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An 1809 Connecticut Newspaper featured an article on the auction sale of Arabian Horses. The auction was to take place on April 25, 1809 in Milton “nine miles from Boston, at 11 A.M.” The horses were from the personal estate of General Henry Jackson. One of the horses was “Young Dey of Algiers” a full blooded Arabian dapple and grey, 15 hands high, seven years old, long and well proportioned, his figure and movement lofty and elegant. His Sire was the noted Dey of Algiers, imported by Col. James Swan, in the year 1800. His Dam, the grey Arabian Mare, imported at the same time with the horse. These and other horses were being sold along with oxen, carts, ploughs and other farm utensils along with about 12 tons of best English hay by the executor Elisha Sigourney, Ex’r.”
At the end of the Civil War Union Colonels auctioned horses as part of the spoils of war. During the late 1800’ and early 1900’s many stockyards accumulated horses for periodic auctions. Some auctions were as frequent as weekly.
According to an article in Harper’s Weekly November 18, 1871 titled A Horse Market, “ Every Wednesday and Saturday, old, disabled, or incurably vicious horses are sold at auction. The sight is not a pleasant one; nor is it agreeable to reflect that these valuable servants of man, after years of faithful toil, should be knocked down to new and generally worse masters, who are bound to get their money’s worth out of them before they are finally sent to the bone-boilers.” The article goes on to indicate that “The customers at these sales are generally a very hard set of men. Licensed vendors of truck and rags, too poor to buy a sound animal, cartmen who perhaps want a horse for a special job, and would just as lief kill him in a week, and farmers from the neighboring country in search of an extra horse for haying or harvesting, are the principle bidders on these occasions. The average price for a horse was three to five dollars.
In sharp contrast to the worst horses in the city of New York, “A Galaxy of the Greatest Horses of the World” was the name that Fasig-Tipton Company placed on their semi-annual horse auction held at Madison Square Garden in November of 1910. Fasig-Tipton Company started doing their Annual NYC auctions in 1894. According to their 1910 catalog they were offering 842 horses over 6 consecutive days. All the horses were cataloged with a note that no uncataloged horses would be sold. There was only one auctioneer – George A. Bain.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Sisson’s Auction Market had horse auctions every Monday in Poughkeepsie, New York. Out West train carloads of horses were sent to stockyards in Kansas and Wyoming destined for dispersal by auction. In the South auction firms such as Fasig Tipton (still in business) had regular thoroughbred horse auctions boasting outstanding prices.
The highest prices for horses sold at auction were recorded in the International Auctioneer’s magazine April 1901 issue. At that time the records were “Flying Fox” - $191,000, “Ormonde” – $150,000, “St. Blaise” - $100,000., “Hamburg” - $60,000. and “Meddler” - $50,000. The article went on to say that “Hamburg sold January 30 last by the Marcus Daly estate. There were fifty-two head in the lot and they brought $158,400. William Easton was the auctioneer. If these horses had been sold in some little town, there would probably have been some tupenny official who would have attempted to blackmail the auctioneer out of a big license fee. As it took place in New York City no additional license fee was required.”
An article in 1902 International Auctioneer magazine provided for the “Largest Horse Auction Sale in the World”. It attested to the fact that “Warren Lewis, live stock Auctioneer of Ypsilanti, was yesterday engaged to make the Kalamazoo Horse Sale on April 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th.” Further, “Over one thousand horses, the finest and fastest horses in the world will be sold by Warren Lewis auctioneer. Kalamazoo is the western horse center of America as well as many of those representing the Austrian, German, French and English governments will attend this great horse sale of the finest bred horses of all kinds in America as well as many of the United Kingdom’s largest breeders of fashionable bred live stock. Last year the foreigners purchased nearly all the best horses in the U.S. for export, paying top prices. – Michigan Paper.”
On a personal note, last year I had to auction a horse to help finalize a divorce settlement. The couple had agreed on everything but who would get the horse. The judge ordered that the horse, valued at $50,000, be sold at public auction. A large, serious crowd came to bid without a clue that they would not stand a chance against the aggressive bidding of the warring couple. The “$50,000 horse” sold in six minutes to the ex-wife for $84,500. When all is said and done - auctions work!
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