Horses were literally our early Morgan family's best friends

In our modern time the internal combustion engine, electricity and a multitude of other power sources have made power so easy to come by and physical work so easy that it is almost impossible to comprehend how important horses were to our early Morgan families.

Try, just for a while, to imagine what it was like when there were no automobiles, no electricity, no telephones, no tractors, no trucks. There was sagebrush to be cleared, land to be plowed, crops to be planted, cultivated and harvested. There was the necessity of getting from one place to another. And there was one unit of power that served all these purposes. The horse.

Horses were an intergral and deeply ingrained part of our early pioneer family's life.

Children learned to work with, handle, ride, and drive, horses as soon as they were big enough to hold the reins.

The most important basic implement used in farming with horses was the wagon. It was used to haul everything, from rocks to potatoes to family furniture. Families often lived out of wagons when necessary and slept under them in inclement weather. The wagon in the picture above has been modified; the old wooden wheels in the front have been replaced with the more modern, and stronger, iron wheels.

Horses were hitched to farm implements with single trees, double trees or quad trees. The tree shown above is a quad tree, also known as a four horse evener. It served to even out the differences in the amount each horse pulled as it scrambled for footing or tried to overcome some disadvantage such as being on the uphill side on a hillside.

Horsepower