Happy Friday! Here is your Friday Flashback, written by Dana Wingate Kelley for 1985 LCN Vol XII, No 4 (pp 24-25):
“Lippitt Ethan Ash”
I always considered Lippitt Ethan Ash the most beautiful-headed stallion that Mr. Knight owned. I considered a beautiful chestnut mare, Lippitt Sally Moro, one of the finest mares that he owned. Lippitt Ashmore was a son of both Ethan Ash and Sally Moro.
At Mr. Knight’s sale, I purchased several horses and Marilyn Childs knew I was interested in Lippitt Sally Moro. She asked me if I would refrain from bidding so that she and Mrs. Stoner could buy Sally Moro and her stud colt Lippitt Ashmore. This I did for them.
I had previously purchased two daughters out of that pair that I had planned to use as foundation mares: Lippitt Royalton Ashbee and Lippitt Royalton Phoebe. They were a pair of chestnuts just like their dam and I thought the world of them. Mr. Knight did not like to breed many outside horses, but when I came to Vermont as a young man, I purchased four mares from him, which we registered as Lippitt-Royalton prefix horses. When I obtained John A. Darling, he wanted to breed some mares to him, as well as Ethan Eldon, so we exchanged services. From that breeding came Lippitt Darling, a mare that I treasured, and who I later purchased back at Mr. Knight’s sale. The combination of John A. Darling and Lippitt Ethan Ash’s head is one of the reasons that Royalton Ashbrook Darling’s get and grandget are able to stamp typical Morgan heads on their offspring – it’s a double cross.
Lippitt Royalton Ashbee, an Ethan Ash daughter, was one of my favorite mares, as I have said before. My heart was broken when she died. I must bring this out so that you will never follow in my footsteps. I had Ashbee ridden and shown at a horse show, and when we came home, we didn’t have another halter handy, so we put on one of those halters that never break.
Now, being in the show, she had to have shoes. We turned her out in the pasture with the other mares, and evidently the flies bothered her head. She must have reached up to scratch her head and her shoe caught in her halter. Those rope halters never break, so she went down and broke her front leg. I came out of the house just after supper in time to see her running across the pasture with the other horses, and her falling down and getting up and going again on three legs. As luck would have it, Dr. Roberts had just driven by, and I hailed him. He came in, looked at it and said, “Dana, go in the house. I’ve got to put her down. There’s nothing I can do save her because there would be no circulation.” I went in the house and he laid her away. So please, never use rope or nylon halters on your horses when you turn them out.
Joe Boulris, who managed Mr. Knight’s farm, always kept shoes on Ethan Ash. I asked him why he did that when Ethan was only a breeding stallion. He said, “well, when one of Mr. Knight’s sons comes up, the one horse he likes to ride is Ethan Ash. And ‘though he hadn’t been used for weeks and sometimes months, he never had any trouble riding him. So I keep him shod for that purpose.”
Willard K. Denton of New York City attended the Lippitt dispersal sale and said he would like to get into Lippitts. He asked me which ones I should buy. I recommended he buy Ethan Ash get, namely, Lippitt Dusky Kate and Lippitt Duplicate, and the stallion, Lippitt Ethan, whom he later had gelded. He took the two mares to one of the national shows, and hired top riders to show them. The two sisters were Grand National Champion, and Reserve National Champion. To my knowledge, this was the first time two Lippitts won the top rewards.
