The Little Gray Arabian Stallion, at Home

We do a lot of virtual time-traveling in this blog. Now let's imagine we are riding around in our '37 Chevy with some horse-crazy people in Southern California, sometime around the end of World War II, maybe a few years after. 

We don't know their names, but from looking at the old black-and-white snapshots they left behind, we know these folks love horses. They're making a trip to the San Gabriel Valley northeast of Los Angeles, to visit a ranch destined to become one of the most influential American Arabian horse breeding establishments of our time. 

And of course they're going to take a camera.

The sign outside the ranch reads:

REGISTERED

ARABIAN HORSES

H.H. REESE

As the visitors approach, they see one of the stallions in a paddock surrounded by trees. He's a little fellow, almost pony-sized; he looks relaxed and happy. Perhaps he's munching on something? He's a dapple gray, turning whiter with time. He has a beautiful wide head, a deep jowl, expressive eyes, and a small muzzle. 

The visitors get out the camera. One click, and this image of the little horse is preserved for posterity.

And until their photograph of the little gray Arabian stallion turned up at an estate sale in Southern California in the summer of 2023, it's likely no one else had ever seen it. I didn't go to the sale, but someone who did attend rescued the photograph and gave it to me a few days ago.

The sign told me where the photo had been taken, and I was almost certain I knew the name of the horse. Why would someone have visited Herbert H. Reese's Rancho Canada Oscura (Ranch of the Hidden Canyon) in Covina, if not to see his famous Arabian stallions?

I checked with my friend and mentor, Arabian horse historian par excellence Carol Woodbridge Mulder. She wrote back:

"I am sure that is Ferseyn in the paddock with the sign about Reese's horse business. I remember seeing Ferseyn many, many times in that paddock on Glendora Ave. in Covina."

Ferseyn, foaled in 1937, was bred at the W. K. Kellogg Institute in 1936, the son of *Raseyn and *Ferda. At the time, Herbert Reese was managing the Kellogg Ranch. Cattle and horse rancher Fred Vanderhoof bought *Ferda shortly afterwards. Ferseyn was foaled at Vanderhoof's ranch in Woodlake (San Joaquin Valley). 

Correspondence in the collection of the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library shows that, when Ferseyn was two years old, Vanderhoof sent him and some other horses to Reese's ranch in Covina, Reese having parted company with the Kellogg property and set up his own Arabian breeding establishment in Covina in February 1939. Vanderhoof took out an ad in Western Horseman magazine in March 1939, featuring a photo of the young Ferseyn. The ad calls him "brown," but he was already starting to turn gray.

In his book The Kellogg Arabians, Reese wrote that the more he looked at Ferseyn, the more he liked him, and bought him for his own. Ferseyn appears in an "At Stud" ad for Reese's ranch in the September 1939 issue of Western Horseman.

Along with the single photo of Ferseyn from the estate sale, there was another surviving souvenir of the visit to the Rancho that pointed to the identity of the little stallion. Mr. Reese had had brochures made for each of his famous stallions, specially reprinted from material originally published in Western Livestock Journal. Two of his most famous stallions -- Abu Farwa, and Alla Amarward -- were chestnuts. Ferseyn was gray. His flyer was reprinted from an ad in WLJ's September 1944 issue. 

Ferseyn, Abu Farwa, and Alla Amarward went on to become three of the leading Arabian sires in North America in the mid-twentieth century.  It's nice to see the amateur snapshot of the little gray stallion relaxing in the pasture at Reese's Arabian Horse Ranch, waiting for some human guests to arrive. 

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The website for the W. K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Library on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona is here:  https://libguides.library.cpp.edu/wkkahl

Herbert H. Reese and Gladys Brown Edwards collaborated on several books. 

The Kellogg Arabians

Training the Arabian Horse

Arabian Horse Breeding

Horses of Today: Their History, Breeds, and Qualifications 

Affordable good used copies are readily available via online booksellers. Shop around for a price under $20 apiece.

Lonny Hitchen has posted a short film of an older Ferseyn on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0rc5RmhTXM