The 19th century was full of innovation, exploration and is one of the most popular eras for writing historical fiction. This blog is dedicated to tiny tidbits of information that will help make your novel seem more real to the time period.
Thursday, July 20, 2017
Lost Horse
In the Jan. 5, 1836 in Rutland, Vermont's newspaper "The Rutland Herald" I stumbled across two notices of where folks had found horses. In the first the gentleman found one stray that came into his property. In the other the poster found three horses that came into his property. Each were asking the owners to identity their horses and pay for the damages that came from these horses entering their properties. I found this interesting because of the request that the owner pay for the damages. We've all heard of the value of a horse and even death by hanging for stealing a horse in some places. But the owner being responsible for damages their livestock has done...well that just gets the creative juices flowing, doesn't it?
I love this post. My first thought was that the horse trampled on the wife's flowers, garden or both. My second thought was that when we placed our Arabian gelding into a local horse farm, they were not used to "spirited" horses and therefore kept separate from the other horses. Horses have a pecking order just like other animals. They will fight, kick and bite in order to be the leader of the pack. If a strange horse came onto a farm or ranch and disrupted the other horses, I can see why the farmer would require payment for damages from the owner. Especially if the strange horse disturbed the working horses which were used for plowing as well as pulling wagons. We learned quickly in boarding our horse that they are not like Hollywood horses in the movies. (We found another place to keep our ace where he could run and have fun with the other horses. The first week, one of the older horses defended Ace from the other horses and wouldn't let them near him until he became acclimated. After that, there were a few knicks and scratches but he was happy and actually made friends. A new horse causes quite a stir among the horse community.) Thanks for posting this, Lynn. Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the additional info, Kathy.
Delete