“I do not propose to write the history of the Morgan horses, although to do so would be like writing the history of kings.  Of Justin Morgan alone, it can be said that he founded a family. There have been other horses of note and whose eminence was well deserved, but they passed away and left no sons like themselves to be distinctively theirs. Not one built a throne and founded a nation whose population were abundant and all his children. But Justin Morgan did this thing. He stands the progenitor of a mighty race, spread over all the land from Maine to California and wherever you find a Morgan horse….whether in city or country, East or West, North or South…you know that he is a Morgan horse. One glance is enough.  Color, shape, style, limbs, feet, head, all suggest the little horse from which he lineally descended…Justin Morgan. How other bloods bowed in submission to his! Crossed with twenty families, he dominated over them all. No matter what the dam might be, the colt was sure to look like the sire. There were the same feet and legs, and depth of chest, and haunches swollen with muscles, the same proud curve to the neck, prominent eye, quick ear, full front, and muzzle as a sweated racer’s. Men say he had no pedigree. He had. His pedigree was written the form and spirit of his children.  The proofs of his pedigree were not BACK of him, but IN him; and they were read in living characters in his three sons…Sherman, Woodbury, and Bulrush – and in all the successive generations of his descendants, even down to the present time.” ~ William H. H. Murray