“A. Fullerton Phillips” – by Nancy Plimpton.
Mr. Phillips was a distinguished gentleman. His family was from the Philadelphia elite and his business became Morgan horses.
He became interested in the Morgan horse while attending St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH. He discovered that many of the Morgan horse families were on the verge of disappearing. During this time they were being used as foundation stock to develop other breeds of horse, such as the Tennessee Walker, Standardbred, American Saddlebred, and the Quarter Horse.
Phillips came to Vermont in 1900 and later to Windsor, Vermont in 1914 where he lived his last twelve years. There he kept his collection of Morgans. He was dubbed with the name of “The Morgan Kind of Windsor Street.”
He took great pride in his stock and raised many which were prize winners at the state fair in White River Junction.
The Morgan horse was known throughout New England for its “thoroughbred type” and as a horse of rare qualities and was threatened with extinction.
Mr. Phillips died suddenly in 1927 at the age of 77, leaving behind his beloved Morgans. Mr. Phillips’ main interest was the Morgan horse for which he devoted twenty-five years of his life. He had spent about a quarter of a million dollars in collecting and buying up the horse with the highest percentage of Justin Morgan blood that he could find and paying for them with gold coins.
His quest was to preserve the “ancient type” of the Morgan horse.
After the death of Mr. Phillips, Mr. Robert Lippitt Knight’s grain man told him of the small herd of old type Morgans that had been Mr. Phillips’; on May 17th, with the encouragement of that man, Mr. Knight ended up buying from Mr. Phillips’ estate two stallions, Ashbrook and Moro, and three mares, NeKomia, Green Mountain Twilight, and Adeline Bundy. These were to become the foundation for what we know today as the Lippitt Morgan horse.
Also at that same time Mr. Knight purchased Croydon Mary from Ida Hall, also of Windsor. Croydon Mary was then in foal to Moro and gave birth to a colt on May 28th. It was named Lippitt Welcome, becoming the first colt to be labeled with the “Lippitt” prefix. In July 1927, Mr. Knight purchased Trilby, from Mrs. E. Hoffman, as well as Mary Allen and an unregistered 7 year old daughter of Mary Allen, from D.F. Sallies of Montpelier, Vermont, who Mr. Knight registered, naming her Lippitt Sallie (after her breeder). She was the first mare to carry the “Lippitt” prefix label.
Mr. Knight owned the Green Mountain Stock Farm in Randolph, Vermont and bred about 200 Morgans who carried the Lippitt prefix.
Mr. Knight died June 1962 and his Lippitt Morgans went to auction, ending his devoted efforts to carry on the old Morgan line.
Due to the efforts of a few Morgan breeders over the years, the “Lippitt Morgan” line has been carried on, having no twentieth century outcrosses and having been saved from extinction – all of these horses coming down from the famed Peter’s Ethan Allen 2nd 406.
(Photo of an aged Croydon Prince and A. Fullerton Phillips.)
