In 1636 the first plantation was made in Connecticut at Hartford by the Rev. Thomas Hooker and over a hundred of his congregation with him. They left nothing behind, but brought all their domestic animals to their new home. I have not been able to discover just how many horses they brought with them, but in a few decades they had a great abundance and to spare. In 1653 the General Court at New Haven made provision for keeping public saddle horses for hire and fixed the rate of charges for their use. It also prohibited the sale of horses outside of the colony. In 1658 all horses, young and old, had to be branded by an officer appointed for that purpose, and it required several years of legislation before the system of branding, selling and recording could be so perfected as to prevent dishonesty and frauds. In 1674 an act was passed providing and enjoining that all colts entire and stallions running at large, under thirteen hands high, should be gelded. This law also required a good deal of amending before it could be made to work smoothly. The size of the Connecticut horses about the time of the Revolution was an average of thirteen hands three inches, thus ranging below the other New England colonies. In 1778 horse racing was prohibited under the penalty of forfeiture of the horse and a fine of forty shillings. In 1776 a careful compilation of the gaits of the horses of that period, embracing nineteen individuals, taken as they came, showed that fifteen were pacers, or pacers and trotters, and four were trotters only. As an evidence of the quality of the Connecticut pacers, take the following passage from a little volume published 1769, in England, entitled “A Voyage to North America,” by G. Taylor, Sheffield, England, 1768-69: “After dinner at New London, Conn., Mr. Williams and I took post horses, with a guide to New Haven. Their horses are, in general of less size than ours, but extremely stout and hardy. A man will ride the same horse a hundred miles a day, for several days together, in a journey of five or eight hundred miles, perhaps, and the horse is never cleaned. They naturally pace, though in no graceful or easy manner, but with such swiftness and for so long a continuance as must seem incredible to those who have not proved it by experience.” This is a very different view of the pacer from that expressed by another Englishman who visited Virginia in 1796. He had never seen a pacer before and he was wholly unwilling to believe his host when he assured him it was a natural gait and that many colts paced from the day they were foaled. This, to the mind of the Englishman could not be true, he says, “for none of our horses ever move in that manner.” (See Virginia, pp. 117-118).