Way
back -- probably 1957 -- when I was trying to get started with
Davenport breeding, I was contacted by an Elizabeth Paynter,
who was trying to do the same thing. Elizabeth Paynter turned
out to be a teen-age girl, still in high school
She liked to be called "Liz."
She was one of those sweet, wholesome kids with a wonderful
father and mother. There was no question that she was horse
crazy. No doubt her folks liked horses, too, but I think their
main interest was in participating in an activity with Liz.
One or both of them would be along when she came for a visit.
They actively took part in her horse projects. Betty, the mother,
took care of the horses when Liz could not, and, of course,
money had to come from somewhere. The Paynters were not wealthy
people, but they took good care of their horses and paid their
horse bills.
As time passed, Liz went on
with her education, first to Stephens College at Columbia MO,
then to Iowa State. Later, she was out of school and married
for a while, but ended up back at home. Usually girls who become
horse enthusiasts get into horse-show circles.
Instead, Liz had somehow caught
on to purist breeding. Looking back, one wonders how that happened.
There was very little in print on the subject, and most of that
was hidden away in obscure books she probably did not know existed.
The major way to find out about the breeding of "asil" Arabian
horse was through personal contact with a few purist breeders.
Liz had limited opportunity for such contact. She was just a
kid who lived in Muscatine, Iowa, knew almost nobody in Arabian
breeding, and had traveled very little to Arabian breeding farms.
Nevertheless, she had a good
working knowledge of purist breeding, probably at least as good
as that of most Al Khamsa breeders of the present time.
She had the advantage of being
unencumbered by some of the misinformation which plagues us
now.
Liz was like many girls who
love horses in that her taste in equine matters was rather broad.
She understood the logic of what to get, and perhaps she wanted
some of all of it. She managed to obtain Ardith 1101 (Ahamed/Sherah)
from Jimmie Wrench. Ardith had actually produced sixteen foals
up to the time Liz got her.
She was by one of the Domow-line
stallions and out of a double granddaughter of *Urfah 40. Liz
was in negotiation to acquire Sunbul 1318 (*Nasr/Samarkand)
-- from the same crop of *Nasr foals as Hallany Mistanny but
out of a Davenport mare (Antez/Markada) - from Jose De la Torriente
of Havana, Cuba. Something must have interfered with completion
of that project, which would have been fascinating if it had
succeeded.
Unfortunately the Ardith project
did not work out too well either. The mare was just too old
and fragile to produce what Liz wanted, which was a foal from
the Davenport stallion,
Tripoli, who was
by
Hanad and out of Poka, a full sister to the mare's mother.
The great advantage of this kind of breeding would have been
production of a foal uniquely concentrating the blood of *Urfah
40, who at that time, thanks to the research of Ameen Azher
and Pesi Gazder, was recognized as the premier foundation broodmare
of American Arabian breeding.
Liz's achievement in Arabian
breeding was production of two Davenport foals from Ehwat-Ansarlah
4776 (Kasar/Anlah). This mare was 100% Davenport breeding. She
was the only Davenport mare left tracing to the import *Hadba
43, which she did in tail female. She had been bred at the Hearst
ranch in California and had somehow ended up in Idaho, where
she became surplus when her owners decided to switch to Appaloosas.
She was branded. That had probably been done when she was mature
and after she had left the Hearst ranch. Possibly the experience
contributed to her attitude towards people which, while not
hostile, was not very positively inclined.
Liz found her and bought her
at a time when no one else was interested in an obscure mare
with a pedigree that was so antique that almost everyone had
forgotten what it meant.
Ehwat-Ansarlah was a small mare.
She had a neck with a lovely, lean mitbah, a big eye, and a
dark chestnut color which sunburned miserably in the summer.
Somewhere along the line, she had gotten into something and
had major scarring on her legs. She had nice regular feet, rather
flat musculature, and a neck carriage and croup that inclined
to the horizontal. Her head was rather triangular in shape when
viewed from the side, more so than most Davenports.
Ehwat-Ansarlah was 9 when Liz
got her and had had four foals. Her first was a chestnut mare
by *Mounwer (Hadba-Mounwere Chance 7928) in 1952, followed by
three other non-Al Khamsa foals.
Liz called her "Annie."
Liz had corresponded with
Raswan before getting Ehwat-Ansarlah.
He had encouraged her, sending pictures of one of the mare's
imported ancestors, *Gomusa 31, who was shown to have two dark
eyes.
Ehwat-Ansarlah came to
Craver Farms to be bred to Tripoli. Trisarlah 13690, a dandy
filly, resulted. The mare then came back for repeat breeding.
Perhaps something went wrong
with the support system for horses at the Paynter household.
Maybe Liz was simply growing into an age where young women whould
be thinking about other things, but anyway Ehwat-Ansarlah was
sold to Frank Brewster of Baxter Springs, Kansas before producing
her second foal of Liz's breeding, which turned out to be a
colt by Tripoli named Trian 15144.
My last recollection of a face
to face contact with the Paynter family was in 1959. Some time
not long after that, Liz's mother, Betty died, and after a short
while Liz, too, was gone.
She had carried on a brief,
intense period of equine-related activity. It came too quickly
to an end, but some of it still lasts in the descendants of
the two breedings Liz made with Ehwat-Ansarlah. Of these, the
stallion Trian, eventually found a home with Larry Dove in Kendallville,
Indiana. His only Al Khamsa foal was entirely Davenport:
Rosebud LBU (out of Rose of Jessica), whose bloodline continues
through her and her daughters by
Trouvere (Tripoli/Verona) with the
Daughtons in North Carolina. (I can remember the birth of
Trian very clearly. It happened at Craver Farms. My first sight
of him was one front leg sticking out of the mare. I was a complete
neophyte at the delivery of foals, but I was able to push him
back, get the other one, and out he came in good shape, a nice
colt with just about a perfect body.)
The more numerous contribution
by Liz Paynter to Al Khamsa (and Davenport) breeding was through
the first foal of her breeding out of Ehwat-Ansarlah, Trisarlah
by Tripoli. Trisarlah went to Carolyn Ullmann (later Case) who
bred her twice to the Davenport stallion El Alamein (Dhareb/Antarah),
producing Letarlah and Waddarlah. Both mares have been successful
producers with Davenport stallions. It is primarily upon their
progeny that the current successful move to restore the Hadban
bloodline to Davenport breeding has been based.
After leaving Elizabeth Paynter's
ownership, Ehwat-Ansarlah passed through a number of other hands.
For a time, she was owned by Frank Brewster, in whose ownership
Trian was foaled. Brewster sold her in foal to Claude Bates
of Bristow, Oklahoma, for whom she produced Bates Fadl 22280,
a 1962 grey stallion by Ibn Fadl.
She turned up in the ownership
of W.R.Sheets in Canada, producing several foals by non-Davenport
Al Khamsa stallions. This production is said to have been very
successful, and included daughters of ASF Deena 27268 and ASF
Deborah 33745 by the Babson stallion Serr Deene, daughter ASF
Hagar 38628 by the Babson stallion, Fa-Serr, and son ASF Gabriel
44134 by the Blue Star stallion Dhahran.
She was then bred to the Davenport
stallion Pericles (Tripli/Dharebah)
to produce her last foal, ASP Cicero 65981, a 1970 chestnut
stallion who unfortunately died without produce. She finally
returned to Illinois for her last years, dying at age 30. Even
up to the very end, she was an extremely vital mare, maintaining
her own sense of self. At last, it was just impossible to get
her up one more time.
There is a tendency to think
of horse-fascinated kids as youngsters who will outgrow silly
folly. That may be true of some, but maybe the world of
back-yard horse husbandry upon which Arabian breeding is
based would not be possible if it were not for adults who got
started with horses when they were young. Thank heavens they
get started some way!
There can be more to young breeders
than that. Some of them have done excellent and even historic
breeding. Elizabeth Paynter is an example of a girl who made
a long-term contribution to Arabian breeding. Maybe it was the
major long-term achievement of her whole life. As far as concerns
the breeding of Arabian horses, time seems to be proving that
it preserved a major part of the *Hadba 43 element in Al Khamsa
breeding as it has in Davenport breeding where it also preserves
the tail-female line of descent from that mare.
Other young people, too, have
made their great contributions.
Pat Payne, for
example, was responsible for the breeding of Tripoli (Hanad/Poka),
who was an essential for the preservation of modern Davenport
breeding. Jane Ott began her horse activity as a girl, as did
Reba Troxell,
Diana Marston Weiner, and
Alice Martin Kuhn.
Departing from Al Khamsa circles, Dick Lodwick, Lois Selby,
Bill Munson, and Bazy Tankersley all started young.
Not all young breeders have
made major contributions, of course. It is terrible hard for
a young person to have the financial and personal stability
to establish a long-term breeding project. But then young people
have their own advantages: enthusiasm, logic, and a disregard
for common sense. What they do can be very special because sometimes
it is important and something that older, wiser breeders will
not do.
Liz did not have enough time
to leave the normal mementos of life: no home of her making,
no family, no professional achievements. Hardly any of us remember
her now, but what she started with Ehwat-Ansarlah has grown
and promises to be something unique and lovely that has its
own niche in the preservation of the "asil" Arabian horse.
It's nice to be credited for
something worthwhile after you're gone, but there has to be
more to horses than that. For Elizabeth Paynter there was an
abundance of pleasure in horse activity as it occurred. She
enjoyed putting together a breeding venture which was unique
and her own. She enjoyed being with the horses and taking care
of them. The writer still remembers her pleasure as "Annie"
took off across the pasture on one of her stays at Craver Farms,
leading all the other mares and making them look dull. She enjoyed
studying horses. She enjoyed visiting with horse people. She
enjoyed taking dressage lessons so she could better train her
Trisarlah. And how she thrilled at Trisarlah!
The pleasure was not only for
her. It was shared by her mother and father. They loved the
horse project, too, and the family activity with the charming
daughter.
As primarily a bystander observing
the events, the writer of this memorial takes pleasure in thinking
back to a friendship of thirty years ago with a young person
who seemed just a kid at the time: sweet, ambitious, and willing
to work with enthusiasm in a project that was worthwhile. The
memory is especially satisfying because there was a permanence
to what she did as an Arabian breeder. She was one who counted.
