Approximately 1000 items, primarily letters written to Randolph Huntington, but also including letters or copies of letters written by Huntington (57, 15 of which are incomplete) comprising over 250 pages, ephemeral items such as printed broadsides, telegrams, programs, etc. Huntington, a careful and voluminous correspondent, often asked that his letters be returned, and, in case they were not, wrote copies of the ones he though particularly important. The letters are both handwritten and typewritten, many accompanied by their original mailing envelopes. They are inserted in plastic sleeves and housed chronologically in 34 three-ring binders.
Highly important archive shedding new light not only on the life of the man who introduced the breeding of Arabian horses into the United States, but delving into the science and methods of horse breeding in the U.S. during the latter decades of the 19th century as well. The archive, recently released from a private collection, is undocumented and previously unpublished, and contains an unprecedented amount of first-hand source material on the gentlemanly art of the breeding of horses. Randolph Huntington (1828-1916), began his involvement with Arabian horse breeding in 1880, when he saw the celebrated Arabian stallions Leopard and Linden Tree, which had been presented to General Ulysses S. Grant in 1878 by the Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II of Constantinople. Huntington, a pharmacist by trade, had for a number of years been engaged in buying and selling fine trotting horses as a sideline, and around 1876 began breeding trotting road horses descended from Henry Clay, a fourth generation descendent of the renowned trotter Messenger. He valued highly the Clay blood, and attributed the excellence in large part to the amount of Arab blood present in the strain. He determined to use the two purebred Arabians given to Grant, which were under the care of Edward Fitzgerald Beale at his "Ash Hill" farm outside of Washington, D.C., in his trotting horse breeding program. He felt that the Thoroughbred, product of selection for specialization at the gallop, was not necessarily the ideal cross to use to increase speed at the trot. He saw in the Arabian the "unspecialized, desert origin" of speed, whether at the trot or at the gallop. Huntington's Clay mares were bred with Grant's Arabs in 1880, the first foals arriving in 1881. Thus began one of Huntington's prime ventures over the next two decades, the quest to develop a "national breed of horse," and hoped that these Clay Arabians, or Americo Arabs, would become the foundation stock for this national horse. The correspondence in the archive, most of which is concentrated in the years 1883-1892, reveal the methods of this quest, the energy exerted by Huntington, the cooperation or lack thereof of other horsebreeders, and many other facets of his life and work. Talented and clever, Randolph Huntington could also be difficult, cantankerous, suspicious, fiendishly jealous, and in the end a tormented and tragic figure. His may monetary difficulties are laid bare, and it was this financial distress which was to haunt him for most of his latter years. These difficulties were exacerbated by the tragedy which befell the company formed by Huntington and several backers in 1891, for the breeding of Americo-Arabs. In 1893, the treasurer of the company, a man called Weeks, embezzled most of the organizations assets, some $100,000, and absconded to Costa Rica. There is much correspondence in the archive dealing with Huntington's attempts to dig himself out of debt, borrow money, sell of horses, etc. Perhaps the greatest portion of the archive, however, consists of queries, authentication, and opinions on the heritage and lineage of Clay and other stock. Huntington wrote many articles and elicited responses from all over the country. Among the more interesting correspondents with Huntington was A.S. Asdikian, an Armenian who was an expert on the history and breeding of Arabian horses, with approximately 20 letters, 1888-1891. Other revealing material is found in the fourteen letters written by Colonel Spencer Borden, whose Interlachen Stud was the premier North American Arabian nursery of its day. A much fuller description of this important archive is available on request.