This founder of the type, when the property of Justin Morgan, who, after he gave up tavern keeping in Massachusetts, became a schoolteacher, a drawing and music master in Vermont, was called Figure. When the produce of his sons began achieving fame, and the family and type needed a distinctive name, he was called after his old owner (maybe his breeder, for all that I can say to the contrary), Justin Morgan. His most famous son was Sherman Morgan, though there were eight or ten others of his colts kept entire, and the progeny of them have found place in the Morgan Register. Mr. Linsley’s description of the first Morgan is worthy of transcription: “The original, or Justin Morgan, was about 14 hands high and weighed about 950 pounds. His color was dark bay, with black legs, mane and tail. His mane and tail were coarse and heavy, but not so massive as has sometimes been described; the hair of both was straight and not inclined to curl. His head was good, not extremely small, but lean and bony, the face straight, forehead broad, ears small and very fine, but set very wide apart. His eyes were medium size, very dark and prominent, with a spirited but pleasant expression, and showed no white round the edge of the lid. His nostrils were very large, the muzzle small and the lips close and firm. His back and legs were perhaps his most noticeable point. The former was very short, the shoulder blades and hip bones being very long and oblique, and the loins extremely long and muscular. His body was rather round, long and deep, close ribbed up; chest deep and wide, with the breast bone projecting a good deal in front. His legs were short, close jointed, thin, but very wide, hard and free from meat, with muscles that were remarkably large for a horse of his size, and this superabundance of muscle exhibited itself at every step. His hair was short and at almost all seasons soft and glossy. He had a little long hair about the fetlocks and for two or three inches above the fetlocks on the back sides of the legs; the rest of the limbs were entirely free from it. His feet were small but well shaped, and he was in every respect perfectly sound and free from every sort of blemish. He was a very fast walker. In trotting his gait was low and smooth, and his step short and nervous; he was not what in these days (1857) would be called fast, and we think it doubtful if he could trot a mile much, if any, within four minutes, though it is claimed by many that he could trot it in three.”