tell their story... it tells of the development of what I believe to be the most versatile horse on earth, then of its neglect and near demise.

The McCurdy was developed in Lowndes County, Alabama, in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century by the McCurdy family, a family of large plantation owners.  The McCurdy family owned many thousands of acres of cotton farming land around Lowndesboro, Alabama.  The men of the McCurdy family worked as overseers of the cotton farming, but the labor was performed by sharecroppers.  The overseers needed to travel many miles every day, seeing that the farming was done right and on time.  Thus, a saddlehorse with a natural, swift, easy-going gait was developed, commonly known as the "plantation walking horse".  These plantation walking horses were smaller, more delicately built, had greater endurance and a smoother, more natural gait than the later Tennessee Walking Horse.  The plantation walking horse was the foundation of the Tennessee Walking Horse breed.

There are two stories , both of which I will relate to you, regarding the development of the McCurdy breed of horses.  The truth may contain some elements from both accounts, yet neither story may be completely accurate...The first story that I will relate gives explanation to the McCurdy's strong Arabian appearance and excellent stamina.  The second one does not.  Regardless of which story is true, or if neither is, somewhere there was a strong infusion of Arabian genes.  That is unmistakable.

The first story goes that the McCurdy family imported an Arabian stallion from Egypt around the turn of the century.  He was grey, and was bred to 20 plantation walking horse mares, then half-brother was bred to half-sister.  The McCurdy family supposedly didn't let any of these horses out of the family and a close circle of friends until the Great Depression.  This kept a closed inbreeding program.  Thirty years of inbreeding would have allowed for five to ten generations of inbreeding with no outside influence.  By 1930, the McCurdy was established as a distinct and recognizable breed separate and apart from the plantation walking horse.

The Great Depression affected the McCurdy family like everyone else.  It left them with land, but they were broke.  They were no longer able to support an expensive horse breeding program.  Everyone else was broke and were not able to buy these horses, even if they were the best to be found.  Consequently, most of the horses fell into the hands of the black sharecroppers.  Since the Great Depression, it has been primarily the black people of Lowndes County, and a few in surrounding counties, that have been responsible for keeping the McCurdy breed going.  The McCurdy served those people as a plow horse, a buggy horse, a cow horse and under saddle was their transportation.  As late as the 1970s, almost every black family had one or more McCurdy horses.  My first trip to Lowndes County was in 1967.  Then you could drive along the road and see black people plowing corn with McCurdys, working cattle or using them as their transportation, usually all this being done with the same horse.

That part of Alabama has a lot of large pastures consisting of several thousand acres.  Over time, some of these pastures developed herd of wild McCurdys that inbred generation after generation.  Periodically, some of these horses were trapped, broke and became the using horses of the people.  Some were sold to the public.

In early May (1992), I was passing through Alabama and made a point to go through Lowndes County and try to locate a McCurdy mare to breed to my 29 year old McCurdy stallion that I bought in Lowndes County as a two-year old in 1965.  I learned that Lewis McCurdy, the only living son of Ed S. McCurdy, lived at Lowndesboro.  He must be near eighty years old.  I went by his house and interviewed him.  The following is a synopsis of Lewis McCurdy's account of the origin of the breed.

According to Lewis McCurdy, his father Ed S. McCurdy, bought a grey stallion from a Dr. McNair (located) somewhere South of (Lowndesboro) in the late 1890s.  The stallion's name was McCurdy's Doctor.  He said they called him a plantation walking horse.  He showed me a picture of his father astride the stallion, taken in 1905.  He said his father probably rode him 75 miles a day every day of the week, overseeing the cotton plantation.

According to Lewis, McCurdy's Doctor became the foundation hub of the McCurdy breed.  All McCurdy horses go back to that one stallion.  The McCurdy family owned a stable of Standard Bred race horses.  McCurdy's Doctor was bred to several of those standard bred mares as well as plantation walking horse mares.  Offspring of both were then inbred, with McCurdy's Doctor being the common sire.  As second, third and fourth generations were continually inbred, the traits of McCurdy's Doctor became dominant.

The McCurdy family kept a stud book on their horses from the very beginning.  They registered some of their horses as Tennessee Walking Horses.  If you are familiar with some of the older Tennessee Walking Horse pedigrees, you most likely remember seeing "McCurdy mare" listed on some of those pedigrees.

Somewhere about the time of the Great Depression, the McCurdy breed started in two separate directions.  The branch kept and headed by the McCurdy family was assimilated into the Tennessee Walking Horse breed and, consequently, eventually was lost.

The other branch that fell into the hands of the sharecroppers is the one that has survived, albeit  barely.  The account given previously from the Great Depression on is essentially correct.  After World War II horses became less important to the sharecroppers.  Some were rounded up and sold at "killer" sales.  Horse traders hauled hundreds, maybe thousands, to surrounding states. H.J. White, Jr., of Bladenboro, NC, hauled McCurdys out of Lowndes County from the early 1950s until the early 1970s.  It was from him that I learned about McCurdys.  I bought a number of the better ones from him.    In the 1960s I had dreams of doing for the McCurdy horses what I had done for the Leopard dogs.  I was unable to generate the kind of public interest  necessary to swing it, and did not have the financial resources to do it alone.  There were a lot of people who wanted to ride a good horse, especially if someone else furnished the horse, saddle and feed; but few were willing to make a personal commitment.  Consequently, I gave up on the dream.

Two years ago, I asked Joe Wood of Greenville, Alabama to help me find a pure McCurdy mare to breed to old Doc, my McCurdy stallion that was 27 at the time.  Joe put me in touch with Roy Rogers, also of Greenville, Alabama.  Roy was in the process of trying to locate as many pure McCurdys as possible.  There are very few pure McCurdys, even in the area of their origin.  The situation with the McCurdys now is like the situation with the Cur dogs forty years ago.  Just as the public's fascination with registered hounds resulted in the near extinction of Curs and unregistered hound breeds, fascination with Tennessee Walking Horses, American Quarter Horses, Arabians and other registered breeds led almost to the extinction of one of the most versatile breeds of horses on earth.

I am going to work with Roy Rogers and a group of McCurdy enthusiasts in starting a McCurdy association and eventually a registration program.  My role will simply be that of an advisor.

In early July, Roy informed me that he had a mare for me.  My brother-in-law, Robert Suggs, and I arranged to go down and pick her up.  On the way back, I said to Robert, "If old Doc lives long enough to breed this mare, then I will be satisfied for him to die in peace."  When we got home, we found Doc had died while we were gone to pick up the mare.  He was 29 years old.  He apparently had a heart attack and died with little pain or struggle.  



I hope this article on McCurdy horses will inspire people to do something to rescue other endangered breeds and sub-species.  I would appreciate hearing from anyone in any state who knows of pure McCurdy horses in their area.

Friday, June 9, 2017

Dad and I had McCurdy horses in the mid-1960s, but he had been aware of them and had ridden them even earlier than that.  These horses were brought to southeastern NC by the scores by a horse/mule trader from Bladenboro, NC named Henry James White, Jr.  Henry James had made contacts in Lowndes County, Alabama and was catching the horses wild, out of the huge swamp pastures where they were running free, breeding and thriving.  In those days, Henry James was known to return from Alabama with as many as 15 at one time.  We knew he was getting them from Alabama, but no one knew exactly where.  Like a good fisherman, he didn't give out the exact direction of his favorite fishing hole!  All of the McCurdy horses we had in the 60s came from Henry James.


Dad rode a McCurdy stud named "Doc" (Doctor McCurdy).  One of the stories we had heard back then (there were many, and sometimes they conflicted) was that these horses were the product of plantation walking horses that were crossed with some Arabian blood brought back to the U.S. after WWI by an Army veterinarian named McCurdy, who then developed this breed.  We now know that wasn't true- there was no veterinarian, and the confusion stemmed from the fact that there was a horse named McCurdy's Doctor, who became the foundation stud of the McCurdy breeding program at the old McCurdy barn in Lowndesboro.  But this story explains the stud's name.

We also owned several McCurdy mares- my main McCurdy horse was a little mare named Freckles, who was a fleabitten grey.  She was a great mare that would go anywhere- I used to swim her in the Lumber River.

My parents moved from the country into town in 1972.  I don't think that we ever intended to get out of the horse business; it's just one of those things that happens when you get involved with other priorities.  Dad had decided to go back to seminary, and he was putting his heart and soul into his ministry work.  My uncle, Robert Suggs, became custodian of the horses, as he had large pastures where he could accommodate them.  I was finishing high school, college and seminary.  At some point, I turned around and the the only McCurdy horse left in my uncle's pasture was my Dad's old stud, Doctor McCurdy.
Grandson of our Doctor McCurdy, owned by Robert Suggs of Elizabethtown, NC

Fast forward to June, 1989:  Dad and I drove to Las Vegas, NV to attend the Southern Baptist Convention.  We were both serving Baptist churches at that time, and we decided to combine our church duties with an epic father/son cross country trip.  Dad had traveled extensively in Texas, and I had been as far as Oklahoma, but there were vast parts of the West that neither of us had ever seen- so we decided to remedy that.

After departing South Carolina, we spent our first night on the road in West Memphis, Arkansas.  On the second day, we drove into Oklahoma (where the wind comes sweeping down the plain!), to Tulsa, then due West into the panhandle, where we turned North into Kansas.  Being that we were Matt Dillon fans, we spent the second night in Dodge City and toured "the Long Branch" and Boot Hill the next morning.  Then we continued West into Colorado and, after crossing Wolf Creek Pass (11,000 feet above sea level), we spent the third night in Durango.  On the fourth day, we turned South into New Mexico, then West again to Arizona, and across Hoover Dam into Nevada.

The return trip was great too- across Arizona, where we saw the cliff dwellings near Sedona, then across the corner of New Mexico and into Texas, where we spent a night at some long-forgotten motel.  The next day we made a bee line for Alice, Texas (home of the Rattlesnake Roundup)  It was a hard day on the road, but we finally arrived on Saturday night at the place we were staying- a ranch near Alice that was managed by one of Dad's wild-hog-hunting buddies.  We slept in the bunk house that night (I'm not kidding), and Wade, Dad's friend, had to go in and make sure no scorpions had slipped in since the last cleaning!  The next morning (Sunday!) we went hog hunting on the King Ranch with Wade and Darren, another cowboy.  After finishing up about mid-day, we showered, got in the truck and started for home.  We spent that night somewhere near Lake Charles, Louisiana.

But I digress...

The following day we started for home in S.C.  Dad and I had been talking about the McCurdy horses all the way to Las Vegas and back, as we often did when we were together.  As we entered Alabama and turned North toward Montgomery, our thoughts and conversation turned again to memories of these great horses.

I had been keeping my eyes peeled for horse businesses or tack shops- anywhere we might get some information on the McCurdys- and as we passed through Montgomery, I saw a big horse trailer dealership beside the Interstate.  I remember saying to Dad, "Let's go back and ask them if they know anything about the McCurdys".  He was driving, but he turned around and we did just that.  Sure enough, there was a friendly fellow in a white cowboy hat who remembered the McCurdy horses, and he had a high opinion of them. I remember him saying, "you could ride one down the railroad track and he'd never step on a crosstie".  But he said they had "about played out" (I think this gentleman was Jim Pitts, who was a director of the Alabama Racking Horse Assoc.)

Dad had written a monthly column in "Full Cry" (coon and tree hound enthusiasts' magazine) for over 30 years, and he made mention of the McCurdy horses in his column.  Joe Wood, of Greenville, AL, put Dad in touch with Roy Rogers, who was also looking for some of the old timey McCurdy horses.  Dad began to correspond with Roy and others by phone and letter, and that was the beginning of the McCurdy Plantation Horse Association, and later the Registry.

I have copies of the some of Dad's writings about the McCurdy horses, and I'll post those in a later blog.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Finding Flora

I found myself in Southern Pines, NC today, making a hospital visit (I'm a Presbyterian minister, for those who may not know).  My way home, through western Harnett County, brought me across Cameron Hill, possibly the highest point in the "sandhills" section of North Carolina, and a place that has a direct connection to Flora MacDonald.


Flora MacDonald
Flora is, of course, the great heroine of Scotland (think Joan of Arc without the martyrdom)- credited with saving Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) from capture by the English after his defeat at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden Moor in 1745.  The failure of the Uprising of '45 resulted in the further breakdown of the clan system in Scotland and gradual decline of favorable living conditions in the Highlands and the Hebrides.  

Meanwhile, here in America, colonial Governor Gabriel Johnston, himself a Scot, was encouraging his countrymen to come and populate this wealthy new land.  So it was that, some thirty years after her daring exploits with the Bonnie Prince, Flora and her husband Allan MacDonald joined tens of thousands of other Highlanders (including most of my ancestors) in the Cape Fear country of North Carolina.   

After arriving through the newly-established port of Wilmington and traveling upriver to Cross Creek (where banquets were given in her honor), Flora and Allan spent their first winter in America (1774-75) with her half-sister Annabella MacDonald on Cameron Hill, before moving farther West to establish their own plantation on Cheek's Creek (in the edge of modern-day Montgomery County).  During that winter, Flora attended Barbecue Kirk (church) and tradition says that she spent some of those pleasant winter days sitting in the sun by a spring on the side of the hill near the house, where she would sometimes smoke a clay pipe.


Mount Pleasant, as it appeared in the late 1800s.
Little remains of Mount Pleasant today- the site is now overshadowed by a North Carolina Forest Service fire tower and a massive Harnett County water tower.  The land where the house was formerly situated now belongs to the Cameron Hill Presbyterian Church, which is just across the highway, and the tract has just been clear-cut of timber.

After introducing myself to the Forest Service employee and assuring him I was harmless (one of his bosses is actually a member of my congregation in Fayetteville, so I also did a bit of name-dropping), I proceeded to try and get my bearings and locate some remains of the old house.  I didn't have a great deal to go on- the only image I have seen of Mount Pleasant is a drawing that I found in The Celtic Monthly (printed in Glasgow, Scotland) from around 1900 (see above).  The drawing appears to show a large house, most of which is hidden by trees, with a creek or millpond below.  I had been told by Bill Caudill, director of Scottish Heritage Center at St. Andrews University (Laurinburg, NC) that "Flora's spring" was only a few feet from the base of the fire tower.  This was corroborated by my N.C. Forest Service parishioner. 

The location of the spring was immediately obvious.  It isn't flowing anymore, presumably because many rural wells are now pumping ground water out of Cameron Hill, but there was obviously the origin of a stream there at one point in time.
Flora MacDonald's spring, now overgrown


Working downhill from the spring, I tried to find a high bluff that looked like the site of Mount Pleasant, as shown in the rendering above.  That wasn't hard to do.
The Mount Pleasant bluff above the creek, which descends from Flora's spring.

I think it's safe to assume that, at the time this drawing was done, someone had dammed up the creek in order to create a millpond, which explains the water and boats in front of the house in the drawing. 

Once I felt pretty certain that I had approximated the location of the house, I climbed the bluff to see if any remnant could be found of the structure.  Because the logging machinery has recently stirred up the topsoil, I had good hunting.  In a matter of 2-3 minutes I found several granite stones lying right on top of the ground in close proximity to each other. Loose granite rocks do NOT naturally occur on top of sand hills in North Carolina, so clearly these had been brought up here by someone who was building a structure.  Are they part of the foundation or the chimney of Mount Pleasant?  Probably so- but if not they belonged to one of the outbuildings!  I brought the two largest ones home, and will find a place of honor for them here on The Farm. Maybe I'll build a cairn of remembrance here for Flora, Allan, and all those who endured so much hardship in Scotland, as well as here in America.
 
Mount Pleasant stones 
 
Flora's Statue at Inverness Castle

Scottish Emigrant's Farewell- 
Alexander Hume (1811-1859)

Fareweel, fareweel, my native home,
Thy lanely glens and heath clad mountains,
Fareweel thy fields o' storied fame,
Thy leafy shaws and sparkling fountains,
Nae mair I'll climb the Pentlands steep,
Nor wander by the Esk's clear river,
I seek a hame far o'er the deep,
My native land, Fareweel, forever.



Thou land wi' love an' freedom crown'd,
In ilk wee cot and lordly dwelling
may many hearted youth be found,
And maids in ev'ry grace excelling;
The land where Bruce and Wallace wight,
For freedom fought in days o' danger,
Ne'er crouch'd to proud usurpin' might,
But foremost stood, wrongs' stern avenger.

The old Highlander cemetery at Cameron Hill Presbyterian Church.


Tho' far frae thee, my native shore,
An' toss'd on life's tempestuous ocean,
My heart, aye Scottish to the core,
Shall cling to thee wi' warm devotion,
An' while the waving heather grows,
An' onward rows the winding river,
The toast be 'Scotland's broomy knowes,

Her mountains, rocks, and glens forever!'