One of the staples of Out of Left Field activities was the pursuit of truth in the search for the name of Paul Revere's horse. I thought this was a little bit of historical knowledge that had never surfaced, though it was a subject of great interest to true patriots. In the course of my Revere studies I learned that the name of Mr. Revere's horse was the question most asked by children visiting the Massachusetts Historical Society. I made this pursuit despite the bad rap laid on Paul Revere by the night club comedian, Joe E. Lewis. A confirmed horse player, Lewis said he would do a benefit for just about anybody but a Paul Revere Society. "No, not Paul Revere" he said, "he gave the horse a bad ride. He took him wide at Lexington." The Nov. 7 column, one of many on Revere, is as good a summary as any. November 7: The Continuing Saga Of Paul Revere's Horse The presence in New York of the National Horse Show is a reminder that it is time to raise anew the question of the name of Paul Revere's horse. Devoted followers who share the passions of Left Field are aware of the unflagging search here for the name of the horse. Some recent correspondence on this burning issue calls for a review. Revere, you will will remember, was an on-call messenger for the American colonists. As immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, he was taken in a rowboat across the Charles River from Boston to Charlestown. He took off on a horse and rode to Concord to warn the colonists the British were coming. Revere was all of 40 years old at the time and the distance was about 15 miles. Everybody knows how important that ride stands in history. Revere's horse may well rank as the Horse-of-the-Year for all years.
The dilemma is, though, that nobody knows the name of the horse. Was it Trigger? Rex? Silver? Citation? Rumpelstiltskin? Left Field has been searching the archives. Research reveals that the identity of Reverd's horse is the most often asked question of the Bostonian Society. It got so that Barret Williams, the former secretary of the Society, was moved by a puckish spirit to invent a name for the horse. Williams called the horse, "Sparky", because in the Longfellow poem there are these lines: "The fate of a nation was riding that night; And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight, Kindled the land into flame with its heat." Williams was found out soon enough for the rascal he was. If Williams was wrong, he was not alone. Longfellow's poem is hoked up with the stuff of a romantic. And others have felt free to bestow a name on Revere's horse just because they felt like it. Somebody wrote a children's history of Revere's ride giving the horse the name "Scheherazade" without any documentation. Well-meaning friends of Left Field wrote they had read somewhere that the horse's name was Scheherazade. Nix on that. In his book, "Paul Revere" (Taylor, Dodd Mead & Co., 1930) Emerson Gifford takes some healthy liberties in the name of history. He wrote, "That night's work was the last which good old Dobbin was ever called to undertake. Before daybreak he had been ridden almost to his death in his country's service." Dobbin?!?! Come, come Emerson Gifford. What's more, the horse hardly was ridden almost to his death. When Revere was captured near Concord, he surrendered the horse to an English soldier; nobody ever heard of the animal again. Nat Glantz of Hauppauge thought he had the winner, sending along a poem called, "Tribute to the Horse" by W. A. Paxson which appeared in the Feb. 1, 1909 Horse Journal. It included this paragraph:
"Take Tam O'Shanter and his mare,Meg Paxson's poem is suspect because Peg Nicholson is the name of a horse associated with Robert Burns. We fear Paxson went out into left field to come up with a name for the horse that would help him with a badly needed rhyme. The primary source in the matter is Revere himself. He wrote three accounts of the ride. The first two probably were written in 1775, the same year as the ride; the third and most complete account was a letter to a friend, reputedly written in 1798. Revere began his ride in Charlestown. He wrote (in the 1798 letter): "When I got into Town I met Col. Conant, and several others; they said they had seen our signals. I told them what was Acting and went to git me a Horse; I got a Horse of Deacon Larkin. . . I set off upon a very good horse." So the horse belonged to a Deacon Larkin. Somebody who knew about Deacon Larkin might know about the horse. And out of Oceanside, N.Y. came George Vincent with a letter. He wrote: "May I offer you some historical notes on Paul Revere's horse. Based on a book published by Knickerbocker Press, N.Y. 1930, entitled, "Some Descendants of Edward Larkin" (plus seven other immigrants from England & Wales) the following occurs: 'Samuel Larkin, born Oct. 22, 1701, died Oct. 8, 1784; he was a chairmaker, then a fisherman and had horses and stable. He was the owner of Brown Beauty, the mare of the Paul Revere's ride. . . The mare was loaned at the request of Samuel's son, Deacon John Larkin, and was never returned to the owner." Mr. Vincent is a descendant of Samuel Larkin, hence his interest. The source he quotes is a limited edition. The unknown author makes no attempt to document the name of the horse, yet it is the closest thing to a reliable source on this great matter. The name, Brown Beauty, though. . .It sounds, well, it sounds a little too pat, a little suspect. In deference to George Vincent of Oceanside, one of the Larkin clan, Left Field hereby takes the position that Brown Beauty stands above all other candidates as the name of Paul Revere's illustrious horse. But should any scholars out there have any other leads . . .
Though I was kind enough to bow in the direction of Brown Beauty, I have my doubts. Revere, as he wrote, took the horse from Deacon Larkin. There was no indication there that Larkin told him the name of the horse at the time. Revere then wrote that when he was captured a British sergeant took the horse from him. My pursuits took me to the British archives in Kew outside London where I came upon the diary of the sergeant who took the horse from Revere. I thought possibly a name for the noble steed would have surfaced there. No, it did not. So the closest thing to the name of Revere's horse is that offered by George Vincent, the name Brown Beauty mentioned in the document published in 1930. As I wrote, there is no documentation for it and to my way of thinking the name Brown Beauty, so much like Black Beauty, sounds too pat. Yet historians like David Hackett Fischer who wrote "Paul Revere's Ride", seem to accept the claim made in the Knickerbocker Press pamphlet. Such historians to the contrary, I am still in the chase looking for a definitive answer to this burning question.
|
You never really know a man until you camp with him. |
9. Horsing Around 
